Claims the new IR laws will close the gender pay gap and strengthen equal pay laws are welcome. But, as Mary Merkenich and Sarah Hathway argue, the laws will divide workers and weaken the Better Off Overall Test.
equal pay
The gender pay gap — a measurement of gender equality in the workplace — is growing.
Appallingly, women who have made history make up just 1% of all of Victoria’s statues. Darren Saffin argues why it is important to support a statue of feminist unionist Zelda D'Aprano.
Disabled people can be paid as little as $2.54 per hour. Shaun Bickley urges candidates, companies and others to support equal pay for equal work.
Two hundred people took part in the International Women’s Day protest organised by Hunter Workers' Women's Committee. Kathy Fairfax reports.
Jake Johnson takes a look at how the US women’s football (soccer) team was driven by their struggle for equal pay, and used their Cup win to escalate the fight.
An estimated 7000 childcare workers took industrial action by walking off the job around Australia on September 5 to demand equal pay.
More than 6000 early childhood educators walked off the job on March 27 for the third time in 12 months to demand equal pay. In addition, more than 30,000 parents made other arrangements for their children, or kept them at home, to stand in solidarity with childcare workers.
The walk-off was part of a nationwide day of action called by the workers’ union United Voice prompted by the failure of the federal government to act on equal pay. Early childhood educators are among the lowest paid professionals in Australia.
The fact that Barnaby Joyce has been forced to step down from the leadership of the Nationals is a good thing. Not so good was Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's reframing of the former deputy PM's wrongdoings in terms of a paternalistic, sexual moralism.
Rather than address Joyce’s abuse of parliamentary privilege to ensure his partner maintained her well-paid media advisor job and questions over Joyce’s expenditure claims for travel and accommodation, Turnbull decided to play the moral card.
Communist and feminist Zelda D’Aprano became the symbol of the fight for equal pay when, in October 1969, she chained herself to the Commonwealth Offices in Melbourne, after becoming frustrated at the lack of pay equity for women.
D’Aprano was employed by the meatworkers union, which was involved in a test case on the gender pay gap in the meat industry before the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission. At the time, women’s participation in the workforce was 38% and they were paid 75% of men’s wages for doing the same work.
Early childhood educators, from Cairns to Hobart and from Perth to Townsville; from big cities like Sydney to the smallest like Launceston, walked off the job on September 7 to demand equal pay.
The childcare workers’ strike on International Women’s Day caused me to reflect on the long journey towards equal pay and my personal experience over 50 years of my working life.
My first job as a student was as a conductor on Sydney buses from 1964 to 1966. Bus conductors and teachers were the only jobs that paid women the same rates as men, because there were “manpower” shortages in these industries. However, it was not until late 1966 that women conductors could be promoted to drivers.
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