Gender equality could become part of collective pay talks in female-dominated industries, Etu union assistant national secretary John Ryall says.
The planned law change announced on Thursday would have a profound effect, Mr Ryall said yesterday.
"What’s been lost in this, I think, is we are largely introducing again the whole system of arbitrated industry agreements.
"The reason a lot of these workers are actually low paid is because they’ve got [a weak bargaining position] in collective bargaining."
Agreements with larger employers could set industry-wide precedents.
Equal pay claims would in many cases become part of collective bargaining. But they would not hold up bargaining, because it would be possible to agree on a collective contract and continue gender pay talks separately, he said.
Etu backed rest-home caregiver Kristine Bartlett’s landmark case against Terranova, which set in motion the law change announced this week. Etu argued she, like most men and women in female-majority industries, were underpaid relative to industries that mainly employed men.
Next year, the Government will enact the recommendations of the Joint Working Group on Pay Equity to allow women to raise claims with their employer rather than the courts.
Fairer pay for aged residential caregivers and home support workers is likely to happen sooner, because the Government has entered direct talks with unions.
Negotiators could have an offer by Christmas and workers could ratify it by early next year.
The union would look at the catering, cleaning, hospitality, and laundry sectors to consider whether the equal pay principle applied.
"We need to cast the equal pay eye over them.
"It’s pretty obvious with the caregivers ... but with some of these other sectors we’d need to have a look at them and see if the same thing occurs."
The system works by finding male-dominated jobs to act as a comparison. Settling on how this could work caused disagreement among the working group that advised the Government. Mr Ryall disagreed with the Government’s decision to establish a hierarchy system that would favour male jobs in the same or similar sectors, saying this could act as a barrier.
"These workers are paid very low because there’s been gender under-valuation for jobs."
