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Equal Employment Opportunity Commissioner Saunoamaali’i Karanina Sumeo
photo: supply
The Human Rights Commission has called on the government to take race into account when tackling the pay gap.
On Thursday, acting Minister for Women Louise Upston announced a plan whereby businesses will voluntarily report on gender pay gaps.
Equal Employment Opportunity Commissioner Saunoamaali’i Karanina Sumeo said other factors must be considered when having such conversations, not just gender, or people will be left behind.
“It’s not enough to just talk about the gender pay gap. We have to include race in all pay transparency conversations.”
She said a recent survey found that without intervention, the Pacific Islander pay gap would take 110 years to close.
The same survey found that for every $1 earned by a white man, white women earned 89 cents, Asian and Maori men earned 86 cents, Asian women earned 83 cents, Pacific men and Maori women both earned 81 cents, and Pacific women earned 75 cents.
“For Pacific Islander women, the pay gap is as high as $488,310 over their working career.”
She said that for many people, the wage gap had a huge impact on poverty, the ability to raise children and live with dignity.
“For Māori and Pacific people, there are intergenerational inequalities. Many disadvantaged ethnic and migrant groups have median wages significantly lower than non-migrants. Ultimately, we need to include people with disabilities in the discussion.”
Upston announced that companies will now be required to report pay inequality on a voluntary basis, in line with the Legislation introduced by the previous Labour government.
Pay equity expert Lyn Brieseman said mandatory reporting had been introduced in other countries and had proven to be a successful way to reduce the gender pay gap across the country, but voluntary reporting was just beginning.
“The purpose of the voluntary reporting framework is to normalise pay gap reporting so that others can easily follow the trend.
“Putting an issue under the ‘spotlight’ is a way to focus attention so that steps can be taken to address it.”
Sumeo said that while the gender pay gap tool was a good step forward, there was still more work to be done.
“If mandatory reporting is not possible for the time being, we call on governments and businesses to have the courage to continue this important conversation.”
Mr Upston said the government wanted to address the ethnic pay gap in the future.
“While the tool was developed to assess the gender pay gap, we hope that as we learn more over time, the ethnicity pay gap can be measured in a similar way. Measuring the ethnicity pay gap in overseas jurisdictions has proven difficult due to data collection issues.”
She said Cabinet had not yet made any decision on taking forward work on the previous government’s mandatory pay gap reporting system.
“The Coalition Government is committed to tackling inequality in the workplace, but we also don’t want to burden businesses with unnecessary costs and regulation.”
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