A
second day of protests against changes to pay equity laws
are being held around the country, after hundreds braved bad
weather on Friday to express their anger over the
government’s sudden change to legislation.
The law
change, rushed through Parliament under urgency this
week, means 33 claims – representing thousands of workers –
must be restarted.
Nelson Post Primary Teachers’
Association regional chair Anna Heinz said 1500 people
turned out to march along the city’s main street just after
11am on Saturday. She said a real mix of people had come out
to express their anger.
“Old, young, women, men, all
kinds of different areas of society, it’s a real broad range
of people.”
Heinz said “everyone” there was outraged
by the speed of the law change, as well as the “arrogance
and cowardice” of those responsible for it.
However,
the attitude at the protest was positive, she
said.
“They’re all pleased to be here, because they
feel disempowered from being able to make change. So being
able to go on a march at least feels like something they can
do.”
Heinz said the Equal Pay Act 1972 was
groundbreaking because it compared pay for workers in
female-dominated sectors with similar jobs in male-dominated
roles.
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“I was a 12-year-old when they passed [it], and
I noticed it at the time and thought, ‘Gosh that sounds like
an important thing.’
“I was aware of conversation at
the time that said the big change and the big difference was
going to be the comparators outside of the area where the
women were working.
“That’s the very thing that’s been
changed with this legislation change. They’ve taken the
heart out of what was the best bit of that piece of
legislation, that’s what makes me so angry.”
The
change in legislation was announced by Workplace Minister
Brooke van Velden on Tuesday, and would make it harder to
lodge claims.
On Friday, under questioning from RNZ as
protests
swept the country, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said
individuals and unions whose claims had been halted could
resubmit their applications.
Luxon said the changes
affected what was required in terms of the breadth of
claims.
“For example, you’ve had librarians being
compared in pay equity work to the work of fisheries
officers.”
He said there needed to be a comparative
hierarchy of jobs to make the system more workable and give
it more certainty.
“Pay equity is an issue where you
have women in particular, in female-dominated industries,
looking to the value of the work that they do is akin to
value that might be a different job done in a different
industry or a different
sector.”
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