Genter Julie AnneEQUAL PAY AMENDMENT BILLIn CommitteePart 1 Amendments to principal ActHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Minister for Women): Tēnā koe Mr Chair. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. It's a real privilege to be here to discuss in particular Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 548 to the Equal Pay Amendment Bill. That will be the focus of my remarks right now but I just want to start by saying as Minister for Women my role is to advocate for all women and girls in Aotearoa New Zealand and this bill and the amendments in the Supplementary Order Paper represent a step forward for gender equity in the labour market. The Government is committed to building an inclusive economy particularly in the response to COVID-19. It's very important that we maintain a focus on achieving gender equity and recognising the intersectional factors that are leading to substantial pay gaps particularly for non-European women. The pay equity framework in this bill encourages collaboration and evidence-based decision-making to address pay inequity. Supplementary Order Paper 548 further enables this vision by aligning the bill more closely with the bargaining system in the Employment Relations Act (ERA). We have been making significant progress towards eliminating the gender pay gap in the core public sector this term—a priority for this Government—with several pay equity settlements finalised and in progress and it's now time to ensure that pay equity can be realised across all of New Zealand and the economy.I want to briefly talk about the process we've been through to get to this point today and then I'll outline a few changes in the SOP that I believe will particularly benefit women and employees in occupations that have been subject to systematic undervaluation due to gender discrimination. Following the select committee report back our social partners the Council of Trade Unions and BusinessNZ approached us with the view that the pay equity bargaining framework should align more clearly with the framework for collective and individual bargaining under the Employment Relations Act. The Government agreed that closer alignment with existing employment bargaining practices would improve the pay equity process. So Cabinet then agreed to make these changes to the bill that will align the pay equity process further with the current bargaining practice that businesses unions and employees are all already familiar with.So some key changes include enabling unions to raise pay equity claims on behalf of their members and these claims will also cover employees who are not union members but are performing the same or substantially similar work. This is good for women because unions have expertise in resolving pay inequity they have a stronger voice than one individual claimant and this should lead to more robust settlements that fully correct pay inequity while allowing individuals who are not members to have a voice in the settlement. Secondly: requiring employers to offer any pay equity settlement negotiated by a union to other affected employees. So these changes recognise that pay equity is an issue of systematic sex-based discrimination which affects both union and non-union members. So where a union settlement has addressed sex-based undervaluation in the remuneration for the work it should be offered to other employees all employees performing that work. The bill will also continue to allow employees to bargain individually for pay equity where there is no union or where employees choose not to be represented by a union. These changes are more consistent with the approach taken to collective bargaining under the ERA and in international law.We're also enabling unions to raise single claims across multiple employers where the work is substantially similar. Several submitters asked for a more balanced employer and employee voice in the multi-employer consolidation of pay equity claims. This aligns more closely with multi-employer bargaining processes under the ERA and this is good for women and employers because settlements can be reached with multiple employers concurrently reducing the risk of multiple different settlements being reached for the same or similar work. For both employees and employers it makes sense to have consistent pay rates and to reduce the costs of concluding multiple settlements within occupations. We've also made some key changes to time frames for the progression of each stage of the process and I could probably go into detail on that throughout this debate. We are ensuring that during the assessment phase of the pay equity processes parties will assess the nature of the work terms and conditions of the work and remuneration of the work that is the subject of the claim and those of one or more comparator occupations the comparator occupations being the more male-dominated occupations although it could also be other female-dominated occupations that have also been through a pay equity process. This is good for women because relevant evidence will be taken into account to remove the undervaluation of the work and it will also enable those existing resources and tools to be used so that claims can be resolved quickly. We've clarified that a pay equity claim will be settled when parties have agreed remuneration that they consider corrects pay inequity. This is not necessarily just a pay rate or salary but can include elements such as annual leave or superannuation and anything else the parties mutually agree. We've also made sure that settlements must also include a commitment to regularly ensure pay equity has been maintained and this is really important because our goal is to correct this systemic longstanding gender-based or sex-based discrimination and after a settlement has been made we don't want it to stop there. We don't want it to lose that progress over time. So it's important that we continue to review that we have a process in place that employees and employers understand just to make sure that we're eliminating inequity over the long term which is what this bill is about. There are also protections against unfair individual bargaining similar to those provided for in the ERA. These changes are reflected in Supplementary Order Paper 548 presented to you today. It has taken time to improve the bill and we've done so at the request of our social partners. It is worth getting it right. A robust and accessible pay equity process will be a critical tool in helping to reduce the gender pay gap across the economy. This bill is an important milestone but we still have more work to do and it's great that there are so many individuals and organisations working towards achieving pay equity for all women in Aotearoa.