From equal pay to overcoming undervaluation: The Australian National Pay Equity Coalition 1988–2011

Abstract

Australian feminists have struggled to define the International Labour Organisation’s Equal Remuneration Convention’ goal of gender pay equity and find a platform for achieving it. Approaches based on discrimination, or a male comparator, have proved unworkable. Networking nationally and internationally, the National Pay Equity Coalition (1988–2011) formulated many submissions to industrial tribunals and parliamentary inquiries. Early interventions argued the disadvantages to women of the decentralisation of bargaining in the 1990s, but following the failure of discrimination-based cases, this focus shifted. National Pay Equity Coalition submissions came to define the gender gap, not as one between women and male comparators, but as a recognition gap. They argued that indicators of a history of gender-based undervaluation should lead to a bias-free work value assessment. Bias lay in the distance between actual job demands and their characterisation in classification descriptions. It could be redressed by fuller recognition of the work value of feminised service roles. This approach to the recognition and remedy of undervaluation informed the 1998 NSW Pay Equity Inquiry and the NSW Equal Remuneration Principle, but is not recognised in federal labour law. No Equal Remuneration Principle yet applies in the federal jurisdiction which since 2009 has governed most Australian wage setting amidst growing social inequality.

Is job evaluation compatible with care work?

“…This approach was integrated into pay equity efforts despite the dynamic of gender dominance underlying job evaluation methods and despite critical discourse on HR practices as tools of power and domination that perpetuate the undervaluing of certain jobs, including home care (Townley, 1993). 3 In line with that critique, Deborah Figart (1997) states: “the lived experience of discrimination requires qualitative analysis, in order to trace the influence of labour market structures within broader gender systems of social organisation and power distribution” (Blackman et al, 1988: 587).…”

In Memoriam: Commemorating an industrial relations revolutionary. Frances Hayes 8 November 1953–11 December 2023

“…This particular challenge was addressed prominently and selflessly by Fran in her work for the National Pay Equity Coalition (NPEC), a feminist policy and advocacy group. The work of NPEC, together with other organisations, was ultimately prominent in analysing the gender pay gap not ‘in terms of differences between women and men, but in terms of the failure of classification structures, skill recognition systems and evaluation methods to give due weight to the demands of work done by women’ (Blackman et al, 2020: 601).…”

“…The two then continued to collaborate in the National Pay Equity Coalition (NPEC) convened by Meredith Burgmann and including Suzanne Hammond, Anne Junor and Meg Smith. A fine account of Fran's efforts in the struggle for pay equity can also be found in Anne Junor's Obituary, published in February 2024 in the Economic and Labour Relations Review (Junor, 2024) and further accounts can be found in Smith (2008), Blackman et al (2019) and Blackman et al (2020). It is important to acknowledge that Fran was one of the authors of the latter two articles, one of which appeared in the Journal of Industrial Relations .…”

Equal pay for work of equal value, wage-setting and the gender pay gap

“…The experiences of Australia and New Zealand are further elaborated in two articles that address the impact of coalitions of activists in refining the concept of gender pay inequality and mobilising action to redress it. Blackman et al. (2020) provide an insider’s view of the ways in which the National Pay Equity Coalition (NPEC) in Australia promoted the goal of redressing the undervaluation of feminised work.…”