'Tragedy': Union boss decries ongoing Pacific gender pay gap

It's no secret the gender pay gap is a major problem here in New Zealand - with the current difference between what men and women earn sitting at 8.9 per cent.

But for Pacific wahine that difference is even greater - with the Council of Trade Unions calculating that these women essentially started working for free last Friday, 28 September, due to the higher wages Pākehā men earn for similar roles.

Council of Trade Unions Vice President Rachel Mackintosh told William Terite on Pacific Mornings, this is both an “outrage and a tragedy” and places the blame firmly with employers for allowing these gaps to develop.

“It's definitely discrimination,” Mackintosh said.

“If specific women are doing the same work as men, they are likely to be paid less, especially if there is no pay transparency - so this thrives in the dark.”

She says another driver of this disparity is that the industries Pacific women generally occupy aren't valued enough.

“There’s a lot of Pasifika women working in the care industry … there's a lot of Pasifika women who work in cleaning, which is really low paid.

“And what that means is that this discrimination is on the basis of gender as well as ethnicity, because those kinds of jobs tend to be undervalued.”

Mackintosh is also concerned that with the government’s recent policy changes, the gap will not be closing anytime soon.

“There's a huge role for government and in fact there are a lot of things that this current government has done is likely to slow if not reverse the current slow, slow trend to close the gap.”

Mackintosh says putting a stop on the fair pay agreement legislation, along with closing the pay equity unit are two such measures that hurt progress on this issue.

"The tiny increase in the minimum wage affected way more women and way more Pasifika than the general population. So there's quite a lot of things that have been done in the past year that are going to make it worse or at best, going to slow it down."

However Mackintosh hasn’t lost hope the pay gap will remain forever.

“With political will and with the right to bargain collectively through unions, we will do it. But we also need support from the government.”