Labor vows to close gender pay gap if elected
If elected Labor would consider legislation to close the gender pay gap, the employment spokesman, Brendan O’Connor, has said.
On Wednesday O’Connor told the National Press Club that legislation could include changing the objects of the Fair Work Act or giving the Fair Work Commission powers to close the gap that “should have been resolved many years ago”.
After a question about the breakfast TV presenter Lisa Wilkinson leaving Channel Nine over a dispute in which she had asked for pay closer to her Today co-host Karl Stefanovic, O’Connor said it had “elevated” the debate about gender pay equity.
Although he said he was “less concerned” about the highest-paid workers, O’Connor said the principle of equal pay is the same: “If the only difference is the gender when the performance, the quality and the experience is the same ... then that is unfair.”
O’Connor said he and the shadow minister for women, Tanya Plibersek, were “looking at what we can do”, noting that the FWC “can play a more proactive role”.
When pushed whether this would include legislation or just submissions, as Labor did in trying to prevent penalty rate cuts, O’Connor replied: “I wasn’t suggesting we would make a submission” and confirmed Labor was considering legal changes.
He suggested in government Labor would “look at the objects of the Fair Work Act and the powers and responsibilities of the commission as to whether that is the best vehicle for us to start fixing [the gap]”.
The FWC already has the power to lift award rates of pay if it finds gender is one of the reasons work is undervalued. In 2012 the commission lifted the rates of pay of community and disability sector workers after it found they were underpaid compared with public service workers doing similar jobs.
That case, led by the Australian Services Union, has become the template for gender pay cases, such as United Voice’s “big steps” campaign for equal pay in the childcare industry.
O’Connor said there had been “some very good decisions” from the FWC to address inequality “in certain sectors of the labour market, but there is a lot of work to be done”.
O’Connor said a gender pay gap “should not be acceptable in any modern economy and society” and Labor was concerned at the lack of progress.
He said it was “not coincidental that the occupations that are undervalued ... have been predominantly [performed by] women”, which he called an “intrinsic bias and prejudice that has existed for decades”.
Earlier, O’Connor promised a crackdown on “sham” enterprise agreements by legislating to make clear that the workers who vote on a workplace deal must be representative of those who may ultimately be covered by it.
O’Connor also flagged a new inquiry into the future of work to address the challenges that new technology and business models present to the labour market and system of workplace laws.
Asked how Labor would regulate the gig economy, O’Connor noted technologies like transport app Uber were “very popular” and argued it was therefore preferable to regulate platforms that connect sellers and buyers of labour rather than ban them, as London did in the case of Uber.
Banning a company would be a “last resort”, but O’Connor said there would be consequences if large companies showed contempt for national laws and refused to pay tax or workers.
He said Labor had not finalised a policy on the gig economy, but companies must not use technology “to obviate obligations under particular laws, to undermine people’s rights and that includes industrial rights”.
O’Connor said that increasingly people were likely to have many jobs in their lifetime, so governments should “do better” in providing portable entitlements that workers could take with them when they change jobs.
But he said he had “not given up” on the idea of full-time work and would not “surrender” to a world of 10-hour days and workers having five jobs.