New campaign asks Paula Bennett to be our champion for equal pay

As part of the 48 Hour Campaign Competition, TCHR is launching a campaign to ask Paula Bennett, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Women, to make Equal Pay top of her list for 2017. The campaign follows years of work by women and unions to address the gender pay gap in New Zealand, a gap that still stands at 12% in 2017.

A working group including government, unions and employers has developed a set of principles to allow employees to make equal pay claims directly to their employers. Employees, under the principles, can make a claim if their work is predominantly done by women and has been undervalued as “women’s work”. This would have huge impacts for thousands of women in low payed jobs across the country; many of whom have dedicated their lives to caring for the elderly, the young and the vulnerable.

The next step is to make the principles part of New Zealand law. While the government has said they will do this, it’s a busy year and women have already waited a long time for equal pay.

The campaign asks people to drop Bennett a reminder note in time for parliament’s first week back, to make sure that getting the principles into law is top of her list for 2017.

“This is one solid thing people can do to make sure equal pay doesn’t drop off the agenda for this year,” says an unnamed TCHR operative.

“We know there is an election to win and America is hard to look away from, but get equal pay for women done first. They’ve been waiting a long time, it’s only fair they’re top of the to do list now.”

For more information see the campaign's website at http://payequity.48hcc.nz.

The Concerned Housewives of Remuera (TCHR) is a mysterious and newly formed team of labour advocates based in Wellington.

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