Fair Pay, Equal Pay
Julia Gillard posted Thursday, 10 November 2011
For too long Australia has undervalued workers in the social and community services sector – the vast majority of them women. Today I was proud to tell them the Labor Government is pushing the case for them to get a pay rise. We're putting $2 billion on the table for 150, 000 workers in their sector.
Workers in this sector have been underpaid for too long because their work is viewed as women’s work. They work in incredibly challenging jobs, including:
- Working with people with disabilities
- Counselling families in crisis
- Running homeless shelters
- Working with victims of domestic violence or sexual assault
They deserve to be properly rewarded for their work.
Plainly, it’s just wrong that full-time working women earn on average one fifth less than men. That equates to women working seven weeks a year for free.
That’s why today I was proud to announce that my Labor Government and the ASU will make a submission to Fair Work Australia that argues for rates of pay that fairly and properly value social and community sector work. It will argue for rates of pay that don’t discriminate, so decades of inequality are brought to an end.
This equal pay case has only been possible through the introduction of Labor’s Fair Work laws. Prior to the Fair Work Act all 16 applications for equal pay had failed because the test was impossible to meet.
When I abolished Work Choices and created Fair Work Australia I hoped for an outcome like this. I hoped Labor’s new laws would lead to a fair decision, based on fair evidence, that often people who work in female-dominated sectors had long been underpaid.
This is an historic announcement for social and community sector workers and something only a Labor Government will deliver.
Julia Gillard
Prime Minister
Tags: Fair Pay,
Gender Pay Gap,
NLWN,
Pay Equity,
Social and Community Sector Workers,
Unions