In October 2022 on the 50th anniversary of the Equal Pay Act, the NZ Government announced it was working ‘with haste’ on the introduction of a pay transparency regime. Since then 41 weekly paydays have passed and we are still yet to have that announcement from Government

Meanwhile around the rest of the world advances are being made* on already established measures to close pay gaps

YWCA CEO and Mind the Gap Co-founder Dellwyn Stuart is frustrated with the pace of progress.

“In a time of growing material hardship for many kiwis, our Government has yet to make a public commitment to legislating pay gap reporting.

“This is not new territory – both internationally, in our own Public Service and in more than 100 of our businesses - pay gap reporting is in practice. The policy work and tailoring to the New Zealand environment has been done – so why is it taking so long? Why are we still waiting?”

• Pay gap reporting is already required in New Zealand's public service, where gender pay gap fell to 7.7% and Māori pay gap declined to 6.5% in 2022, according to the Public Service Commission. Business peak body – BusinessNZ agrees that pay gap reporting is needed as a modern business practice and legislation is required.
• Last month the Pacific Pay Gap Inquiry conducted polling showing that all major party supporters want to see it introduced.

Ms Stuart says the need for legislation has never been more widely accepted and more urgent.

“While the Government has been working on this, kiwis have been living the reality of high inflation, with women, Māori and ethnicity groups bearing the double impact of discriminatory pay gaps.

“Our pay gaps are a source of embarrassment for Aotearoa. We are a country that values fairness and we are not living up to this. We must do better and want to see legislation introduced before the end of this Government term.”

Additional facts:

Scoop Gender And Ethnic Pay Gaps A Concern For Majority Of New Zealanders, Most Support Pay Transparency Law – New Poll

Recent advances around the world:

• In March 2023, the EU Parliament passed a new Equal Pay Pay Transparency Directive to build on already established reporting requirements. It now requires companies with more than 250 employees to report annually on the gender pay gap in their organisation to the relevant national authority and to share action plans to resolve gaps.
• Some individual member countries in the EU go further with lower thresholds and more requirements for action and transparency.
• Also in March 2023, Australian Parliament passed the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill 2023. This requires WEGA – the government body charged with receiving pay gap date to now publish that data for organisations with more than 100 employees – it was previously held centrally but not published.

A report released this month from the OECD finds that:

More than half of OECD countries now mandate that private sector companies report their gender pay gap. 1 55% – 21 of the 38 OECD countries – require certain pre-defined private sector employers to report gender-disaggregated information on pay. These countries include Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, 2 Chile, 3 Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Lithuania, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

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