Equal Pay Alliance

10 August 2009

Prominent community, union and business organisations have formed an Equal Pay Alliance to promote equal pay and employment opportunity for all Australians.

The Equal Pay Alliance will be encouraging government to take a more proactive stance in eradicating unequal pay and employment opportunity in Australia.

Many Australians believe women won equal pay in the 70s but they are wrong.

It’s almost 40 years since Australian women were officially granted equal pay for equal work by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission.  Yet women still earn 17% less than men or one million dollars less over a lifetime.

·        While women are now more likely to have a tertiary qualification than men, women graduates will earn $2,000 less than male graduates and $7,400 less by the fifth year after graduation;

·        Fewer than 2% of ASX 200 companies have a female chief executive officer and only 1 in 12 board directors are women; and

·        Women retire with less than half the amount of savings in their superannuation accounts compared with men.

And, it’s predicted that rather than improving, the gender pay gap between women and men’s earnings is set to increase over the upcoming years.

Our labour market and social structures continue to discriminate against women in employment.

On one hand, women have access to unprecedented levels of education and employment.

On the other, they continue to shoulder most of the unpaid housework and care of children with a critical lack of childcare services and flexible work practices, in most cases, to enable them to combine those two roles adequately.

We believe this inequity is not acceptable in modern Australia.

We have formed the Equal Pay Alliance to end this inequity and promote genuinely equal employment opportunities for all Australians.

September 1st, is Equal Pay Day.  On average, it takes women 14 months to earn the same amount that men earn in 12 months. Starting from the new financial year on 1st July, Equal Pay Day commemorates the day when women’s earnings "catch up" to men’s.

With the support of fellow organisations, the community, the government and progressive businesses, we pledge to work towards the eradication of unequal pay through the provision of genuine choices and opportunities for women.  In particular we will campaign for:

·        Flexible work arrangements in workplaces for women and men with caring responsibilities

·        Improved quality, accessible and affordable childcare including after school hours care

·        Improved equal employment opportunity practices in workplaces

·        Meaningful reporting by employers of equal pay and employment opportunities

·        A greater role for government agencies in auditing, promoting and implementing equal pay and employment opportunity programs in workplaces

·        Proper valuation and funding of wages and conditions for work traditionally carried out by women

We look forward to the support of the Rudd government, employers and the community to achieve these reforms so our daughters don’t need to work an extra two months to earn as much as their brothers.