Why the big picture matters in achieving pay equity
Understanding the wonderful disruption of pay equity
I have been involved, in one way or another, in most of the pay equity settlements in Aotearoa New Zealand. It has been a fascinating and challenging journey, and I remain unequivocally committed to the achievement of pay equity and all the associated societal benefits it brings. (If you are new to pay equity as a term or want to read about these benefits you can start with this blog)
Pay equity is about getting paid fairly for your mahi. So far so good. In my experience most people agree that being paid fairly for the skill, responsibility and effort a person has in their work, is pretty straightforward….right? While the concept of pay equity is simple in many ways, the process of achieving it can also be complex in that provides a fundamental challenge to how we have been taught to think about work and its value.
Without realising it many of us have a reliance on established and expected pay gaps, between jobs to tell us what different jobs should be worth. These gaps are often referred to as ‘relativities’. Achieving pay equity can disrupt longstanding “relativities” between the pay of different jobs. For workers, employers, funders, business owners, politicians, officials and policy leaders, media – all those involved or observing the process – this disruption can feel dislocating and uncomfortable to grapple with.
The experience of disruption is not limited to pay but to our sense of the status of a job (how important or valuable it is seen as). Status and pay are so intertwined that workers can feel they need to elevate and maintain the status of their role above another job within their workplace in order to argue for change their pay and conditions of work. This can often come at the expense of disparaging or putting down another occupation - the “I am more important than a [insert occupation here]” mentality. This can set worker against worker and promotes the idea that there is such a thing as ‘unskilled work’.
The problem with relying on status or relativities to value work is that is not connected to any kind of wholistic, complete and objective assessment of the skills, responsibility and effort required in a job. Relativities can be old when work has evolved and changed, and they are often created and maintained by bias. Many occupations with established relativities have never had a gender-neutral evaluation of their skills, responsibilities and effort, while others have had this done with tools designed to heavily favour some skills over others, or ignore some skills altogether.
Pay equity is a disruptor. Pure and simple. A pay equity process creates, often for the first time, a rich complete, gender-neutral understanding of the skills, responsibilities, effort, experience and conditions of a role. This process is designed to challenge our traditional understanding about what work is worth. The Equal Pay Act 1972 literally requires us to put aside our current assumptions and ideas of the value of a role in order to undertake a full comprehensive pay equity assessment. Doing this properly means that a pay equity settlement can lead to the expected pay gaps between jobs transforming or evaporating- because they were never evidence based to begin with.
Experiencing this kind of disruption to existing ideas can be challenging and painful- and even lead to resistance. This is why engagement and education matter so much to the long-term success of pay equity.
The challenge of disruption
In my experience employees and employers’ concerns about pay equity settlements and their impact overlap a lot. Perhaps more than you would expect. For example, both groups are often extremely worried about the impact of a pay equity settlement on relativities. A pay equity settlement may have led to a workforce being paid similarly or much closer to their managers. It may have led to the gap between more junior/unregulated roles and senior/professionalised roles close a bit. For employers who do not shift in the view that existing relativities are inherently accurate, concerns are often focused on overall staff costs (or ‘flow on’ as it is sometimes referred to) as these would increase if all relativities were maintained exactly as they are.
For workers the change in relativities can disrupt their existing understanding of their seniority and status. Their idea of what proportion ‘above’ others they should be placed at is challenged. Workers whose roles are not covered by the pay equity settlement can feel that they are ‘owed’ an increase to retain any existing gaps. This kind of worker vs worker conflict over status can be a significant barrier to cultural change in how we view skills. It can be hard to see that the correct valuing of a worker around you does not diminish your own mana or occupational expertise in any way.
The disruption presented by pay equity processes and/or settlements have been a challenge for both workers and for employers to navigate. I have seen both parties struggle and pay equity outcomes have come under real pressure as a result, with one or both parties wanting the evidence gathered to more comfortably fit their existing ideas or pay systems. The problem is that these existing systems have led us to the place where women’s work has been underpaid and undervalued for the entire colonial history of Aotearoa New Zealand. We cannot do the same things in the same way over and over and hope for different results.
The opportunity of disruption
If we do not embrace the disruption and discomfort of a pay equity process, we will be losing a critical opportunity for progress. A pay equity process offers an opportunity to fundamentally change the way we think, talk about and value skills, responsibility and effort in work. This is the difference between bargaining a temporary pay increase and being part of transforming our societies perception and recognition of work. In working on a particular pay equity claim it can be easy to lose sight of the fact that this is the aim of this mahi. We must change the way we value work if we want to eliminate gender and ethic pay gaps.
If employers and workers come out of a pay equity settlement with anger about changes to traditional relativities (or worse that a settlement is altered away from the evidence to respond to employer or worker concerns about relativities) we have failed to make the necessary cultural shift in how work is thought about. We are accepting that old established ways of thinking about work and its relative worth are somehow inevitable and unchangeable. We will have failed to genuinely engage people in the evidence and what it has told us. This kind of failure will likely make pay equity hard to maintain over time as it hasn’t changed our core view of the value of the work in the pay equity settlement. If we still inherently see the work as less skilled than it is, then it will always be a battle to maintain equitable rates.
Education and engagement to change ingrained thinking is not an easy task. We have been sold certain ideas about status and qualifications for a long time that can be challenged by a pay equity assessment. Our occupational identity is often precious to us, and it is natural to feel protective of it. However, this identity cannot continue to rest on how we are paid in relation to others. We all deserve to be able to articulate, celebrate and recognise our important skills and the value of our own work on its own merits.
If we take the challenge of disruption head on and continue to have hard and brave conversations -in spite of our own discomfort or ego, history will look back on this time as a turning point in the closing of the gender pay gap in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Work Ethics provides comprehensive education and support for pay equity claims at all stages. If you want more information on how I can help reach out for a free no obligation chat amy.ross@workethics.nz