WorkChoices and Pay Equity Introduction

WorkChoices and Pay Equity
Introduction
The year 2006 was a milestone for the regulation of industrial
relations and efforts to achieve gender pay equity in Australia. The
commencement on 27 March 2006 of the Howard government’s
Workplace Relations Amendment (WorkChoices) Act 2005 made the
most comprehensive changes to the Australian industrial relations
and wage-fixing system since Federation. The year 2006 was also
noteworthy because State industrial tribunals found gender-based
undervaluation of the industrial award wages in one industry
overwhelmingly dominated by women workers. These decisions are
significant for a number of reasons. First, they are likely to be the last
occasions where wage fixing tribunals can apply ‘equal remuneration’
principles with wide application due to the operation of the federal
‘WorkChoices’ regime because section 16 of the WorkChoices Act
excludes the operation of ‘a law providing for a court or tribunal
constituted by a law of the State or Territory to make an order in
relation to equal remuneration for work of equal value’.’ And second,
they demonstrated that gender pay equity can be achieved under a
centralised, tribunal based, wage fixing system. This article discusses
the impact of the new federal wage fixing system on gender pay
equity, and is divided into three parts. The first section briefly
examines the history of pay (in)equity under the Australian tribunalbased industrial relations system, and overviews the recent
developments at the State level focused on gender pay equity. The
second section discusses the 2006 cases in State wage-fixing systems
designed to remedy the gender-based undervaluation of children’s
services employees. The third and final section discusses the
implications of the new ‘national’ workplace relations laws in the
context of gender pay equity in Australia.
The Award System and Pay Equity
The issue of gender pay equity is problematic for governments, trade
unions, employers and women in paid work, as notable differences
still exist between the overall earnings of women and men. While
these differences can be partly explained by the occupational
locations of women and men in the labour market, the industrial
relations and wage fixation system and ‘masculine’ concepts of skill
are equally influential.^ At face value, gender pay equity is a simple
concept: men and women should receive equal remuneration for
work of equal value. Yet both components of the concept involve
complex issues of measurement. The first component — equal
remuneration – involves reviewing a variety of different employment
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forms and wage measurement, spanning issues of full-time and parttime hours of work and the inclusion or otherwise of overtime and
indirect forms of earnings. The second component — ecfual value —
leads to similarly vexed discussions as to what constitutes ‘work
value’, and how it should be measured. Should the valuation of
‘feminised’ work; that is, female-dominated occupations and
industries, require a comparison to ‘masculine’ work, or can an
abstract standard be applied to address the ‘undervaluation’ of
women’s work on its own terms?
Historically, the industrial award system in Australia v/as
unsympathetic to the notion that women and men should receive
equal pay for work of equal value.3 This outcome was initially
influenced by the understanding that men were ‘bread winners’ and
thus deserved a ‘family’ wage, and therefore women in paid work
deserved a lesser wage.4 This understanding was modified by the
federal wage fixing tribunal’s adoption in 1969 — and State industrial
tribunals — of the equal pay for equal work wage fixing principle.s
Due to gender labour market segregation, where women tend to work
in different occupations and industries to those of men, the equal pay
for equal work principle had only limited application. This limitation
was acknowledged by the decision of the federal tribunal to adopt the
wage fixing principle of equal pay for work of equal value in 1972.^
The combination of the fiow-on effect of the 1972 federal wage fixing
principle to State tribunals and State government’s passing
legislation to implement the International Labour Organization’s
(ILO) 1951 Convention No. 100 Concerning Equal Remuneration for
Men and Women Workers for Work of Equal Value meant that in
theory at least the concept of equal pay for work of equal value
applied throughout Australia when award wage rates were decided by
industrial tribunals.^ Nevertheless, the difficulty of having the
principle apply in practice was highlighted in 1986 when the federal
tribunal refused to adopt a ‘comparable worth’ methodology when
applying the 1972 wage fixing principle to access the appropriate
award rate of pay for feminised occupations and industries.^ Despite
the advances made in the 1970s, the inertia of the gender earnings
gap in Australia can be seen by the proportion of female full-time
‘ordinary time earnings’, that is earnings that exclude overtime,
relative to male earnings: in the period between 1981 and 2003
female earnings in Australia hovered at about 80 to 85 per cent of
male earnings.9 This stagnation in gender pay equity motivated the
Keating government in 1993 to amend the federal Industrial
Relations Act 1988, adding equal remuneration provisions primarily
based on ILO Convention No. 100. The federal equal remuneration
provisions introduced in 1994 were substantially retained with the
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passage of the Howard government’s Workplace Relations Act 1996
and the Workplace Relations Amendment (WorkChoices) Act 2005.^°
State Pay Equity Inquiries and Equal Remuneration Principles
In 1997-98 Justice Glynn of the Industrial Relations Commission of
NSW (IRC of NSW) conducted a pay equity inquiiy.^^ The motivation
for the NSW inquiry was partly due to the stagnation in gender pay
equity ratios and partly due to the significance of the State system of
industrial awards for women in paid work in NSW.’^ The NSW
inquiry concluded that a new ‘equal remuneration’ wage fixing
principle he adopted hy the IRC of NSW. 13 Justice Glynn explicitly
rejected the test of discrimination as the threshold for an equal
remuneration claim, the test required hy provisions in the federal
Workplace Relations Act that had heen problematic in the only case
to proceed to arbitration under the 1994 federal equal remuneration
provisions.14 Commissioner Fisher of the Queensland Industrial
Relations Commission (QIRC) conducted a Queensland pay equity
inquiry during 2000 and reported in March 2001. The final report of
the Queensland inquiry recommended both legislative amendments
and a new equal remuneration principle to be established by the
QIRC. Commissioner Fisher’s report adopted the position ofthe NSW
inquiry in recommending that the most effective means of reform
would be via labour law rather than claims lodged under antidiscrimination legislation.15 The equal remuneration wage fixing
principle declared by the QIRC^^ allocated a proactive role for the
QIRC in satisfying itself that the principle of equal remuneration has
been met.
The IRC of NSW determined that its ‘Equal Remuneration
Pnnciple’ was confined to its award making and wage fixation
functions, and inclusive only of the award rate of pay.i7 The first
application under the NSW equal remuneration principle concerned
the design of classification and grading structures as well as the
gender related undervaluation of the work of State government
employed librarians, library officers and archivists. The case study
submitted to the NSW pay equity inquiry, and Justice Glynn’s
findings about undervaluation of librarians’ work, provided a partial
basis for the employer’s concession that there was gender-related
undervaluation of librarians’, library officers’ and archivists’ work.
The issue of whether the work was undervalued was, therefore not
contested and hence the IRC of NSW was not required to provide
further guidance by way of an arbitrated decision as to what
constituted gender-related undervaluation.is The IRC of NSW was
however, required to arbitrate on the size of any pay increase to
remedy gender undervaluation of librarians’ work. It was accepted
that it was appropriate to compare the work of librarians with other
public sector employed professionals, and it was relevant that
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librarians were paid less than other professions where work value had
been assessed by the IRC of NSW in setting award rates. Substantial
increases were granted: on average 16 per cent across classifications,
and up to 37 per cent for some classifications. The ‘Crown Librarians’
decision has been described as ‘a great victory for Australian
librarians’ and an ‘endorsement of their value and their profession’. ^9
The first application under the Queensland equal remuneration
principle concerned dental assistants covered by the relevant State
award. The Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union (LHMU)
Queensland Branch made the apphcation in 2003 and it was opposed
by the relevant employer association. Dental assistants seemed to be
an ‘obvious’ workforce with which the QIRC’s equal remuneration
principle could be tested because of the findings of the 2001
Queensland pay equity inquiry.2° In reaching its decision in this case,
the QIRC noted ‘the absence of precedents in this or other
jurisdictions made it difficult for the parties to determine how to
conduct their respective cases’.^i The QIRC held there had been an
undervaluation of dental assistants’ work because of gender related
factors, and granted award wage increases of $63.60 per week (about
11 per cent) plus an ‘Equal Remuneration Component’. ^^
Children’s Services and Pay Equity
In terms of industrial regulation, children’s services in Austraha is a
relatively new industry. State industrial awards to cover the industry
were established first in NSW in 1969 and as late as 1982 in the
Northern Territory.^s The ‘child care’ workforce, both in NSW and
other Australian States, is overwhelmingly female-dominated with
men accounting for fewer than five per cent of all employees.24 The
rates of pay under awards for children’s services staff had been
identified as relatively substandard.^s Therefore it should come as no
surprise that ‘child care’ was one of the industries examined in both
the NSW and Queensland pay equity inquiries.^^ Both the gender
composition of the children’s services workforce, and the nature of
the tasks performed by ‘child care’ workers, indicate how gender pay
inequities can develop. For instance, Morley et al. note that an
important factor explaining the gender wage gap is that the work
performed in female dominated occupations is ‘undervalued [when]
compared to occupations that are dominated by males’. ^7 This factor
was shown with the analysis of the 1995 Australian Workplace
Industrial Relations Survey data conducted by Pocock and
Alexander.28 They found that female-dominated workforces with
‘identical characteristics’ to male-dominated workforces received
lower pay than their male counterparts. This study is exceptional
because they analysed not only ‘human capital’ characteristics
including labour market experience, education level, age, and
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language proficiency, but also ‘job characteristics’ such as firm size,
hours worked, employment status — permanent or casual — and
industry and occupational gender composition, and detected an
hourly pay gap of 32 per cent hetween occupations close to 100 per
cent female-dominated and those occupations close to 100 per cent
male-dominated.29 The comparison of hourly earnings is significant
because it controls for factors that are often used to ‘explain’ the
gender pay gap, such as females dominating part-time employment
and males’ greater opportunities of paid overtime.30
Further, Watts’ review of the research explaining reasons for
gender-based segregation of industries or occupations notes the
limitations of ‘human capital’ explanations and the ‘self-selection’
argument that women choose relatively lower paying occupations for
lifestyle or family-related reasons. According to Watts, the research
suggests that once an occupation becomes ‘sex typed’ a complex
process of institutional ‘discrimination’ occurs which disadvantages
women. The typical attributes of female-dominated occupations
reflect stereotypical views about abilities of females such as ‘a caring
nature’ and ‘skill and experience in household-related work’.si Watts
also notes that, once an occupation becomes female dominated, a
process of ‘self-reinforcing’ takes place that results in a decline in
relative pay, status and working conditions which deter male
employment.32 These implications were confirmed by Smith’s (2004)
study of reasons for the low proportions of males in the primary
education teacher workforce. She found that ‘low status and pay’ were
important factors in explaining the small proportion of males because
the male participants in the study were ‘frequently reminded that
they are earning less than their male friends in other careers’.33
Due to the female domination of the children’s services
^employment, gender-based stereotypical attitudes infiuence opinions
about the nature of the work, the skill levels of employees, and the
necessity for formal qualifications. The industrial relations system in
Australia and some wage fixing tribunals have not been immune fi-om
these gender-based attitudes. A Full Bench ofthe QIRC stated, during
that State’s minimum rates adjustment process, that the work found
in long day care centres was ‘reasonably simple’, and that hoth
trained and untrained workers were ‘performing the same duties and
exercising the same responsibilities’.34 The understanding that
industrial tribunals could be infiuenced by outdated, outmoded and
inaccurate conceptions about the nature of work in a particular
industry, rather than the wage fixing principle of equal pay for work
or equal value, is not all that unexpected. Bennett35 notes that, when
assessing wage outcomes for female dominated occupations,
trihunals often follow in the wake of social and community attitudes.
The type of skills required in many areas of feminised work challenge
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traditional understandings of what is a skill because of their
dissimilarity with more easily recognised skills, sueh as those found
in masculine industries. The social and industrial tribunal bias
towards traditional or ‘mainstream’ skills means that interpersonal or
communication skills do not accrue the same value as conventional
skills, use of machinery and technology, or exercising management
and supervisory responsibilities, for example, when the skill levels of
feminised employment are being assessed for remuneration
purposes.36 For instance, Bradley37 refers to a 1990 report arguing
that there is little ‘scope for ongoing skill development’ in child care.
The outcome is a general undervaluation of the skills of many women
workers, and results in the stagnation of the gender earning gap.
NSW ‘Child Care’ Pay Equity Case
The ‘Crown Librarians’ decision encouraged the trade union with
industrial responsibility for ‘non-teacher’ staff employed in long day
care centres, and the NSW branch of the LHMU made an application
in 2004 to the IRC of NSW to vary the NSW Miscellaneous Workers’
Kindergartens and Child Care Centres, (State) Award (the Award),
principally based on the equal remuneration principle. According to
the LHMU38 the justifications for the application included: the
historic undervaluation of the work; the feminised nature of the
industry; ‘child care’ is an industry based on skills associated with the
care, nurturing and development of children, and this has been
predominately carried out by women; and previous industrial
tribunal valuations of the work had reflected normative assumptions
about the value of ‘child care’ work based on gender. On 7 March
2006 the IRC of NSW upheld the NSW branch of the LHMU’s
application. The IRC of NSW noted this was the first ease it was
‘called upon to consider a fully contested application brought under
the [equal remuneration] principle’39, and held ‘we are satisfied that
consistent with the Equal Remuneration principle [sic], a case of
undervaluation on a gender basis was made out on the evidence’
submitted by the LHMU.^o The LHMU relied on expert witness
evidence of gender undervaluation for long day care workers. The
IRC of NSW agreed with the expert evidence that ‘the uniqueness of
the work of child care workers, limited the usefulness of selecting any
particular male dominated industry as a “comparator”.’4i The expert
academic evidence of the LHMU showed that female domination of
an industry workforce reduces relative wages; relative low wages
deter male employment; the skills exercised by staff had not been
appropriately recognised when wage rates were previously
established; working with young children is not ‘innate’ to women,
and is a learned skill; the skills demanded by accreditation were
undervalued; and the charitable and philanthropic origins of the
industry had ongoing consequences for the low levels of pay fixed by
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the Award.42 Importantly, the IRC of NSW noted that ‘some employer
witnesses in these proceedings accepted those views’,43 and
concluded that, while it might be ‘difficult to detect gender based
undervaluation’, no employer witness supplied explanations that
challenged the LHMU’s expert academic evidence or the findings of
the NSW pay equity inquiry.44 The decision of the IRC of NSW
granted substantial pay increases for long day care workers covered
by the Award, ranging from about 20 to 50 per cent. A comparison
between the old and new Award weekly wage rates, and the
percentage increases, granted by the IRC of NSW are shown in
Table 1 (Appendix).
Queensland ‘Child Care’ Pay Equity Case
In 2003 the Queensland branch of the LHMU made an application to
the QIRC to vary the Queensland Child Care Industry Award — State
2003 (the Award) under the QIRC’s equal remuneration principle,45
and again it was opposed by relevant employer associations. The
grounds for the Queensland branch of the LHMU’s application
included: the occupation of child care fits the profile that indicates
undervaluation — that is, child care work is characterised as female
and the occupation is usually carried out in small workplaces; there
had been a lack of effective work value outcomes; qualifications are
inadequately recognised because child care is a new industry with
new occupations involving ‘soft’ – traditionally female – skills which
have not been properly valued; employees received significantly less
remuneration than workers in many other occupations which have
comparable levels of skill, qualifications and responsibilities; there
had been inadequate recognition given in the Award to many of the
skills which employees require in their work because they are
characterised as female attributes rather than skills; and Award pay
rates were originally based on comparisons with rates paid for
children’s services employees in other Australian States, with no
regard for the value of the work relative to other occupations,
particularly male-dominated occupations. The QIRC handed down an
‘interim’ decision on 24 March 2006, and found ‘the work performed
by childcare workers has been historically undervalued based on the
gender of the workers’.46 The QIRC held that the conditions under
which the work is performed had not been adequately taken into
account in the past by the QIRC and its predecessors when the value
of the work was assessed. Expert academic and professional witness
evidence submitted by the LHMU concerning the gender
undervaluation of the work was accepted ‘without reservation’ by the
QIRC. However, the QIRC held that achieving pay equity needed to
be balanced against the ‘public interest’ of ensuring children’s
services were affordable and accessible to parents. Consequently, the
QIRC rejected the LHMU’s wage claim as being ‘excessive’ for it
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would ‘put at risk the public interest consideration’. For this reason
the award pay increases granted to long day care employees by the
QIRC are not as generous as the wage increases granted by its NSW
counterpart. For employees holding the appropriate academic or
vocational qualifications, the pay increases range from about 14 to 29
per cent.
The Federal WorkChoices System and Pay Equity
For more than one hundred years the Australian Industrial Relations
Commission (AIRC) and its predecessors have set fair and reasonable
minimum wages for Australian workers and their families covered by
federal awards. The Workplace Relations Amendment
(WorkChoices) Act 2005, which amended the federal Workplace
Relations Act 1996, has created a new federal wage setting body, the
AustraUan Fair Pay Commission (AFPC). The amended Workplace
Relations Act has fundamentally changed the wage determination
process: it removed power from the AIRC to set award wages or to
hear national wage cases. Instead, employees, including those who
were previously covered by State industrial awards, now have their
minimum wages exclusively determined by the AFPC. Under the
‘WorkChoices’ system the AIRC is left with only a residual role in
setting minimum wages for unincorporated employers covered by
federal awards during a five year transitional period.47
The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC)
has expressed disquiet about the ability of ‘Work Choices’ to deal with
the issue of gender pay equity. It has noted the danger of cutting
award classifications to a bare minimum scale with a limited number
of salary points under the award ‘rationalisation’ process48, and
raised more expUcit doubts about the ability of the AFPC to address
the issue of pay equity:
The current provisions of the [Act] in relation to equal
remuneration are limited both by their terms and their
interpretation. Currently a key feature of the Australian
Industrial Relations Commission’s (AIRC) interpretation of the
provisions is the imposition of a threshold test of discrimination.
There is a lack of clarity as to the meaning to be afforded to the
term ‘discrimination’ in this context. A finding of discrimination
requires that an applicant would need to establish a
discriminatory cause for any earnings disparity that is the subject
of an equal remuneration claim. This overlooks the fact that
much of the pay gap results from systemic and often historical
biases rather than specific sex based discrimination. On a
procedural level, also, this approach is problematic because it
suggests gender pay inequity can only be proved by comparing a
female dominated job with a male dominated job. Such
88 HECATE
comparator methodology has been historically difficult to prove
and fails to incorporate the latest understandings of
undervaluation. State industrial tribunals have had most success
in assessing the historical undervaluation of women’s skills and
determining the work value of occupations traditionally carried
out by women employees.49
Furthermore, the new federal system’s emphasis on agreement
making is similarly unlikely to assist in the advancement of gender
pay equity. The primary objective of ‘WorkChoices’ is to have
workplace agreements as the principal form of employment
regulation, yet this emphasis on agreements offers workers almost no
mechanism to address the issue of pay equity. The effective
prohibition of the 2005 Act on ‘pattern bargaining’ by trade unions
(section 421) makes it unlikely that unions representing workers
employed in occupations dominated by women will be able to pursue
the issue of pay equity because it would require negotiating more
than one collective agreement with common wages; that is, to pattern
bargain.5° The limitations of the capacity of the WorkChoices regime
to remedy gender pay inequity are magnified if an individual, and not
a collective agreement is involved. HREOC has noted a problematic
issue concerning the ‘lack of transparency’ created by the Australian
Workplace Agreement (AWA) confidentiality provisions. For
instance, if a person seeks to make a complaint about discriminatory
treatment in their employment because she or he believes they may
be being treated less favourably than an equivalent colleague, section
165 means they will be unable either to seek clarification from their
employer that discrimination is occurring, or to seek this information
from other employees who are parties to an AWA, because it is a
criminal offence to disclose such information.si
The combination of award wages and classifications now being
within the jurisdiction of the AFPC and award rationalisation means
that for many women workers, the concept of gender pay equity and
the processes connected with this new wage fixing system have
elements of deja vu. For example, the Australian Chamber of
Commerce and Industry’s 2006 submission to the AFPC argued: ‘Pay
relativity between men and women is a factor of market rates of pay
across the labour market’,52 and that addressing the gender earnings
gap was best dealt with by women workers shifting away from
minimum wage awards and moving into higher paying jobs under
workplace agreements.53 This type of reasoning was found by the IRC
of NSW in its 2006 equal remuneration decision to have no merit
because of the structural characteristics of feminised work.54 Simply
put, the award system protects the wages of proportionally more
women than men,55 hence the downgrading of awards by
‘WorkChoices’ is a significant threat to women’s earnings. While the
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2005 amendments retain the equal remuneration provisions of the
1996 Act, they only provide a nominal right to equal pay for v^ork of
equal value because they are based on a test of sex discrimination and
require a comparison against a (male) ‘comparator group’. This test
fails to address gender pay inequity, which is — as noted by HREOC
— generally systemic and not necessarily a result of overt
discrimination. Thus the provisions cannot adequately address the
issue of the lower earnings returns that women receive from their
qualifications and experience (in comparison to men), and cannot
adequately address the issue of undervaluation of the work
traditionally performed by women because of gender-based
stereotypical assumptions regarding the concept of ‘skill’; a factor
highlighted in both the NSW and Queensland long day care pay
equity decisions.
Moreover, under the new federal industrial relations system the
AIRC is prevented from issuing an equal remuneration order if it
inconsistent with an AFPC decision. This limitation fails to address
the means through which gender pay inequity can be embedded in
systems of wage determination that appear, on the surface, fair and
equal. For example, the AFPC asserted in its 2006 wage setting
decision that it had applied the concept of equal remuneration for
work of equal value because there was no overt gender
discrimination;56 this narrow and conservative understanding of the
meaning of gender pay equity — more akin to the 1969 equal pay for
equal work principle — was explicitly rejected by the NSW and
Queensland industrial tribunals in their 2006 equal remuneration
decisions.
Conclusion
In the last three decades, the Australian wage fixing system has made
slow, but steady, advances towards achieving gender pay equity.
Starting with the adoption of the equal pay for equal work v\rage fixing
principle; then the equal pay for v^ork of eqnal value principle; and,
more recently, equal remuneration principles, the centralised
industrial relations system had progressively sought to reduce the
earnings gap between women and men. Hov^rever, further progression
on the road to achieving pay eqnity is unlikely, due to the operation of
the Howard government’s ‘WorkChoices’ industrial relations and
wage fixing system with its focus on market forces, agreement
making and economic factors to set the pay of women employees. In
addition, the combination of excluding State industrial tribunals from
making any future equal remuneration award pay decisions; the
further downgrading of the relevance of the industrial awrard system
as a method to regulate workers’ pay; and the inadequacies of the
AFPC’s wage setting processes clearly suggest that pay equity is not a
90 HECATE
Howard government policy priority. With the retention of the 1994
federal equal remuneration provisions as the only remaining method
to reniedy gender pay inequities, despite their already identified
limitations, the Howard government’s WorkChoices regime is a
retrograde step on the road to gender pay equity in Australia.
Michael Lyons and Meg Smith
Notes
‘ See High Court of Australia New South Wales & Ors v Commonwealth HCA
52,14 November, 2006. 5 4 ,
!,^.J^’t^^O”se, ‘Gender and Pay Equity: Future Research Directions’, Asia
Paeific Journal of Human Resources, 41,1,2003, pp.116-128.
3 C. Short, ‘Equal Pay – V^at Happened?’, Journal of Industrial Relations 28
3,1986, pp.315-333.
4 CCCA (Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration), Ex Parte H V
MeKay, 2 Commonwealth Arbitration Report 1,1907.
5 CCAC (Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission) Equal Pau
Cases 1969,127 Commonwealth Arbitration Report 1142,1969.
. CCAC National Wage and Equal Pay Cases 1972,147 Commonwealth
Arbitration Report 172,1972.
7M. Smitii and M. Lyons, ‘Women, Wages and Industrial Relations in AustraliaThe Past, the Present and the Future’, International Journal of Employment
Studies, 14, 2, 2006, pp.1-18.
8 ACAC (Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission), Re Private
Hospitals and Doctors Nurses (ACT) Award 1972, 13 Industrial Reports 108,
1986.
9 M. Smith and P. Ewer, ‘What about Working Women?’, in C. Sheil (ed) The
State of Industrial Relations: The State of the States 2005, Sydney Evatt
Foundation, 2005.
n ^” ^^PP^y’ •^- Burgess, M. Lyons and J. Buultjens, The New Federal Workplace
Relations System, Sydney, Pearson Education Australia, 2006, p.68.
” IRC of NSW (Industrial Relations Commission of New South Wales) Pay
Equity Inquiry Reference by the Minister for Industrial Relations pursuant to
section I46(i)(d) of the Industrial Relations Act 1996, Report to the Minister
Volume I 1998a; IRC of NSW, Pay Equity Inquiry Reference by the Minister for
Industnal Relations pursuant to section 146(1) (d) ofthe Industrial Relations Act
1996, Report to the Minister, Volume II, 1998b.
»yRC of NSW 1998a; R. McCallum, ‘The making ofthe Industrial Relations Acts
of 1991 and 1996’, in D. Nolan, (ed.), The Australasian Labour Law Reforms
Sydney, Federation Press, 1998.
«IRC of NSW, 1998b, p. 164
14 AIRC (Australian Industrial Relations Commission), Automotive, Food
Metals, Engineering, Printing and Kindred Industries Union and HPM
Industries, 94 Industrial Reports 129,1998.
‘5 QIRC (Queensland Industrial Relations Commission), Worth Valuing- A
Report ofthe Pay Equity Inquiry, Matter No. B1568 of 2000, (Fisher C), 2001
‘* QIRC, Equal Remuneration Principle, Australian Industrial Law Reports
Queensland: paragraphs 9-211, 2002.
‘7 IRC, Re Equal Remuneration Principle, 97 Industrial Reports 177, 2000
‘8 IRC, Crown Librarians, Library Officer and Archivists Award Proceedings –
Application under the Equal Remuneration Principle, 111 Industrial Reports 48
2002. ‘
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19 P. Teece, ‘Pay Equity for Library Workers: A Long Time Coming’, Aplis, 15, 4,
2002, p.140.
20 G. Whitehous e an d T. Rooney, ‘The Queensland Dental Assistants Equal
Remuneration Case: An Illustration of the Pay Equity Implications of Eroding the
State System’, in B. Pocock, C. Provis an d E. Willis, (eds), 21” Century Work:
High Road or Low Road?, in Proceedings of the 20 * Conference of th e
Association of Industrial Relations Academics of Australia an d New Zealand,
Volume 2, Adelaide: AIRAANZ, 2006 , p.112.
21 QIRC, LHMU V The Australian Dental Association (Queensland Branch)
Union of Employees, [2005] QIRC 139,180 Queensland Government Industrial
Gazette 187, paragraph 40, 2005.
22 QIRC, 2005.
23 M. Lyons, ‘Who Cares? Child-care, Trade Unions and Staff Turnover, Journal
of Industrial Relations, 38,4,1996, pp.629-647.
24 M. Lyons, A. Quinn and J. Sumsion, ‘Males in Children’s Services: Attitudes,
Employment, Practice and Policy”, Australian Journal of Early Childhood, 30,1 ,
2005, pp.6-13.
25 EPAC (Economi c Planning Advisory Commission), Child Care Task Force
Interim Report: Future Child Care Provision in Australia, Canberra: AGPS,
1996, p.27.
26 IRC of NSW, 1998a; QIRC, 2001.
27 c . Morley, S. Bellamy, M. Jackson and M. O’Neill, ‘Equal Pay for Equal Work
in Accounting? An Analysis of Gender Differences in Accountants’
Remuneration’, Accounting Research Journal, 16,1,2003, p.33.
28 B. Pocock and M. Alexander ‘The Price of Feminised Jobs: New Evidence on
the Gender Pay Gap in Austraha’, Labour and Industry, 10, 2,1999, pp.75-100.
29 B. Poeock and M. Alexander, 1999, pp. 84-85.
30 G. Whitehouse, 2003, p.120.
31 M. Watts, ‘The Evolution of Occupational Gender Segregation in Austraha:
Measurement and Interpretation’, Australian Journal of Labour Economics, 6,
4, 2003, pp.636-37-
32 M. Watts, 2003, p.636.
33 J. Smith, ‘Male Primary Teachers. The Experience of Crossing over into PinkcoUar Work’, Every Child, 10,3, 2004, p.9.
34 [1991] 137 QGIG 399, pp. 403 and 402, cited in CREW (Centre for Research on
Employment and Work), Pay Equity in Queensland: A Report to the
Department of Employment, Training and Industrial Relations, CREW, Griffith
University, December 2000, p.55.
35 1994, cited in M. Lyons, ‘The Work Organisation in Australian Daycare
Centres: Professionahsm or Exploitation?’, in L. Briskman and M. Muetzelfeldt
(eds) Moving Beyond Managerialism in Human Service, Melbourne, RMIT
Publishing, 2003 (http://www.informit.com.au/library/).
36 ibid.
371993, cited in M. Lyons, 2003 .
38 LHMU New South Wale s Branch, Notice of Major Industria l Case,
Correspondence to Industrial Relations Commission of New South Wales, 21 July
2004.
39 IRC of NSW, Re Miscellaneous Workers Kindergartens and Child Care
Centres (State) Award, [2006] NSWIRComm 64 (IRC No. 5757 of 2004), 150
Industrial Reports 290, 2006, paragraph 2.
40 IRC of NSW, 2006 , paragraph 199.
41 IRC of NSW, 2006 , paragraph 103.
42 IRC of NSW, 2006 , paragraphs 101-106.
43 IRC of NSW, 2006 , paragraph 200 .
44 IRC of NSW 2006 , paragraph 210.
92 HECATE
45 Liquor and Hospitality an d Miscellaneous Union (LHMU) Queensland Branch
Application for an Equal Remuneration Order Pursuant to s. 60 an d to Amen d
the Child Care Industry Awrard — State 200 3 (Matter No. No. B2133 of 2003)
46 QIRC, LHMU V Children’s Services Employers Association, [2006] QIRComm
50 (24 March 2006), 181 Queensland Government Industrial Gazette 56 8
unpaginated, 2006.
47 New South Wales Government, Submission to the Australian Fair Pay
Commission, 28 July, 2006, pp.6-8 .
48 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC), ‘Submission to
the Award Review Taskforce’, 2006, p.io.
49 HREOC, ‘Submission to the Australian Fair Pay Commission’, July, 2006,
p.28.
5° R. Sappey, J. Burgess, M. Lyons and J. Buultjens, 2006, p.68.
5′ HREOC, ‘Submission to the Award Review Taskforce’, 2006, p.9.
52 Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) Submission to the
Australian Fair Pay Commission, July 2006, p.266.
53 ACCI, July 2006, pp.271-272.
54 IRC of NSW, 2006, paragraph 21.
55 Award Review Taskforce, Final Report on Rationalisation of Wage and
Classification Structures, July, 2006, p.56.
56 Australian Fair Pay Commission (AFPC), Wage-Setting Decision and Reasons
for Decision, October 2006, p-134-
Appendix: Table 1: New long day care weekly wages under the
2006 NSW Award
Classification
Child Care Worker:
Lowest step
Highest step
Advanced Child
Care Worker:
Lowest step
Highest step
Advanced Child
Care Worker
(Qualified):
Lowest step
Highest step
Centre
Coordinator:
Lowest step
Highest step
Centre Coordinator
(Qualified):
Lowest step
Highest step
Old Award
Rate$
507-80
521-40
532-20
555-20
569-50
614.20
551-50
586.00
623.30
658.70
New Award
Rate$
611.28
633-47
639-82
676.00
687.94
842.78
774-48
834-87
950-77
10H.16
Pay
Increase $
103-48
112.07
107.62
120.08
118.44
227.98
222.98
248.87
327-47
352-46
%
Increase
20.4
21-5
20.2
21.8
20.8
37-0
40.4
42.5
01 01
61 61
Source: IRC of NSW (2006).
HECATE 93

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