What the Equal Pay Act changes really mean for women

Thursday, 15 May 2025

The coalition government's surprise move to introduce emergency legislation to make it harder for employees and unions to raise a pay equity claim has drawn condemnation from the political left, and unions.

Melissa Ansell-Bridges is secretary of the NZ Council of Trade Unions.

OPINION: The National-led Government has made significant changes to the Equal Pay Act, effectively ending any real ability for women in female-dominated workforces to challenge pay discrimination.

These rushed amendments undermine decades of progress and signal a return to systemic undervaluation of “women’s work”—the kind that reflects deep-seated societal biases around gender and work.

It is important to take a moment to explain in detail what these changes mean. Spoiler: they mean the end of pay equity in practice.

Under the 2020 regime, workers who believed they were being paid unfairly due to gender-based discrimination could raise a pay equity claim by writing to their employer. Claimants needed to demonstrate that most of their colleagues were women, that their work had historically been seen as “women’s work” (such as being responsible for the care of others), and that factors known to drive the gender pay gap — like occupational segregation — were at play.

It was a formal, collaborative process. A well-researched letter, often taking up to a year to compile, initiated a joint investigation between worker and employer. The letter might flag that this could be an issue for lots of your colleagues including those who do work that’s the same or substantially similar, but looks different because of slightly different tasks, or because in 2005, Jim from HR decided the job needed a new name, and now some of you have different job titles.

Therefore, the scope of discrimination may be wider than just those of you with exact same job title, recognising systemic undervaluation often hides behind arbitrary role distinctions and name changes.

CTU national secretary Melissa Ansell-Bridges has been leading protest action against the Government’s review of pay equity law.

Once accepted, the employer and claimant would investigate whether the work had been undervalued. Many claimants have endured years of slow, expensive, and incredibly comprehensive investigation. Key to this was using well established job sizing methodologies to compare the level and kind of skill, responsibility and demand required in the claimant work to that required in male dominated work.

The process wasn’t perfect, but it held employers accountable and created a shared evidence base to establish and define any discrimination.

Now, thanks to these “tweaks”, that pathway has been all but erased.

Claimants must now prove they are undervalued before they can even write the first letter. This frontloads years of work, expert research, and cost — before the employer is even required to engage. Employers can reject claims simply by stating that they don't believe the evidence or that the threshold hasn’t been met. The move from 60% to 70% female dominated will block claims for thousands of women that we know, right now, are undervalued.

Employers will also be able to reject or end claims if they think the scope is too wide, so workers will have to raise and define narrow claims (leaving many women who may be doing the same or similar work out) or risk having to start again.

And if you do manage to clear that first hurdle, the new law requires claimants evaluate the impact of “market factors” on equity (where the employer is free to offer any explanation they choose other than gender for the undervaluation), and comply with a rigid comparator hierarchy that demands comparisons with male-dominated roles in the same sector, employer, or industry.

One of the various protests around the country against the Government’s pay equity changes, this one in Nelson.

Given the gendered nature of many professions, this is practically impossible. None of the existing settlements would have been possible. Without a valid comparator, which likely will not exist, your claim dies.

The changes now prevent back pay and end the reviews intended to maintain equity, with the only option to raise a whole new claim after 10 years. Even where historic undervaluation has been established and documented, even where you know a settlement will be out of date within a few years, no financial redress will be provided. This is a direct breach of human rights and signals a disturbing shift: the Government acknowledges discrimination but refuses to compensate for it.

For the 33 claims that have been wiped out overnight, several have completed the full investigation, and are ready for settlement. Some of the longest claims have been filed with the ERA and were set to hear evidence of undervaluation stretching back years and running into thousands of dollars.

To discontinue claims, so close to settlement, after years of work undermines our trust and faith in our government, legal system, and social contract as citizens.

The Government may sell these changes as “streamlining,” but they do nothing of the sort. They construct an almost impenetrable legal barrier in front of the very workers who are most vulnerable to discrimination.

This is not a policy adjustment—it is a structural demolition of pay equity law, and it will lock in pay discrimination for years to come.

The fight for pay equity must continue, but the focus will now need to be on political change and rolling back these changes.

For a business perspective on the pay equity debate, see this article by BusinessNZ’s Catherine Beard.