Is comparing librarians to fisheries officers really so ridiculous?
National spent the first few days after repealing pay equity legislation blinking in the face of a category five cyclone of pure anger. Dame Anne Salmond said she was ' incandescent with rage ' over its move to halt 33 existing pay equity claims for workers ranging from hospice nurses to primary teachers. Spontaneous protests broke out across the country. The Herald's Thomas Coughlan accused the party of ' bad lawmaking '. Stuff's national affairs editor Andrea Vance went slightly further and just straight up called six female MPs cunts in the newspaper.
It took the government some time to settle on a response. But in the last few days, it's arrived at some strategic messaging. First off, Vance shouldn't call people cunts in the newspaper. Second, Labour's pay equity legislation was flawed because it was too loose, allowing comparisons between very different jobs. 'You've had librarians being compared in pay equity work to the work of fisheries officers,' said prime minister Chris Luxon. 'Social workers were being compared with detectives; and librarians were being compared with fisheries officers,' wrote Nicola Willis in her response to Vance. 'It resulted in social workers being compared with detectives, librarians with fisheries officers,' said senior National MP Chris Bishop. 'Librarian = fisheries officer. This is what Pay Equity looked like under Labour,' wrote the Act Party on X.
It's weird that fisheries officers would be compared to librarians though, isn't it?
It would be if we were talking about pay equality, which ensures equal pay for equal work. The former pay equity legislation (RIP) had a broader scope. Claimants didn't just have to compare their jobs to identical roles, but could point to male-dominated fields that require comparable levels of skill and training, or involve similar amounts of responsibility. 'That's why sometimes you do end up with these slightly odd comparatives, on the face of it,' says Fiona McMillan, a lawyer who worked on pay equity claims. 'But in my view that doesn't mean they aren't helpful.'
But still, librarians surely can't just point to a pay discrepancy with one very different industry and ask for more money…
Though it's been highlighted in government comms, the librarians' claim didn't just look at fisheries officers. It also compared their pay and conditions to property surveyors, teacher aides, customs officers, corrections officers, parking compliance officers, and administration staff.
That analysis was carried out using a government-issued assessment tool Te Orowaru, which provides a lengthy set of criteria to help claimants compare work responsibilities in seemingly disparate fields. Tessa Bowler, a librarian and PSA delegate who spent four years working on their pay equity claim, says the whole point of the process was to unpick the reasons for differing pay in male and female-dominated sectors. 'Yes, the effort of going onto a fisheries boat is different from the effort it takes to work in a library, but that doesn't mean it's not comparable.'
Will any of these sorts of job comparisons be allowed under the new law?
Under the government's new legislation, pay equity claimants will only be able to compare to roles in either the same, or a similar field. Critics say that defeats the whole purpose of pay equity legislation, stopping workers from measuring their pay rates against male-dominated roles and forcing them to only turn their attention to similarly low-paid female-dominated ones. 'What do you compare a nurse to, or a kindergarten teacher, or an aged care worker to, that's not also a low-paid job?' asks Kawea lawyer Rima Te Ngahue, in a widely viewed TikTok video.
In other words, being able to compare librarians to fisheries officers or detectives to social workers was a feature, not a bug, of the repealed legislation.
Is the new legislation at least more simple and workable?
If there's one thing the government has said more than 'librarians are being compared to fisheries officers', it's that they've created a more simple and workable law. But McMillan is struggling to identify anything simpler about the system. She says claimants will have to go back through a similarly complicated, lengthy process from scratch under the new legislation. The main difference is they'll have to clear a higher bar. 'So you have to wonder if this is about saving money. But if it is, let's just front foot that and be honest. Because I don't think it's providing clarity. I think it's just raising the bar, and as a result of that, saving the government money,' she says. 'And if that's the case, it is what it is, but maybe people have to own that.'
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