Pay equity protestors voice their opinions outside Parliament on Budget day 2025. Photo: RNZ/Marika Khabazi
A representative from the Council of Trade Unions has taken New Zealand's pay equity fight to an international conference.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) is a United Nations agency, which brings together workers, employers and governments to discuss work-related issues, and whose mandate is to advance social and economic justice by setting international labour standards.
Council of Trade Unions secretary Melissa Ansell-Bridges is at its annual conference in Geneva, Switzerland.
The coalition government announced in early May it would use urgency in Parliament to raise the threshold for proving work has been historically undervalued when making a pay equity claim.
Workplace Minister Brooke van Velden said at the time, claims had been able to progress without strong evidence of undervaluation, and some had been "very broad", where it was difficult to tell whether differences in pay were due to sex-based discrimination or something else.
The move cancelled 33 in-progress pay equity claims, and saved the government billions of dollars.
Ansell-Bridges told RNZ she spoke about the changes during her speech to the ILO plenary on Tuesday.
"It was important to inform the 187 member states that despite not being signalled in the last election, reforms to severely undermine the legislation were passed under urgency without any consultation with workers or their unions."
The issue had come too late to make it onto the agenda for the ILO's committee on the application of standards, which sat during the two-week conference.
"But that's definitely something that we'll be considering in advance of the conference next year," she said.
If a case ended up being heard by the committee - which operated on a triage system - it would then be able to make recommendations to governments on how to stay in alignment with agreed conventions.
Ansell-Bridges said the response from those international representatives who heard her speech had been one of warmth, support and surprise.
"Obviously we have this reputation of being quite a progressive and forward-thinking country that values equality, and so to hear that these kinds of changes are happening in New Zealand, people are very surprised."
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