“Across Aotearoa New Zealand, it is estimated that around 900 employers with over 250 employees and almost 2700 employers with over 100 employees will be required to report their pay gap.”
A regional split of the initial businesses was not available. The Government has yet to finalise when the system will be implemented.
“The core elements of the gender pay gap reporting system have been decided on, but the Government doesn’t intend to introduce legislation until the further detailed aspects of the design have been finalised,” it said in a media release last month.
“When legislation is introduced, it will describe when the legislation will come into force to enable employers to begin to prepare. The Government will also provide guidance to support them.”
The proposals mean organisations would be required to report their organisation-wide gender pay gap data annually to a regulator, which would publish the information centrally.
Pay gap reporting is intended to complement other initiatives already introduced by the Government, including Fair Pay Agreements, amendments to the Equal Pay Act to allow employees and unions to raise a pay equity claim directly with their employer, pay parity initiatives and a dedicated Women’s Employment Action Plan.
“The National Advisory Council on the Employment of Women is the national advisory group on pay transparency and has provided expertise and engaged with the business sector to help inform this work,” Ms Radhakrishnan said.
Gisborne District Council would likely be included in the reporting requirements.
“Gisborne District Council hasn’t yet been contacted directly by the Government regarding the requirement to report. However, we are aware of this and will be reporting to and working with the Government on the introduction of the new regulations,” GDC internal partnerships and protection director James Baty said.
LeaderBrand chief executive Richard Burke said the company already regularly checked its team’s remuneration to ensure it was paying employees fairly and equally.
“It’s election year so there are going to be a lot of proposed plans being talked about over the coming weeks. Until these come into law, it’s hard for us to comment.
“As with all government legislation, we will apply the changes to our business and work with the relevant agency to ensure we are meeting the required standards.”
The organisation Business and Professional Women calculates the extra days which women need to work to make up the gender pay gap, which last year was 10.76 percent or the equivalent of working a further five weeks to earn the same as their male counterparts.
“BPW ‘celebrates’ Red Bag Day each year, marking the day in the new year it takes women to earn the same amount as men earned in the previous year,” Business and Professional Women Gisborne president Fiona Evans said.
“In recent years this has been somewhere in February or March. The introduction of gender pay gap reporting will help to further highlight this disparity and move our Red Bag Day closer to January 1.”
In the public sector, pay gaps are already reported. Those statistics show the public sector pay gap has been falling.
As at June 30, 2022, the average salary was $95,400 for men and $88,100 for women in the public sector — up 3 percent for men since June 30, 2021, and up 4.1 percent for women.
That means the gender pay gap decreased by 0.9 percentage points to 7.7 percent.
Government statistics show the public sector gender pay gap has halved since 2003 when it was as much as 16.7 percent.
Age groups under 40 years have gender pay gaps of under 5 percent. Gender pay gaps increase with age, starting from 1.5 percent for those aged 20 to 24 and rising to 11.4 percent for those aged 60 to 64.
Gender pay gaps vary among government departments, ranging from 25 percent in the Ministry of Defence to -3.5 percent in Oranga Tamariki (a negative gender pay gap means women were paid more than men).
