Pay Equity and What’s Happening in 2021

Pay Equity and What’s Happening in 2021

By David Haynes.  
August 3, 2021.  

Right now there are a lot of initiatives, announcements, pronouncements, discussions and social media conversations and opinions surrounding ECE teacher pay.  It is easy to be confused.  This short article is intended to help you to understand what is going on regarding the recent Budget announcement. Things can be broken down into:

• Pay parity, and
• Pay equity.

Pay Parity

Pay parity means all certificated teachers working in ECE having their pay raised so that it is at parity with (the same as) their colleagues working in primary schools and with their ECE colleagues already covered by the Kindergarten Teachers, Head Teachers and Senior Teachers’ Collective Agreement (KTCA).  ChildForum (now incorporated into the OFFICE OF ECE) has been actively advocating for this since the Teacher Pay mass meeting in July 2019. 

Before the last election the Labour Party made pay parity in the next term of government a core committment and asked for your votes on that basis. 

The Minister is trying to take steps towards pay parity.  This is commendable, indeed on 12 May 2021 the Minister announced his “major step to pay parity for early learning teachers”. This is the initiative that promises additional funds to those employers who promise to pay their qualified teachers at the first six (of eleven) steps on the KTCA pay scale.  Unfortunately, and based on advice from MoE, Cabinet has yet to allocate sufficient funds to this “major step” to make it available to more than a tiny minority of ECE centres.

So, we have been promised pay parity in this term of government, but sufficient funds have not yet been budgetted and, as at May 2021 MoE had not even scoped the work necessary.  But what about pay equity?

Pay Equity

Pay equity is about removing disparity in pay based on gender.  The Pay Equity Act (the Act) was amended in 2020 to make it easier for pay equity claims to be raised and to allow individual employees, not just unions, to raise claims. 

The NZEI submitted a union claim with very wide coverage. It included not just those ECE teachers who did not have pay parity, but also those covered by the KTCA as well as unqualified teachers and, as potentially affected parties, primary school teachers.  The PPTA has also raised a claim and this has been consolidate with the NZEI one into one claim covering all teachers.  Because the Secretary for Education acts as the employer for members of the education service, MoE is an employer party to the consolidated claim and must agree with the other employers how the claim process will proceed.

Recently, employers have been asked to comment on the Multi-Employer Process Agreement (MEPA) that employers must agree in order to coordinate their responses to the consolidated NZEI/PPTA claim.  The draft MEPA states that “The work to investigate the teachers claim could extend over several years.”  Given the very wide coverage of the consolidated claim it is no surprise that negotiations are likely to be protracted.

Also related to the consolidated NZEI/PPTA claim, that claim has been deemed to be ‘arguable’.  ‘Arguability’ is a term used in the Act.  All it means is that the claim relates to work that is or was predominantly performed by female employees and it is arguable that the work is currently undervalued or has historically been undervalued.  MoE has reminded the other employers (remember MoE is itself one of the employers) that, as required by the Act, they must inform all non-union staff who may be affected by the claim that it has been made and how they may be affected by it. 

Cabinet has approved a process for the oversight of pay equity claims in the ‘funded sector’, which includes ECE.  Unfortunately, following this process does not automatically free up the funds needed to pay for the outcome agreed between employers and employees.  Before asking parties who believe that they have completed negotiations to sign pay claim settlements, David Haynes is currently working to get clarity from government on how funds will be released so that settlements, including new pay rates, can be entered into in good faith.  Hopefully this will not take the years that are forecast for the consolidated NZEI/PPTA claim.

Budget Announcement 2021

The budget announced three things that are directly relevant:

• from 1st January 2022, providing a 1.2% increase in ECE funding rates,
• providing funding to progress pay equity claims, and
• from 1st January 2022, providing funding for centres that agree to pay in line with the bottom six steps in the KTCA.

Also, the Minister announced that, from 1st July 2021, the attestation rate would be adjusted to keep it in line with the lowest step on the KTCA.  That is an increase of 72 cents per hour taking the rate to $24.69 per hour.  Meanwhile the minimum wage has recently increased by $1.10 per hour.  A new funding rate comes into effect on 1st July 2021 which is intended to cover the increased costs of the new attestation rate.  It contains only a small increase.

Pay Equity Claim Funding

The budget included Investigating and Negotiating Pay Equity Claims

This initiative provides funding for staff and related operational costs associated with the assessment and negotiation of pay equity claims for education sector workforces. These claims seek to remove gender-based undervaluation in the education system. Addressing inequity in pay rates recognises and values the work of people working in education, improving retention and engagement, which in turn improves outcomes for learners.

Note, this isn’t money to increase pay as a result of successful claims, this is money to fund the Ministry of Education’s bureaucracy to handle and process claims.  Note also that this is funding to process claims across the whole education sector.  It’s not just for ECE, but for secondary and primary as well.  You might think that you could do this analysis for less than nine million dollars a year, but it’s less money than you might think – compare the $9million in 2021/22 with the $28 million needed in the same year just to provide the 1.2% funding increase to ECE.

Conclusions

The Minister is working towards fulfilling the government’s promise of pay parity in this term of government, ie in little over two years from now.  

The consolidated NZEI/PPTA pay equity claim “could extend over a number of years”.  It is therefore not a solution for non-‘kindergarten’ ECE teachers to achieve fair pay in the immediate future.