Victorian Govt Continues to Oppose Equal Pay for Community Workers
8 December 2011 at 12:02 pm
The Victoria Government has told a Fair Work Australia hearing on equal pay for community sector workers that FWA cannot make an order that will give SACS workers more than the public sector in Victoria.
The Victorian Government is currently addressing FWA on its revised submission to the inquiry.
Last month the Gillard Government has announced an historic agreement on equal pay for Australia’s Community workers along with a providing joint submission on equal pay with the Australian Services Union to Fair Work Australia.
Under the agreement some tens of thousands of community sector workers are expected to receive pay rises of about 20 per cent, after the Gillard Government agreed to contribute $2 billion to fund the historic equal-pay case.
At the time the Federal Government encouraged state and territory governments to commit to funding their share of the cost of closing the gender pay gap.
However the Victorian Government has continued to oppose the full increase.
The Victorian Government has told FWA in an updated submission that the joint union and Federal Government Submission is no more than an exercise in “reverse engineering”, which purports to rely on a number of formulae to attempt to justify an Equal
Remuneration Order which delivers the Queensland rates (plus 1% over four years).
It claims that “none of the approaches are sound” .
The hearing is continuing.
