Childhood workers and corrections officers – really?

Stuff reports:

The country’s biggest education union is following midwives in to court with legal action in the pipeline for largely female education support workers over unequal pay. 

“We welcome the initiative by the country’s midwives to file for court action over pay discrimination.  And we’ve also been watching developments in the case of Lower Hutt caregiver Kristine Bartlett who last year won in the Supreme Court against her employers over pay discrimination,” New Zealand Education Institute (NZEI) national secretary Paul Goulter said. …

In 2008 a Pay Equity Commission job evaluation report compared the wages of 600 education support workers employed by the Ministry of Education who had roughly equivalent emotional and physical demands and skills and responsibilities as male-dominated corrections officers and found they were paid as much as $8 an hour less.

“It’s a crime that these workers are not paid as much as the comparative group. There’s a terrible ongoing failure when you’re dealing with people in support roles,” Goulter said. 

Really, they compared education support workers to corrections officers? That’s effing barmy.

The is entire notion of comparing one industry to another to claim what the pay level should be is old fashioned socialism.

Jobs pay what employers are willing to pay, and employees are willing to work for.

The days of doing the one job or one industry for 40 years are long gone – that thinking is a relic of the 1970s.

If you don’t like the pay in your job or industry, then move to a different one.