New report uncovers multiple breaches of the amendments
The New Zealand government is being urged to repeal the 2025 amendments to the country's Equal Pay Bill after an inquiry found the legislation to be flawed and in breach of various legal and human rights standards.
The amendments made changes in the process of raising and resolving pay equity claims, including requiring stronger evidence that there are reasonable grounds to believe work is historically and currently undervalued.
It also discontinued the pay equity claims raised before the amendments were introduced, and allowed new ones to be raised provided they meet the new requirements.
But a new report released by the People's Select Committee on Pay Equity found that the cancellation of these existing claims was a serious violation of the rule of law.
The report, sourced from 1,390 substantive submissions and three months of hearings, further found that the processes for enacting the Equal Pay Amendment 2025 breached the following:
- The Regulatory Standards Act principles
- The Legislation Design and Advisory Committee Guidelines
- The New Zealand Bill of Rights
- The Human Rights Act
- The ILO Convention 100
- The International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights, and Economic and Social Rights
- The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
- The UN Women's Convention
- The Conventions on the Rights of People with Disabilities
- The International Convention of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
"The Committee recommends that the comparator amendments introduced in the 2025 Equal Pay Bill are repealed in full and the 2020 version is restored," the report read.
It called for the establishment of an independent taskforce to undertake proactive interviews of male-dominated occupations across the economy to ensure that there is a "wide range of available male-dominated occupations available to support a robust pay equity assessment process."
Equal Pay Act Amendments
The amendments to New Zealand's Equal Pay Act introduced in 2025 raised the threshold for deciding if a job is predominantly performed by females from 60% to 70%.
It also required that this should be the case for at least 10 consecutive years.
The changes also required reasonable grounds to believe the work is historically and currently undervalued, including a requirement for evidence.
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden said the amendments were introduced after the previous version of the legislation was "not working as intended."
"Claims have been able to progress without strong evidence of undervaluation and there have been very broad claims where it is difficult to tell whether differences in pay are due to sex-based discrimination or other factors," van Velden previously said.
"The new and improved pay equity system will provide greater confidence that genuine pay equity issues will be correctly identified and addressed."
But the People's Select Committee on Pay Equity's latest findings confirmed that the changes to pay equity laws undermined human rights in New Zealand, according to the Human Rights Commission.
"The Government's changes make it harder to correct pay inequities for potentially hundreds of thousands of people working in women-dominated professions, undermining their fundamental human right to equal pay for work of equal value," said Gail Pacheco, Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner, in a statement.
"It must not go unnoticed that as a country we are committed and obligated to not only advance pay equity but also to protect the hard-fought gains we have made."
Van Velden, however, remained firm on the amendments to the legislation.
"As I said at the time, equal pay is here to stay, and a pay equity system remains," she said as quoted by Radio New Zealand.
"The new law is already being used to process claims. It makes the regime simpler and more robust, focused squarely on sex-based discrimination, and sets out a transparent process through which employers and employees can negotiate questions of equal value."
