This year marks the culmination of a lengthy and historic reform that is transforming the nature of work and compensation in a wide range of community services industries. After years of research and advocacy, the Fair Work Commission issued an innovative Equal Remuneration Order in 2012 providing for major adjustments in wages paid in non-governmental community services jobs. The order was a response to long-standing gender pay inequity in this sector. Because of the largely feminised nature of most of the jobs (80% of this sector’s workforce is women), and chronic underfunding by governments, wages in the sector lagged far behind comparable roles in other industries with comparable skill and work requirements.

Key points:

• Federal supplemental funding to support the phase-in of pay equity in community services occupations expires in the current financial year (when the Commonwealth government’s legislated 9-year allocation of extra funding to support pay equity wage adjustments expires).
• If that federal funding is not renewed (either by incorporation into a higher level of core funding for affected organisations, or through the extension of explicit pay equity supplements), powerful fiscal pressures will undermine and reverse progress toward pay equity, and jeopardise many thousands of jobs around the country.
• The loss of federal pay equity supplements would inevitably produce some combination of staffing cuts and wage cuts, as organisations respond to the significant loss of funding.