“This is what I do, and I deserve to be paid fairly for it.”
Amanda Gordon is a Nelson disability support worker with Live Life Disability Support (a service provided by Te Whatu Ora), her livelihood for the past 15 years, a job not for the fainthearted.
She is currently supporting four people in one household on a rolling roster three days a week from 4pm to 8am (sleep included).
Preparing meals, cleaning, providing medications, shower assistance, chinwagging, and paperwork are all on her itinerary.
While the current household is mostly positive, Amanda says previous clients she has cared for were less so.
“It has got lots of challenges. You have people with anxieties and challenging behaviours… some of the houses I’ve worked in. I’ve been thrown across the room, I’ve been punched, had my clothes ripped,” she says.
“That’s not to say that in this house there aren’t moments of challenges.” In May, Amanda was one of many women to become embroiled in the government’s sudden and controversial changes to pay equity laws.
The shake-up meant workers in female-dominated professions would face an uphill battle lodging claims for pay increases to be akin to equivalent jobs undertaken by men.
Amanda says this leaves her in a vulnerable position now, especially when she’s verging on retirement age.
“[The government has] no idea what they’ve taken away from us. This is what I do, and I deserve to be paid fairly for it… why should I be punished?
“You have to be aware that a lot of women in this industry are not young anymore, I’m going to be 63 in December, and I would like to think that I could save up some money for retirement, but I’m lucky at the moment if I can put aside $50 a pay, and I get paid fortnightly.
“People say ‘go and do something else’, but I can’t go and study to be anything else at this point in my life, or for a start, I can’t afford to… and what would you suggest that a coming up, 63-year-old woman with 15 years’ experience in a sector that she’s mostly enjoyed then goes and does?”
Amanda also has the double whammy of being the breadwinner while her husband is on medical leave.
“He gets a pension, but the idea wasn’t that he didn’t want to stop working; he wanted to at least be able to do part-time for a while, because nobody can afford to go on the pension,” she says.
“So we’re watching our older years looming upon us with nothing, and that’s not fair.”
While Amanda wasn’t comfortable divulging her wage figures, up to $7 more per hour would placate her.
Public Service Association, which represents workers like Amanda, is one of five unions that took the government to the High Court on 29 August over its pay equity law upheaval in May, arguing the new rules violated the Bill of Rights Act by disconnecting women’s pay equity rights.
The union has also scheduled a nationwide ‘Women’s Day of Action’ on 20 September for a renewed push for pay equity. Nelson’s event will be a march down Trafalgar St at 11am before ending at the Nelson Cathedral steps.
