Women, wages and industrial relations in Australia : the past, the present and the future

Between 2000 and 2002 state industrial tribunals in New South Wales and Queensland adopted new equal remuneration principles and recast institutional approaches to the valuation of feminised work. These principles advanced the concept of gender pay equity and addressed something of a policy hiatus that followed the breakthrough provided by the 1972 equal pay for equal work doctrine. The new principles have been utilised to obtain significant award wage increases for undervalued areas of feminised work. Yet their influence will be a short-lived one due to the Howard government's Work Choices legislation. New federal laws specifically exclude the operation of the state equal remuneration principles and do not provide any substitute agency or process in their place. Coupled with a policy agenda that enshrines individual and enterprise agreements, these laws mean that gender pay equity can no longer be addressed on a collective basis in Australia.