An open letter from the PM to AEU members
14 November 2011
Following the historic breakthrough in equal pay for disability and community services workers, Prime Minister Julia Gillard has written an open letter to our members. This is the full text of the letter.
Dear AEU members,
For too long Australia has undervalued AEU workers in the social and community services sector.
We're putting over $2 billion on the table for 150,000 workers in your sector.
Alongside the ASU, the AEU (Vic) and HACSU, my Labor Government will make a submission to Fair Work Australia that argues for rates of pay that fairly and properly value social and community sector work. We know most of you are women and that full-time working women earn on average one fifth less than men. That equates to women working seven weeks a year for free.
Frankly, it's just wrong.
That's why we're arguing for rates of pay that don't discriminate, so decades of inequality are brought to an end.
This equal pay case has only been possible through the introduction of Labor's Fair Work laws. Prior to the Fair Work Act all 16 applications for equal pay had failed because the test was impossible to meet.
When I abolished Work Choices and created Fair Work Australia I hoped for an outcome like this. I hoped Labor's new laws would lead to a fair decision, based on fair evidence, that often people who work in female-dominated sectors had been underpaid for a long time.
This is an historic announcement for you and your colleagues and it's something only a Labor Government will deliver.
Julia Gillard
Prime Minister
