Australia's SACS Equal Remuneration Order (2012) — Pay Rises of 19–41% for a Female-Dominated Community-Services Workforce

On 16 May 2011 a Full Bench of Fair Work Australia found that employees in the social, community, home care and disability services (SACS) industry did not receive equal remuneration for work of comparable value when compared with state and local government employees, and that gender was relevant to that inequity. Following submissions from unions, employers and governments, it made an equal remuneration order on 1 February 2012.
The order increased award rates by between 19% and 41% depending on classification, adding roughly A$8,000 to A$27,000 a year for a full-time SACS employee. The increases, plus a special 4% loading recognising impediments to bargaining in the sector, were phased in equal instalments over eight years from 1 December 2012 to 1 December 2020.
The case is a rare example of an Australian tribunal using the equal-remuneration provisions of the Fair Work Act 2009 to reset pay in a female-dominated sector by comparing it with a male-comparator public workforce, rather than requiring an identical male job. Its design depends on governments funding the increases because most SACS employers rely on public contracts.
Caveats: the sources reviewed document the order, its scale and its phasing; they do not provide a rigorous post-implementation evaluation of gender pay-gap effects, employment effects or funding pass-through, and reviewers should treat impact evidence as limited.

Read the full analysis: https://www.fwc.gov.au/documents/decisionssigned/html/2012fwafb1000.htm