Labor to force companies with over 1000 employees to publicly reveal gender pay of workers, by Greg Brown.

Deputy leader and spokeswoman for women Tanya Plibersek announced Labor’s gender pay gap policy this morning, saying it will legislate the measure as well as change the Fair Work Act to give employees the right to disclose how much they earn.

Companies that don’t comply will be excluded from holding government contracts, she said.

“We believe that by asking large companies to report on the difference between men and women’s wages in their company, they’ll focus even more on reducing that gender pay gap in their business,” Ms Plibersek told a press conference in Sydney today.

“We know that the gender pay gap is stubbornly high, it’s still around 15 per cent and of course it’s even higher for women in professional and managerial and other industries. We think it’s just not fair that a full-time working women in Australia earns about $27,000 a year less than a full-time working man.”

Oh dear, it’s probably going bipartisan:

The Prime Minister said he would have a “close look” at Labor’s plan, announced today, but warned against any policy that would create disharmony in the workplace.

“It is, I believe, a commitment from, I would hope, everybody who serves in politics to see that pay gap narrower, but I don’t want to set one set of employees against another,” Mr Morrison said.

Why? Surely the value added by employees is a matter for companies and their employees, not government. People aren’t all equal, and the effort, the skill, the risks, and the amount of work they do aren’t equal either. Is this yet another attempt by feminists to boost their incomes by political means, to avoid the discipline of the marketplace?

hat-tip Stephen Neil