Business SA warns Labor on push to make gender pay gaps at big businesses public

SOUTH Australia’s peak business group has warned about the risks of publicising private salaries at companies in an attempt to close the gender pay gap.

SOUTH Australia’s peak business group has warned about the risks of publishing individual salaries in an attempt to close the gender pay gap.

It comes after Deputy Opposition leader Tanya Plibersek on Sunday announced a Labor government would legislate businesses with more than 1000 employees to publicly report their gender pay gaps.

Deputy Leader of the Opposition Tanya Plibersek. Picture: AAP / Joel Carrett

She said they would also change the Fair Work Act to ban pay secrecy clauses which would give employees the right to disclose their wage.

“People will be able to search a gender pay equity portal to find out a company’s overall pay gap, and the pay gaps for managerial and non-managerial staff,” Ms Plibersek said.

Business SA chief executive Nigel McBride said if the figures were aggregated and non-identifying, it would keep the pressure on companies who are rated poorly.

“It is a call to action — publishing data for big companies and putting them in a benchmark with others is a great motivator,” Mr McBride said.

But he cautioned publishing private salaries which would force companies to publicly defend confidential decisions.

“If everybody's salaries were out there, competitors could come and start playing games,” he said.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he was “not ruling it (Labor’s policy) out” but didn’t want to turn employees against each other.

He said the Coalition had reduced the pay gap from 17.2 per cent to 14.5 per cent and there was more to be done.

Originally published as Business SA warns Labor on push to make gender pay gaps at big businesses public