Cooking The Books

OPINION: Each week, the Herald/Newstalk ZB's new Cooking The Books podcast will tackle a different money problem. Today's looks at older people and women being paid less for their work, on average. So what can employees do? Hosted by Frances Cook.Pay gaps are real, and they're not fair. Whether it's because of your gender, your age or some other fun form of discrimination, there are employers out there who will try to exploit you. They're more common than you think. Information given to the Herald by Statistics New Zealand showed the average worker earned the most between 40 and 44. It's understandable that younger people are cheaper, and you'd hope they get paid more as they get more experience. But it doesn't make sense that your earning would drop again when you hit your older 40s. What's happening to these older workers, who are nowhere near retirement age? Meanwhile, this week we've seen an historic moment as three women became the first to use the Government's new pay equity mediation service.