Being undervalued in the workplace We heard of Pacific workers’ experiences of being devalued and undervalued in the workplace and experiencing workplace insecurity. The key themes we heard were: • devaluing of Pacific peoples’ cultural skills and knowledge • undervaluing of Pacific peoples’ talent, labour and work experience • insecurity of employment. Participants felt their experiences in these areas contributed to the Pacific Pay Gap. A consistent theme was people doing additional work with no additional pay or having extra work unrecognised and unremunerated. Devaluing of Pacific peoples’ cultural skills and knowledge This section covers the lack of recognition of Pacific workers’ cultural capability and other social and cultural assets. It looks at both the lack of recognition of these valuable skills and the expectation that these skills will be used but not remunerated or otherwise rewarded. Pacific linguistic and cultural capability One of the common ways that this occurred was employers not recognising and rewarding Pacific peoples’ linguistic and cultural skills, particularly when they were drawn on to support Pacific clients or patients. This was a particular concern for Pacific workers in the healthcare industry, who often drew on their linguistic skills and cultural knowledge to support Pacific patients. This was not only part of healthcare workers’ routine work when caring for patients but also additional to their main duties. One experienced Pacific healthcare worker told us: Another Pacific healthcare worker shared a similar experience, identifying that pay was linked to years of experience and not the other skills and qualities an employee might bring: I have been using my cultural background and language to work with my people and yet I am not recognised for this. The pay scale is according to years of experience rather than the quality of cultural experience you bring to your role. (S151) One of our Pacific key informants in the healthcare industry agreed, noting the systemic assumptions about the kind of language competency required. They felt that recognising the linguistic skills that Pacific workers brought was essential to addressing wider equity issues in the healthcare system: The emphasis in our system is based around English competency and nothing about their language competency. When we talk about their preface, which is language competency, but when you look at the nuts and bolts of the language competency, it’s all English based and nothing to do with Samoan competency, Tongan competency. When you talk about cultural competency it is prefaced on Māori – and well and good, that’s similar to our Polynesian culture – but there is a scope when you look at hospital admissions, when you look at people accessing services, there is a big portion of Pacific Islanders. Why aren’t we extending the competency to look at Pacific cultural competency, Pacific languages? And therein lies our problem. (T003) This person also identified a solution to this issue: As a mature male with years of experience and well versed in my ethnic language and culture, I often get asked to assist outside my normal role in urgent situations to either translate on behalf of patients and/or help resolve challenging patient behaviours, which are not reflected in my salary. Moreover and being a person with mana and spiritual beliefs, I help calm or sort out difficult situations faced by patients and professionals alike that other trained non-Samoan professionals cannot resolve. (S081) 62 Some really rapid ways to redress inequity would be to create spaces within the current pay scales to pay people more if they speak a Pacific language and because that’s a target cohort for our health outcomes. (T003) This call was echoed by other Pacific healthcare workers – “being paid for our unique skills, talents, natural abilities to work with Pasifika people” (S049).