The employers we spoke with identified the concentration of Pacific workers at particular levels and/or particular occupations as a significant reason for the Pacific Pay Gap. Some employers recognised that collective agreements and unionisation might not only protect workers’ rights but also help close the pay gap. Employers told us that Pacific workers are overrepresented in the jobs that are lower paid and perceived as lower skilled. These same jobs are also more likely to be associated with hourly waged work as opposed to pay by annual salary and/or temporary employment arrangements, including seasonal work and work arranged through labour hire companies. Most employers we spoke with did not currently have any specific measures in place to close ethnic pay gaps in their organisations. However, many of those that participated in the Inquiry expressed interest in learning more about what can be done to do so. This section is divided into the themes we heard from employers of: • monitoring the Pacific Pay Gap • drivers of the Pacific Pay Gap • the importance of collective agreements • lack of diversity in applicants for senior roles • perspectives on Pacific workers feeling undervalued • occupational segregation • perspectives on discrimination and raising concerns • pressures securing adequate funding • the impact of immigration and visa requirements • lack of alignment on pay equity. Monitoring the Pacific Pay Gap Two-thirds of the 24 employers we engaged with had some form of system in place to capture the ethnicity of their staff. However, as will be discussed, most employers were not convinced that the system they had in place was robust enough to help to measure ethnic pay gaps. Among the organisations who were not collecting ethnicity data of their staff, only one employer was opposed to the idea. They indicated that they believed that it was illegal and inappropriate to track ethnicity of their staff: I think that’s illegal. If it’s not, it should be. What’s ethnicity got to do with employment or performance? More often, the reason given for not doing so was that the existing systems in place had not been established to include ethnic data collection. Several organisations noted that they were in the process of updating their systems: Have never traditionally captured data. Have recently moved to a payroll system with intent to commence this. 88 As noted above, among organisations that do collect ethnicity data, there were several concerns expressed about the robustness of the information they were gathering. It is important that ethnic data is collected voluntarily and that employees wishing not to share this information with their employers are given the opportunity to opt out. Some employers reported that many of their staff were choosing not to tell them their ethnicity. For example, one manufacturing company estimated that only 70 percent of staff had self-reported their ethnicity. One employer attributes this to the lingering impact of the Dawn Raids on Pacific workers, who may not trust the employer’s intentions in collecting ethnicity information. Other problems included: • systems require updating in order to collect ethnic data and, in particular, to collect data for staff who identify with multiple ethnicities • data had only recently been collected and work would be required to collect ethnicity data for employees who had been at the organisation prior to when this data was collected at the onboarding phase