![]() ![]() From 7 June, pay secrecy terms were no longer allowed to be included in any employment contracts. Seymour’s legal team allege in court documents her dismissal breached her workplace right to discuss pay, as granted by Fair Work Act changes that took effect in December. There is no allegation of a gender or racial pay gap at the Hill of Content bookstore. ![]() Sowerbutts said allowing workers to discuss pay would boost transparency to ensure they get paid the same amount for doing the same job. The gender pay gap in Australia is 13.3%, which is a record low but means women continue to earn 87 cents for every dollar of their male counterparts. “Pay secrecy is one of the reasons we have a gender pay gap and a racial pay gap,” she said. Speaking generally, Sowerbutts said only employers benefited from pay secrecy. “We want it to empower workers to speak up,” she said. The director of the Young Workers Centre, which is representing Seymour, Felicity Sowerbutts, said the case was “significant for all workers”. While not wishing to speak about matters before the court, Johnston told Guardian Australia the bookshop was a small family-owned business that had “always treated our casual staff fairly and as part of the family”. He also said Seymour went on to reduce her shifts after she had secured the pay increase and back payment. Seymour’s representation of her pay increase to colleagues had “totally unsettled our other staff and undermined our relationship with them”, Johnston wrote. “To be a level-three payment recipient you have to do a majority of the items in level three, not just one item,” he said. Johnston said that the pay increase had been provided not because her duties aligned with a higher level under the award but as a promotion granted because they viewed her as “future assistant management material”. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup “You broke our trust and confidentiality in talking to other junior staff about your back pay and wage increase,” he wrote. In Seymour’s termination email, sent in February, Hill of Content co-owner Duncan Johnston said he was “extremely upset” at Seymour’s “total disregard for confidentiality in anything that occurs between employer and employee”. She says she subsequently spoke to two fellow casual employees about her pay. Seymour has become a test case of the commonwealth’s pay secrecy reform after she was fired from her job in a book shop.
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