Thousands of people gathered in Sydney Town Hall taking part in the ASU's Equal Pay Day - the biggest national protest since the 1970s.

Click here to see photos from the day.

Thousands of people have gathered around Australia calling for better pay for women working in the community sector.

Rallies are taking place at 17 locations across the country as part of a union-backed national day of action for equal pay.

Thousands of people have been taking part in the biggest national protest since the 1970s to fight for equal pay for women.

June 10 2010 at 11am is Equal Pay Day.

Equal Pay Supporters from across the country will come together in every capital city to acknowledge the struggle for Equal Pay of the past, and to recognize that we are not there yet.

ASU PRESS RELEASE:

Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard will be asked to champion a ground-breaking Equal Pay Test Case for community workers with the launch of a new campaign aimed at closing the gap between men and women’s pay in Australia.

Late last year the Deputy Prime Minister made an historic deal with the Australian Services Union (ASU), agreeing to support community sector workers in an equal pay test case with Fair Work Australia.

In a new push dubbed Pay Up – No More Lip Service To Equal Pay, Australians will be asked to send Julia Gillard with postcard and video messages, urging inviting her to take the next step and champion funding for equal pay should the test case succeed.

Great article in todays Crikey by Eloise Keating

"During the 1998 Pay Equity Inquiry in New South Wales, Justice Mary Gaudron made the now oft-quoted statement: “We got equal pay once, then we got it again, and then we got it again, and now we still don’t have it.”

Despite being more than a decade old, the statement stands. And while the debate this week has returned to maternity pay for working women, the issue of pay standards remains. Last week, the Australian Council of Trade Unions launched a community and political campaign calling for government intervention and establishing equal pay for women as a major union priority for 2010.

read the full article >>

Today's Age newspaper reports that the Victorian government is dragging it's feet in showing support for the equal pay case.

"The Brumby government is refusing to say if it will back a significant women's pay case, despite the Rudd government publicly throwing its support behind it more than four months ago.

The Australian Services Union test case in Fair Work Australia, to be formally launched this week, is trying to sharply increase the wages of about 200,000 mostly female community sector workers across the country. It is the largest ever federal pay equity case...

read the full article >>

It’s our year to achieve equal pay and who better to be the face of our campaign at the Launch than all of us; people just like us; people who are one of us.

Meet Maree, Anita, Lynne, John, Tara, Karen, Nadia and Rachel.

Our Ambassadors are eight community workers. They are eight ASU members. They cannot win equal pay for all of us on their own. It’s up to all of us.

An interesting article by Ewin Hannan in today's Australian:

UNIONS are considering running cases to lift the wages of the female-dominated aged care and childcare sectors after ACTU president Sharan Burrow yesterday declared "the sky's the limit" for union attempts to increase pay equity across the workforce.

As the ACTU executive met in Melbourne, Ms Burrow also confirmed unions would use funds left over from the Your Rights at Work campaign to fund a strategy aimed at "burying Work Choices" and stopping Tony Abbott from winning this year's federal election.

Unions yesterday highlighted legal action taken against Qantas on behalf of 14 women to support their call for employers to end alleged sex discrimination in the workplace and improve pay and opportunities for women...

read the full article... >>