Pay Equity and Women in Canada
Mon, 01 Jan 2007
On average, women still earn less than men regardless of their occupation, age or education. Today, women earn 72.5 cents for every dollar a man earns. For women of colour, Aboriginal women, and women with a disability, the wage gap is even greater.
Women’s groups and trade unions have pushed for years for the government to improve the federal pay equity system. In the year 2000, the Canadian Women’s March Committee, led by twenty-three pan-Canadian women’s organizations demanded that the federal government adopt proactive pay equity legislation as part of a comprehensive strategy to end poverty and violence against women.
In 2001, after finally recognizing the need to take action, the federal government appointed the Task Force on Pay Equity under the direction of the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Labour. The Task Force reviewed the current pay equity framework and made recommendations to improve the system. The Task Force consulted stakeholders including employees, employers, trade unions, researchers and pay equity experts. Extensive consultations took place across the country to collect information about what pay equity initiatives are needed and to identify new approaches.
Despite widespread support for the implementation of the recommendations made by the Task Force, the government has taken no action to implement them.
Is this the quiet end to pay equity?
Tories want to kill the principle that equity is a right, critics say
by Aaron Wherry on Saturday, February 21, 2009 10:30am - 47 Comments
When the Governor General prorogued Parliament in December, the Harper government’s controversial, and nearly fatal, fall economic update was effectively dispatched to the dustbin of history. But while the government has reversed its projections and shelved its plans to eliminate per-vote subsidies for political parties, it has not dropped one of the update’s more controversial promises—a legislated change to the rules governing pay equity.
The Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act would see issues of equal pay for men and women in the public service dealt with through collective bargaining between union and employer. Complaints would no longer be the business of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, but would instead be referred to the Public Service Labour Relations Board. The Conservatives say this will lead to speedier resolutions of disputes. Critics argue the new legislation will effectively gut the right to equality in the workplace.
The Canadian Human Rights Act, for instance, dictates that the value of work be assessed on skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions. To those criteria, the new legislation would add consideration of “qualifications and market forces.”
“The purpose of pay equity was to, in fact, intervene in order to redress what the forces of the market had done to women’s pay,” explains human rights lawyer Mary Cornish. Adds Margot Young, a law professor at the University of British Columbia: “There’s a wide consensus that pay equity is a human right. The new legislation effectively treats pay equity as if it’s not a human right.”
Ironically, both Young and Cornish expect the new legislation, which has been promoted as an attempt to cut down on lengthy litigation, to eventually be challenged in court.