Thank you, Chair.
This is another amendment to the pay equity legislation that's proposed by CUPE.
CUPE represents 23,000 who work in federally regulated industries, mainly in the private sector, such as airlines, telecommunications, ground transportation and ports. They also represent employees at the RCMP. They have four decades of experience in the development of pay equity plans and overseeing their implementation under provincial pay equity regulatory regimes.
They said to the committee that they've been an integral partner in closing the gender wage gap in numerous employment sectors and workplaces across Canada and in helping Canada meet its obligations to ensure the human right to equal pay for work of equal value. They have successfully challenged the constitutionality of certain provisions of pay equity legislation.
Their submission to the committee was that they believe the federal government should be setting a high standard for the provinces to emulate and should ensure the legislation already deemed unconstitutional by the courts is not replicated in this federal pay equity legislation. I'll just flag, for anybody watching on television, that every CUPE amendment proposed so far, which the NDP has advanced, has been voted down by the government members and sometimes by the Conservatives too.
I hope that with the final three amendments I propose, we can maybe change the tone. There are decades of litigation and collective bargaining. Women who work inside unions and are protected by collective agreements do have much more significant pay equity protection. That's where our experience comes from, but we haven't had federal legislation and we should be building on the experience of these people who have been in the trenches. I promise you, they would not have spent their time at the committee or proposing these very detailed amendments if they did not think that they were necessary.
Here is an amendment proposed—this is NDP-32—by CUPE. They flag that in the enforcement section of this act it contemplates an extraordinary degree of responsibility for the pay equity commissioner, providing technical assistance to employers and committees undertaking dispute resolution, making decisions on the interpretation and application of the act, and providing monitoring and oversight functions. The commissioner and the Canadian Human Rights Commission must have all the resources necessary to fulfill these new roles. That is a big ask of them. Make sure that this is a function that is funded effectively.
They also urge that the dispute resolution mechanisms found in part 8 be amended. They said that the mechanisms inexplicably and unfairly distinguish between employees and bargaining agents. The provisions as written are of concern to CUPE because they appear to limit the ability of bargaining agents to pursue remedies on behalf of their members, particularly if the employer has managed to utilize any of the mechanisms that permit the unilateral establishment of a pay equity plan.
They urge that without a rationale the exclusion from the complaint process seems arbitrary and unnecessarily limits the duty of bargaining agents to exercise all of the rights of their members on their behalf. The legislation as written recognizes that employees who complain are vulnerable to reprisals by providing a complaint process for such situations, but at the same time, the capacity is limited for unions to exercise the rights of their members on their behalf.
They proposed two detailed amendments and these are captured in NDP amendment 32.
The affect of these two amendments would be that proposed subsection 149(2) would read, “Any employee or any bargaining agent that represents unionized employees”—that's the inclusion of the word—“to whom a pay equity plan relates that has reasonable grounds to believe that the employer has attempted to influence or interfere with the selection by its non-unionized employees of members to represent them on a pay equity committee, or that the employer or a bargaining agent has acted in bad faith or in an arbitrary or discriminatory manner while exercising their powers or performing their duties and functions under this Act, and who is affected or is likely to be affected by the alleged behaviour may, within 60 days after the day on which they had become aware of the alleged behaviour, file a complaint with the Pay Equity Commissioner that sets out the particulars of the complaint.”
That's the first amendment.
The second one is adding to 150(1), “Any employee”. Those are the new words. It would read, “Any employee or bargaining agent that represents unionized employees to whom a pay equity plan relates that has reasonable grounds to believe that there has been a contravention” and so on.
Then there's a proposal to delete these words:
other than sections 32 to 51, 78 and 79 and any regulations made under any of paragraphs 181(1)(b) to (h)
The rest of the wording stands.
Again, this you heard in testimony. You had the opportunity to ask the witnesses when they came to committee. You have our amendment. This is the NDP advancing the advice of labour. We hope the government members will use their majority to take up this amendment. We want to get this legislation right, and that's the spirit in which the amendment is offered.