Pay Equity Committee on April 18th, 2016

[Helen Berry]

We've brought joint pay equity plans into other places such as Nav Canada and the CRA and those kinds of things. We've used job evaluation plans that were off the shelf, such as those you're talking about, or we've developed them jointly with the employer. That has worked. In some cases, we've pulled together under one job evaluation plan almost 72 classification systems that were inherited from the Treasury Board and these separate employers, so it can work.

It's very big at the federal level, but the kind of proactive legislation we're talking about would address that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anita Vandenbeld]

Thank you. You're out of time.

I'm sorry, Ms. Daviau. You have 30 seconds.

[Debi Daviau]

All I wanted to do is refer you to page 4 of our submission, where we define some of the work that has been done over the years in the federal public sector, specifically around classifications. We only hope that this work would form part of the considerations for any future plan.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anita Vandenbeld]

Thank you.

We next have Ms. Sheri Benson for seven minutes.

[Sheri Benson, NDP, Saskatoon West, SK]

Thank you.

Thank you for the presentations. It's great to talk about this issue, but at the same time, most of us want to see it move forward. It's nice to see some commonalities, obviously, in the witnesses we've seen so far, and some agreement on how to move forward.

Annick, you brought up a point that I'd like you to repeat. It was about why the proactive stand-alone pay equity process—versus a complaints-based process—allows it move forward so quickly, especially at the front end. On the comment you made about trying to get information and trying to get people to agree, why would a proactive process actually move that piece forward in a better way?

[Annick Desjardins]

One part of the proactive system is that there's a date limit, after which interests accrue. It obviously helps parties to move forward quickly, to meet often, and to agree quickly on the value of jobs.

On information gathering, part of the Pay Equity Act in Quebec makes it an obligation for the employer to provide training to the members of the pay equity committee, as well as relevant information for them to do their work. It is transparent. You were talking about transparency. This is absolutely a transparent process. There are postings so that the employees in the workplace know exactly what happened at the pay equity committee, know exactly how the jobs were valued, and know what adjustments have been made. They can ask questions and they can get answers.

It's about the obligations that are found in the act, as well as the rules at every step that are already in the act and need to be followed. You don't have to argue about them because they're already there.

That's what the recommendations of the task force do as well. They actually set the methodology in advance as to how you identify job classes and how you identify the predominants. It's a recipe that you follow. That's why it works.

[Sheri Benson, NDP, Saskatoon West, SK]

In some ways, it is almost a collaborative mediated process right from the get-go, because you're both there talking and you have to come to.... I understand that at some point if you can't get there, you have another alternative, but it starts with....

[Annick Desjardins]

Out of the 300 or so programs that we did in Quebec, only a couple had to go through a mediation process. The parties agree at the end of the day. It is technical, but it's not as complex as it seems.

[Sheri Benson, NDP, Saskatoon West, SK]

Helen, I wonder if you might expand on this. I know that sometimes we start to talk about job classification and everybody's eyes glaze over. They say that it's so technical and we can never get there, and it just falls flat.

But as a barrier to pay equity.... I thought I heard you say that proactive pay equity legislation is an impetus or can get us moving. You could start with some of those classifications, working on those people who are most affected. Is that correct? Instead of saying that we have to do all this work first before we even start on pay equity...?

[Helen Berry]

Certainly there's an obligation on the employer. Part of it is an information-sharing obligation that would come out of a proactive pay equity model, at least I'm assuming so. That would be a key to being able to work from the union's perspective but also with the employer, and to look at these joint plans. If we don't have that information, we can't move forward. That would be a really important piece of this, the sharing of information from the employer.

Then I think the impetus is on both parties, and when you take it out of the whole bargaining idea or the complaint system, it's not so inherently adversarial. I think that's a key to this. It's working together for the aim, which is pay equity, not the fight about who pays what and who's right and who's wrong. I think that's one of the important pieces to this.

[Sheri Benson, NDP, Saskatoon West, SK]

Do you want to add something to that, Debi? It sounded like you have the biggest problem.

[Debi Daviau]

Under PSECA it takes forever. We can't rightfully get through these complaints. Our common goal is not met. What we need, as mentioned, is a proactive model. But that means having a tribunal, a deciding body with expertise. It means engaging the stakeholders, the unions, in the solution as well as the maintenance. Personally I think that although classification is a great big barrier, what makes it such a problem for this exercise of pay equity is PSECA. If you're looking for low-hanging fruit, what we need to do is repeal PSECA and go back to at least the complaint mechanism under the former legislation. Then we can look forward, and there is a base we can return to in the meantime.

But you're right, we can't resolve all of these classification issues at the same time. Hopefully we have a methodology that doesn't require us to dabble into classification, as a system that brings us to the bargaining table does.

[Sheri Benson, NDP, Saskatoon West, SK]

Debora, because you're from the one group here that maybe has a larger private sector employer involved, could you quickly talk about those groups and what groups you're talking about.

[Debora De Angelis]

In the private sector?

[Sheri Benson, NDP, Saskatoon West, SK]

Yes, because you're representing those. The other groups here are talking more about public sector workers.

[Debora De Angelis]

Yes, right.

[Sheri Benson, NDP, Saskatoon West, SK]

It's occupations we're talking about.

[Debora De Angelis]

In terms of occupations that we're talking about in the private sector, we have members in every single sector right across—

[Sheri Benson, NDP, Saskatoon West, SK]

Are they covered by the federal regulations?

[Debora De Angelis]

They are federally regulated. We have the transportation sector; Canadian Forces bases; credit unions; fishing sector; milling sector, including flour, grain, and malt; and mining.

[Sheri Benson, NDP, Saskatoon West, SK]

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anita Vandenbeld]

Thank you very much.

The next questioner is Ms. Dzerowicz, for seven minutes.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

First I just want to say thank you for your great presentations and thank you for hanging in there. I know my brain is kind of like....

I'm going to ask three questions, and feel free to answer any of them. They're addressed to all of you.

I was curious. As we started going down the line of questioning around the classification, it came to mind that if tomorrow we put into place the proactive federal pay equity legislation, what would the other difficult steps be to actually adhere to it from each of your perspectives? There are going to be some difficulties, and it's beyond just the classifications. What are some of the other elements that are not going to be easy for us to work through at the federal level when we're putting in the proactive model? That's the first question.

The second question I have is around cost. I know I've been asking this question, and I ask it not because I think if this is expensive I don't think we should do it. I'm very much a huge proponent of us moving as quickly as possible. I'm curious about the cost. I want to know whether there's been any costing done in any of your individual groups or unions on if we did pursue a proactive pay equity legislation at the federal level.

The last question I have is.... I come from a family that watches a lot of sports. In my very young days, I used to love Wayne Gretzky. They always say he always goes to where the puck is. For me the world of work is changing. I know that the best model people seem to talk about is the Quebec model now. If I was saying to you the world of work is changing and you wanted us to look at progressive proactive federal pay equity legislation, what are some of the other elements you think we need to be concerned with in drafting such a legislation?

I know they're big questions for late in the evening, but, please, if you could answer them, I'd be grateful.

[Robyn Benson]

Maybe I'll start, since I haven't spoken to any of the questions.

I would like to advise the committee that I'm a recipient of pay equity. I've been with the federal government for 36 years, and many of those years were as a CR, which is the clerical regulatory category. When we filed our complaint in 1984, I was a CR and then subsequently got a pay equity cheque in 1999.

It's really difficult for the PSAC, when we've had so many pay equity complaints and it has taken so many years. Here I find myself now as the president of PSAC, elected first in 2012. Then, of course, we resolved the Canada Post pay equity, and I'm the individual who talks to the folks who want the cheque paid out to the estate. I'm the one they call to say, “My mother died”, or “My grandmother died. Who do I contact?” As a matter of fact, I think it should be known that Canada Post is still making cheques today as I sit here, because they haven't completed the payments.

Proactive federal legislation obviously would mean that we wouldn't be waiting 30 years to have pay equity. I would ask you to look at page 5 of our presentation. Clearly, the task force worked for two years, from 2002 to 2004; they commissioned research reports, heard from witnesses, had round tables and high-level discussions; and then they came through with a number of consensuses and principles. I would thus suggest to you that there wouldn't be difficult steps. I think we would need to have the commission established, we would need to have the tribunal, and certainly we would move forward from there.

Are there additional costs? Well, there are costs to going to court. When we have to file our complaints and we have to go through the human rights apparatus and we have to go to the highest court in the land, if I may be so cheeky, it costs money. From my perspective I think it's the way forward. It's what we should be doing, and I think it can be accomplished by this committee.

[Debi Daviau]

I'll jump in on the tail of Robyn Benson, because we come from a very similar predicament, if you will.

On the issue of costing—I'll start there, because the other two are related for me—we've just come through a government of 10 years during which almost the only considerations were economic in nature, so we've almost become allergic to costing at this point.

No, then; we haven't done the costing, but you can bet that in the context of a solution that costing would have to be done. In fact, we might be able to do it, if we had access to all of the information that we don't have today. That's one of our difficulties, getting access to the data that we need to do effective costing, or any kind of analysis, for that matter.

I agree that moving forward is not that difficult a path, really, if we choose the right plan at the get-go. We need a long-term plan, we need to be able to maintain pay equity over a long period of time, and we need to be committed to implementing and resourcing pay equity.

In my view, once you start with proactive legislation, the steps after that are much less difficult than one would imagine.