Thanks, Dr. Fry.
I'm Patty Ducharme. I'm the national executive vice-president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada. On behalf of the 166,000 members we represent, I would like to thank the Standing Committee on the Status of Women for providing us with this opportunity to share our comments on the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act.
I am joined today by my colleague, Andrée Côté, who works at the PSAC, and by a host of PSAC members and union officers in the gallery.
While I will be making my presentation in English, I will be happy to answer your questions in French.
It was with a feeling of outrage that we witnessed the Conservative government undemocratically implement its plan to strip public sector workers of their fundamental right to pay equity. The law was passed as part of Bill C-10, the Budget Implementation Act. But the government has admitted that an assessment of how much money this piece of legislation would save was never done.
Pay equity is a human rights issue and it should never have been addressed in a budget bill. The federal government has included provisions in this act that will radically reform the law on pay equity for federal public sector workers. PSAC members, 62% of whom are women, will be hit very hard by this new law.
To summarize, this bill will essentially do four things. First, the PSECA will restrict the substance and application of pay equity to the public sector. The legislation will make it more difficult to claim pay equity by redefining the notion of female-predominant job groups to require that women make up 70% of workers in a particular group. It also redefines the criteria used to evaluate whether jobs are of equal value by adding a reference to market forces.
Secondly, the act allows for pay equity to be bargained away. The act transforms pay equity into an equitable compensation issue that must be dealt with at the bargaining table. Pay equity is a fundamental human right that should not be vulnerable to being traded away at the bargaining table. Even within a negotiations framework, this act provides for a very bad process. There is no obligation on the employer to proactively review its pay practices and to provide the union with relevant information. There is no obligation to proceed with a joint pay equity assessment, and there are no clear definitions of the new terms that are introduced in this act. The act actually specifies that it is possible to delay the equitable compensation of female workers for undetermined periods of time.
Thirdly, the act compels women to file complaints alone, without the support of their union. Under this legislation, if pay equity is not achieved through the bargaining process, as Madam Roy already said, individual workers will not be represented by their union. They would only be permitted to file a complaint with the Public Service Labour Relations Board. It goes on further to insist that there would be a $50,000 fine on any union that would encourage or assist their own members in filing a pay equity complaint.
Finally, the act prohibits access to the Canadian Human Rights Commission for violations of public sector workers' right to pay equity. This new law removes the right of public sector workers to claim protection under sections 7, 10, and 11 of the Canadian Human Rights Act and prevents them from filing complaints of wage discrimination with the Canadian Human Rights Commission. It has specifically targeted public sector workers, since other federally regulated workers are not covered by these provisions.
Instead of moving forward and ensuring the progressive realization of the right of all women to pay equity, as required by Canadian and international human rights laws, such as CEDAW and the ILO convention number 100, the federal government has adopted regressive legislation that will seriously undermine the human rights of women.
In PSAC's opinion, this act violates several fundamental constitutional rights of working women in the public sector.
First, it is a violation of women's equality rights. The act introduces a new mechanism to address equitable compensation in the public sector that will actually restrict the capacity of women to claim and obtain pay equity. For example, the introduction of the market forces criteria to evaluate whether work is of equal value undermines the ability of women to receive pay equity because market forces have historically and consistently undervalued women's work.
Some workers will be entirely excluded from accessing the new equitable compensation mechanism since workers who belong to a job group comprised of 55% to 69% women are no longer considered to be members of the female-predominant group. These women will be denied the right to participate in any process to address the issue of wage discrimination.
By requiring that unions and employers negotiate pay equity at the bargaining table, the act undermines the established principle that human rights cannot be traded against other terms and conditions of employment or waived by the agreement. This effectively eviscerates the right to pay equity. The downgrading of pay equity as proposed in this act is a violation of the constitutional charter equality rights of working women that are guaranteed to them under section 15.
Second, it is a violation of the rights of freedom of association and freedom of expression. The prohibitions contained in the act against union assistance or encouragement in filing a pay equity complaint constitute a violation of the right to freedom of association that is guaranteed in section 2 of the charter. This prohibition completely restricts the ability of unions and their members to take collective action, and it violates the right of workers to be represented by their unions in important matters that relate to their working conditions. It precludes the unions from accomplishing their most basic duty of representing their members on issues relating to their working conditions, such as wage discrimination.
The prohibition also prevents the unions from expressing any views or advising the workers on anything that might assist or encourage them to file complaints regarding pay equity. This undermines the constitutional right of unions to express opinions and give advice to their members on matters that bear on their members' rights as workers.
The PSAC submits that the PSECA and the Expenditure Restraint Act impose limits on working women's constitutional rights that are simply not justifiable in a free and democratic society. We too have initiated legal proceedings to challenge this discriminatory and unfair legislation in court.
We have also informed the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women of our intention to file a complaint against the federal government. The urgent notice of communications that we sent to the UNCSW on March 5 is appended to your brief. You will note that the PSAC received the support of 40 important trade unions, women's groups, and human rights groups across Canada and in Quebec. It is of note that approximately 100 well-known lawyers and legal academics likewise expressed their opposition to this bill in a letter sent directly to the Prime Minister.
In closing, I wish to say that PSAC is urging this committee to reaffirm its commitment to proactive federal pay equity legislation, as it has done several times in the past. We invite you to strongly condemn the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act and its discriminatory provisions against women working in the federal public sector. We urge the Standing Committee on the Status of Women to recommend that this act be abrogated and replaced by proactive federal pay equity law, as recommended by the pay equity task force in its report, Pay Equity: A New Approach to a Fundamental Right. This would be a first step towards a proactive pay equity law that would make a real difference in the lives of working women.
With that, I'd like to thank you. I'd be pleased to respond to any and all of your questions.