Okay. Thank you.
The Canadian Labour Congress is pleased to make a presentation to this Standing Committee on the Status of Women concerning the government's Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act.
We are very concerned about the implications of this legislation for workers in the public sector and indeed for the future of pay equity in Canada. The CLC has been involved with the pay equity issue for many years. We were full participants in the consultations conducted by the pay equity task force that led to the very thorough recommendations presented in May 2004. As this committee is fully aware, the task force presented a series of measures that would have transformed the federal pay equity regime and made it more effective and fair for women working in the federal sector. This committee made a number of recommendations, very important recommendations, in your 2005 report, Moving Forward on the Pay Equity Task Force Recommendations.
It is unfortunate in the extreme that the government has chosen to ignore the recommendations of both the pay equity task force and the Standing Committee on the Status of Women.
The government claims that “the current pay equity system in the federal public service is broken”. We agree, but we would argue that the federal pay equity law needs to be fixed by adopting pay equity legislation on the Ontario or Quebec models. The equitable compensation act is nothing like the other pay equity laws in this country. Making pay equity a matter for collective bargaining will not work, and in fact Gisèle, I think, has pointed that out very clearly.
In fact, our unions support effective proactive pay equity legislation because for years we've been unable to bargain pay equity in collective agreements. Only two years ago, library workers in several cities in British Columbia went on strike over pay equity issues. B.C. is one of the only remaining Canadian jurisdictions that does not have legislation in place to enforce pay equity, and yet the federal Conservatives want to throw us back into this kind of regime with essentially no proactive pay equity law.
The government argues that women face lengthy delays in getting pay equity settlements because of divisive court proceedings. Delays certainly have been a major concern, but in general women have been forced to wait years under the current system because employers fight against pay equity plans and take the unions, who represent their members' pay equity claims, to court. The federal pay equity settlement was delayed for years as the federal government fought the Public Service Alliance of Canada through the courts in an attempt to avoid providing pay equity to federal workers. The union finally won in court.
In addition, many of the longest battles for pay equity through legal proceedings have involved private sector workers and their unions facing employers who drag them through the courts to stop pay equity. For example, you've heard from Gisèle about Bell Canada and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union's 15-year battle. Air Canada and the Canadian Union of Public Employees, 17 years; Canada Post and the Public Service Alliance of Canada, 25 years. But the equitable compensation act only applies to federal government employees. Federally regulated private sector employees, where all these delays occurred, will continue under the old pay equity regime.
Now, how does this exactly make sense?
The government proposes its legislation as proactive pay equity, but simply calling something proactive does not make it so. Proactive pay equity legislation requires employers to examine their compensation systems to ensure that they are paying equal pay for work of equal value. In proactive pay equity legislation, individual complaints are not the trigger to challenge pay and equity. Rather, the approach is systemic.
Let me explain that a little bit further. Proactive laws place the responsibility for eliminating discriminatory wages on employers. Proactive laws ensure union involvement in negotiating pay equity in processes separate from regular collective bargaining. Proactive laws require comparison on the basis of skills, effort, and responsibilities required, and the working conditions under which the work is conducted. Proactive laws do not introduce market forces as a factor for consideration, as does the Conservatives' act. Proactive laws require employers to set aside separate funds—usually about 1% of payroll per year—for pay equity settlements.
Proactive laws establish an expert pay equity body, which is responsible for assisting parties and resolving disputes. None—none—of these features are in the equitable compensation act.
Conservative MPs have repeatedly told us that their legislation “addresses the key recommendations of the 2004 report by setting out a proactive and collaborative system”. That's taken from the Ottawa Citizen of March 7 of this year.
In fact, what the equitable compensation act mandates is the complete opposite of what the task force recommended.
It's important to know what the recommendations really are. One of those recommendations is as follows:
Though there are arguments in favour of placing pay equity legislation in the category of either labour legislation or human rights legislation, we have concluded that it should be characterized as human rights legislation....The problem of wage discrimination arises, however, because they are women, not because they are workers. We believe that characterizing a pay equity statute as human rights legislation reflects this fact.
That's from page 150 of the pay equity task force's final report from 2004.
The equitable compensation act makes pay equity a labour law. The review body is the Public Service Labour Relations Board, a labour law body with no expertise in pay equity. For these reasons among others, the CLC--along with pay equity and equality advocates across the country--is very concerned, and we view the Conservatives' legislation as actually an attack on pay equity and on women's human right to work without wage discrimination.
We've distributed copies of Pay Inequity: Canadian Labour Congress Analysis of the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act for your review. The analysis includes a critique of the requirements in the act to refer to market conditions when doing equitable compensation review, as well as a more in-depth analysis of our concerns about the role of and the penalties against unions for defending their members' rights for equality. We've also distributed the presentation we made to the finance committee in February of this year on the inequitable compensation act.
We urge this committee to continue to press the government for real, proactive pay equity legislation based squarely on the recommendations of the pay equity task force report.
Thank you. Merci beaucoup.