Evidence of meeting #21 for Status of Women in the 40th Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was model.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Patricia Davidson Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON
So you would agree, strictly speaking, with the recommendations made in that report?
Executive Vice-President, Canadian Labour Congress
The pay equity task force report? Yes.
Again, as Marie-Thérèse has said, it will take the best of the Ontario and Quebec models and improve on them from the experiences we've had there. But you can't in any way say that this will deal with equal pay for work of equal value or help the process along.
NDP
Irene Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much for being here. The expertise you bring and the clarity of your presentation, I think, will help this committee very much.
I have a number of questions. I'd like to start rather simply.
Is the PSECA proactive pay equity?
NDP
Irene Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
Okay.
We've talked a lot about the complaints-based model. It failed because it was protracted. There was an imbalance of power inasmuch as those bringing forth the complaints may not have had the monetary or legal expertise to help them proceed. What would the system, in terms of pay equity at the bargaining table, look like under the PSECA? They want it to be part of collective bargaining. What would that look like? If pay equity became part of collective bargaining under this new law, what would it look like?
Human Rights Director, Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada
It would look like chaos. What would happen is that you would have bargaining units going to the table trying to figure out how to manage a fundamental human right. When they're putting their packages together, they're going to have to ask their members to decide whether pay equity is more important than how we divide the pie. When it comes time to bargain, the employer has x number of dollars. At the end of the day, bargaining means deciding how you divide it. How can you divide a fundamental human right? You can't bargain a fundamental right. It means people will be going on strike for a human right, and there's no logic to it.
I hear the Conservative government saying this is proactive. But I have yet to see how that is defined in their minds, or how bringing it to the bargaining table could be helpful.
NDP
Irene Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
Thank you.
Ms. Byers, you talked about the pay equity models in Ontario and Quebec, and you said that it should be adopted by the federal government. Can you elaborate on how these models would better serve women?
Executive Vice-President, Canadian Labour Congress
When you're dealing with pay equity as the issue, you're going to be bringing in people who are experts in that kind of bargaining, who are focused on it, and who are going to be dealing with getting rid of the gender-based discriminations that exist in many classifications. I've hung around pay equity stuff for a long time, and it took me a while to figure out the effort piece. I could never get my head around it.
Think about it this way: if a man on a construction site goes and picks up two 50-pound bags of cement and hauls them off to whatever he's doing, that's considered to be “effort”. A woman who works in a grocery store picks up hundreds of five- to ten-pound bags of groceries in the course of a day, but it's not seen as “effort”. Same thing with a woman who works on a keyboard, whose hands are constantly moving, and who may get carpal tunnel syndrome—that's not seen as “effort”, because I guess she didn't sweat or grunt and those sorts of things.
The reality is that you have to go at these things and take out the gender biases, and that takes expertise and help. So that helps.
The other part of it is that the union, from our perspective, has the responsibility of going out and talking to their members about this. The union would have access to all of the information that would be necessary. But it needs to be done separately, because you'll get into negotiations and the employer will eventually give you a “final offer”, and then you will have to choose between continuing to talk about pay equity or workboots or some health and safety issue. That's what will happen.
In the federal sector, the interesting thing is: how is the union responsible when there are legislated wages and wage freezes imposed? How can the union be responsible for negotiating something when they don't have the ability to negotiate it?
There are all sorts of things. Women will not benefit from what's in front of us now. They will benefit if we actually take the advice of the people who worked for a long time on this.
NDP
Irene Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
You used the word “benefit”, and Ms. Pageau, you said Quebec discovered that proactive pay equity actually benefited everyone. Can you elaborate on that?
Human Rights Director, Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada
We tend to forget that women pay taxes too. If you put more money in their pockets, how can that not be a good thing? Employers are finding that the rate of people staying in jobs that are well paid is greater, so you don't have this high turnover all the time, and you don't have the retraining that you have to do for lower-paying jobs, or where there are inequities. Not one employer in Quebec closed its doors because of proactive pay equity legislation. It's a win-win for everybody—for women, for employers, and certainly for the government, who likes to pick up on those taxes.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
We have ended that round, I'm sorry, Madame Chicha, but we will be going into a second round.
Actually, we will have time--yay--for a third round. If everyone wanted three minutes for the third round, we'd be able to do that as well. So line up your names for the third round, if you wish.
Lise, five minutes.
Liberal
Lise Zarac Liberal LaSalle—Émard, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
When the government tabled its budget, at the beginning of the year, it said it had consulted Canadians. In your presentation, Ms. Pageau, you mentioned extensive involvement—200 people made oral presentations, 60 submitted written briefs, and so on.
You also say that you find this legislation to be appalling and regressive. I take from this that you believe the government did not listen to you. You probably are thinking that you made good suggestions, but that the government paid no attention to them. Later on, if we have enough time, I would be interested in knowing how you reacted when you learned that pay equity would be dealt with in a federal budget bill. After that, I will put the same question to all of you.
You all referred to the settlement with Bell Canada. How much time did it take to achieve that settlement? I worked for Bell Canada at the time and I have a very clear recollection of the whole process. Ultimately, we accepted the offer. I was a unionized employee and was one of those who accepted the offer. And it was a negotiation. When you are trying to get someone to accept something that is hard to swallow, often you will try to tempt them with goodies. That is exactly what happened. Because most of the employees were women, pay equity was very important to them. We suffered significant losses in other areas, but because pay equity was important, we reached a settlement.
I want to come back to my colleague's question, because the Minister said that what he was proposing would not take as much time. What is your interpretation of what the Minister said?
Human Rights Director, Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada
In my opinion, it will not take much more time, because women will not be in a position to pay and to challenge their employer, since the union could be subject to a $50,000 fine. Pay equity is supposed to be negotiated, but if things don't work out and there are complaints, well, you ladies are on your own. That's what the legislation says.
I cannot imagine how a woman earning between $30,000 and $50,000 a year could afford to pay for a lawyer or an expert to represent her, collect information and appear before the various courts or organizations being proposed by the Conservative government. I cannot imagine that happening.
Let us talk about what happened at Bell Canada. That is one of the reasons why the legislation doesn't work. At Bell Canada, a study was carried out. The study involved all three parties, including the employer. When the results came out, management was very proud of what had been accomplished. However, when it saw what wage increases for operators were going to cost, all of a sudden, the study wasn't worth anything anymore.
It has turned into a game in the different courts. We had no idea. Fifteen years later, we paid millions of dollars to lawyers on both sides. How can that be proactive?
Liberal
Lise Zarac Liberal LaSalle—Émard, QC
In your opinion, has the pay equity issue been resolved at Bell Canada?
Human Rights Director, Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada
No, it is not resolved. There is no pay equity at Bell Canada. There was just a settlement.
It should be noted that at Bell Canada, there were 4,700 operators; now there are less than 200. Furthermore, we only received about 70¢ on the dollar through the settlement. We had the choice of shutting the door or trying to resolve this.
We still have an agreement in place, because the management of Bell Canada says it is still willing to talk to us. However, the reality is that, with the laws that are currently in effect, there is no point.
Professor, School of Industrial Relations, University of Montreal, As an Individual
I simply wanted to add that the situation is worse for immigrant women. They suffer from even greater wage discrimination. They certainly will not lodge a complaint on their own. They cannot afford to. So, it is doubly prejudicial in their case.
Conservative
Cathy McLeod Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you to the speakers for coming and presenting today.
First of all, I want to reiterate the comments of my colleague--that is, in my belief, we are all trying to achieve the same goal. We have a different lens in terms of how we're going to achieve that, but I think the Conservative government does want proactive pay equity legislation. Again, it's a different world lens that we see in terms of the way we're going to reach that particular goal and what is the best method to achieve it.
I want to talk in terms of this as proactive rather than complaint-based, and within the union negotiations. I sort of look at experience. I would disagree that there will be an ability to negotiate this away at the bargaining table. You look at joint health and safety, you look at many things that the employer and employee have joint responsibility for. This is creating a joint responsibility, it's creating the conversation with the people who need to have that conversation, the people who understand the jobs they're doing. Plus it's putting in a mechanism whereby it has to be reviewed. It has to be reviewed with the length of the contract.
I actually have sat on both sides of the table in terms of negotiations. I have a lot more faith in the negotiation process, and I'm hearing that it's an effective mechanism to accomplish this goal.
I also have a lot more faith.... I know that we talk about the Public Service Labour Relations Board not having the expertise. Well, do you know what? I think to ingrain equity into Canada, we need to be gaining expertise in all sorts of areas, and not just very small groups of people.
So in terms of the Public Service Labour Relations Board, we all need to be gaining expertise in terms of the method and the methodology. Perhaps the union has not effectively done their job at the table, so if the person to bring that forward....
I don't believe they're going to go forward without support, but to not go forward with either the employer or employee, in terms of the complaint, is appropriate, because maybe the union hasn't been doing the job and maybe the employer hasn't been doing the job.
Those are my comments. Again, I truly believe we need to ingrain equity and we need knowledge across Canada. I'd like to talk about that union-employer relationship. I think it could work.
Being as we have this legislation, why don't we talk about how we can make it work to move forward?
Executive Vice-President, Canadian Labour Congress
First off, what you need to understand is that in joint health and safety, which you raised as a reference, those are experts. That is stuff that's done away from the bargaining table. Sometimes some of those things come to the bargaining table, but it's after the experts have dealt with it. That's a reality.
On the other part of it, I want to go back to a question that was asked earlier. We've just seen how pay equity was submerged in this federal budget bill. This is exactly what can happen at the bargaining table. It becomes submerged somewhere else. There's a reality there.
If we want to advance women's wages, then we have to have separate proactive pay equity legislation that's modelled on what the task force put forward, not something that's complaint-based, not something that women take on by themselves, and not something, quite frankly, that unions are prevented from helping them with.