Status of Women Committee on May 28th, 2009

[David Olsen]

Let me try to address your question this way.

First of all, FETCO, our organization, does not include the bankers, boys of the banks. When you say Canada Post has been involved in litigation...we had a complaint by the Public Service Alliance in 1982. That was a long time ago, and yes, that complaint is still in litigation. Let me address it this way, simply by saying that the current status of the case is that the Federal Court trial division last year, after hearing the case, directed that it be returned to the tribunal with instructions that the tribunal dismiss the case because of lack of evidence.

It is important, because misconceptions get circulated in the media. This is what Mr. Justice Kelen said about the length of time: “Within the first year of the hearing before the tribunal, the evidence upon which--”

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Excuse me, Mr. Olsen, I'll read it myself because we don't have much time. I prefer to ask some other questions.

[David Olsen]

Perhaps I could just summarize.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

We really don't have the time to read entire texts.

[David Olsen]

You have suggested to me, in fairness, that Canada Post is somehow responsible for a case that has lasted 25 years. The courts have found that the case should have been dismissed within the first year of hearing for lack of evidence.

Thank you.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Mr. Olsen, I'm not saying that Canada Post is responsible for the fact that there's a case before the court at present. All I claim is that all the lawyers who were paid for 26 years might have helped to bring about the pay equity that women deserve.

[David Olsen]

Could I answer your other question with respect to--

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Completely.

[David Olsen]

Thank you.

The other question, which I think I already addressed...but both parties gave up on the process, both the Public Service Alliance and Canada Post. And in the year 2000, using the methodology that's in this act, we sat down with the Public Service Alliance of Canada, agreed on a job evaluation plan, and then implemented it in collective bargaining. This complaint is retroactive only, it's not perspective. There is no complaint outstanding at Canada Post from 2000 on, because we solved our problems in collective bargaining.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Olsen.

[David Olsen]

Thank you.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Ms. Carbonneau, Statistics Canada told us this week that the regulation of pay equity by the Government of Quebec had transformed women's living conditions significantly. Can you give us an idea of the effect this regulation had on the living conditions of women?

[Claudette Charbonneau]

I can tell you about the most visible group that has benefited from it in Quebec, namely the 300,000 or so women working in Quebec's public sector. We often hear that, in the public sector, there have been negotiations for years and that there isn't any more discrimination. But the evening of the regulation, it was noted that 97% of the categories with a predominance of women were subject to adjustments, some of them very significant. Overall, $2 billion was redistributed to the women of Quebec–which is not nothing. The impact was such that it had an impact on government statistics, the economy and the gross domestic product.

We know that the public sector employs a lot of staff in precarious situations. For some, this regulation has made the difference between living in poverty and more living more decently. Beyond the results in monetary terms, one of the great sources of satisfaction is feeling that one's work is being recognized at its fair value. This is a fundamental matter of dignity and respect. These results were not exclusive to the public sector. Many workplaces in the private sector also had good results and the same level of satisfaction among women.

The area where the results have not been so good, where the enforcement of equity is always harder, is that of non-unionized workplaces. It is a complex process and they need to be able to rely on...

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

Madame Carbonneau, we're going to have to cut you off there. The time is up.

Now we are going to Ms. O'Neill-Gordon, please, for seven minutes.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

Welcome to every one of you, and thank you for being with us this morning.

I have to say that for 34 years I have experienced the means of obtaining benefits, with our union negotiating and getting our contract containing all benefits, including pay equity. I felt secure with that system set up. I feel that a lot of people in Canada wouldn't want it any other way. They have confidence in our union and in the negotiating team, which they believe has our benefits at heart. I feel good about that.

I understand that FETCO has moved to a model similar to the one found in the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act. I believe that your union now incorporates pay equity into the collective bargaining process. I feel women should be able to obtain their pay equity in this process. In your experience, how has this collaborative approach affected achieving pay equity?

[David Olsen]

I'll speak from Canada Post's experience. We had a long-standing complaint that went on for over 25 years. The Federal Court sent it back to the tribunal, made critical comments about the process, and said the tribunal should have dismissed the case in the first year. But we went on for 15 years of litigation before the tribunal. All our unions except for CUPW used a collaborative approach. In advance of bargaining, the parties worked together to agree on a job evaluation plan, the weightings. They looked at skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions. We agreed to plans, and we did surveys of the employees. When you have the hierarchy of values, then you go to the bargaining table and agree on wages and all the other benefits that go with it, bearing in mind the table of values.

We did that in 2000 with this complaint with the Public Service Alliance. There was an earlier complaint by our rural postmasters in 1982, but the litigation fizzled and never went forward. We've done the same thing in resolving other disputes. I can't speak about any other organization—all I know is how it has been done at Canada Post. With our largest bargaining agent, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, which is a very militant, successful trade union, value doesn't enter into their equation. They seek to have all persons who perform work in their bargaining unit paid roughly the same. That's their bargaining agenda.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

There are more and more women getting into work. Working at the post office, we see that all the time. I have family working in the post office under that union, and they seem happy with the quality of this bargaining.

Can you compare the current process with the former litigation-based process?

[David Olsen]

The process under section 11 of the Canadian Human Rights Act is not a proactive regime, it is a complaint-based regime. I understand generally it is trade unions that have used that complaint process. Certainly in the big FETCO employers, it has been the trade unions that have filed complaints, claiming that their members or some of the female-dominated group, when compared with a male-dominated group either in their own union or in another bargaining unit in the same organization, are doing work of equal value and there's a pay discrepancy.

Usually the Human Rights Commission will come in and do an investigation of the situation. They try to encourage the parties to agree on a job evaluation plan, and one that the commission could use as well. We fell apart in the early years on that. We couldn't agree on an appropriate job evaluation plan to measure the work, because for example, under that act, you're supposed to look at skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions. Clearly, a lot of the plans that came off the shelves in the early years, such as the Hay plan, had no criteria for working conditions. Then, under the Canadian Human Rights Act, the guidelines were drafted in such a way as to minimize working conditions, which would lead to a downward evaluation of men's jobs—first of all, men working in plants, and so on.

So we could never agree. It's a very subjective thing to try to evaluate someone working in a plant, on shift work, 24 hours a day, and compare that to someone working in an office, if you can appreciate that. The criteria usually have to be negotiated. It sounds scientific, but it's not scientific, if you can just imagine trying to evaluate those two things. The person who's representing the white collar clerical worker wants the value of working conditions to be discounted because that would give too much value to the man or woman working on the shop floor 24 hours a day. It's not a pretty process, but in any event, you try to get consensus among the parties on the criteria, and then you have to do a survey. How big a survey do you do of all the employees, and do you have the right groups to be compared? That is another huge problem. Do you do a census of everybody in the organization? Can the union cherry-pick?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

Mr. Olsen, could we ask you to wrap up?

[David Olsen]

On the other hand, a proactive regime will require the federal Treasury Board to come together with the trade unions in advance. With the proactive regime, it forces them to address these problems in advance of collective bargaining.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

Thank you very much.

We will now move to Ms. Mathyssen, please, for seven minutes.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all who have come here. I appreciate your presenting your information to this committee.

I have many, many questions, so I will try to be brief and I would appreciate it if your responses were brief.

I'm going to begin by addressing my first question to Mr. Olsen and Mr. Farrell, but certainly Madame Carbonneau and Madame Casara, if you want to add to the responses, I'd be very pleased about that.

One of the things that are concerning me at this point is the understanding about how collective bargaining works. We keep hearing that pay equity should be part of collective bargaining, yet trade unions have been very clear that pay equity is a human right, as defined by the United Nations. It's a human right according to CIDA. A human right cannot be bargained away.

If we make pay equity part of collective bargaining, would it not do precisely that? In collective bargaining, you're looking at pay, benefits, pensions, all kind of things. How can you possibly lump a human right in with those things?

[John Farrell]

Perhaps I could respond.

The rights to collective bargaining and freedom of association are also human rights, as is the right to equal pay for work of equal value. We value, as employers, both of those rights, and we're compelled to deal with both of those rights simultaneously.

I should read to you something that was been prepared in 1998 by the CLC's Women's Symposium. It's from Restructuring Work and Labour in the New Economy, Equity Bargaining/Bargaining Equity. It says, and I quote:

The labour movement in Canada has come to realize that we cannot rely on legislation to achieve and protect equity equality issues. Collective bargaining is a much more effective mechanism for ensuring that these rights exist. Bargaining equity measures also means the resolution for complaints can be addressed to the grievance procedure, a quicker and less costly process. It is essential that equality issues become central to the collective bargaining objectives.

This is a position that has been adopted by the Canada Labour Congress, the Women's Symposium, November 1 to 3, 1998.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you.

I'd like to ask you a question in relation to that, then, going back to 1998.

Since then, we've had the 2004 pay equity task force. That's far different. Back in 1998, we had a complaints-based system, which you have pointed out was simply inadequate. It prolonged things, and it gave the federal government the ability to keep on challenging and going back so that the situation was protracted and certainly not beneficial to women. We all say that system is not good, and so since 2004 we have had something better. Would that not be the route to go, as opposed to what we have here? What's wrong with the proactive pay equity legislation as outlined by the 2004 task force?

[John Farrell]

The fundamental problem that we think this equitable compensation act resolves, which was not resolved in 2004, is that today we're saying that the real solution to a pay equity gap in a unionized environment is to make both employers and unions equally responsible for defining the problem, developing a plan, and finding a solution over time to eliminate the wage gap between men and women where a wage gap has been identified.

So the objective here is to say we don't want to create a situation where the wage gap continues for ever and ever, because there's only side to the equation that has responsibility for reducing the wage gap. The unions have the ability to determine how the wages are determined in their bargaining units, and unless they are made equally responsible with the employer for solving the problem, the wage gaps will continue forever, the unions will continue to use this wage gap as another means to advance more and more pay for one group over another, never really addressing the gap between men and women.

It's a perpetual problem that has existed. It hasn't gone away since the equal pay for equal value was put into place. The objective here is to find a way to make both parties, through collective bargaining, responsible for the solution, not just one party. With both parties being responsible, we believe the wage gap will be eliminated over time, and the equal pay for equal value problem will go away.