Conservative plan to derail pay equity complaints still stands

Attack outlined in economic statement remains despite political crisis in Ottawa

Ottawa (4 Dec. 2008) - Amid all the wreckage that now surrounds the Conservative government's financial statement, one especially glaring piece of its regressive agenda still stands - the assault on federal pay equity.

Despite dumping plans to end public financing of political parties and to legislate away the right to strike for federal public sector workers, Prime Minister Stephen Harper remains committed to derailing pay equity if his minority government survives.

Essentially, the financial statement − a mini-budget − states that pay equity amounts to a "double" windfall for employees and says legislation will therefore be introduced to ensure that it can only be dealt with at the bargaining table.

Specifically, the government said legislation would prevent future complaints related to pay equity from being filed with the Canadian Human Rights Commission, a route that has been used successfully to address a number of important cases.

This is how Finance Minister Jim Flaherty put it when he read the statement to Parliament on Nov. 27:

"Another issue we intend to address is the litigious, adversarial, and complaints-based approach to pay equity. Since the mid-1980s, Canadian taxpayers have paid out over $4 billion in pay equity settlements. These settlements were the result of pay equity complaints to the Canadian Human Rights Commission. These complaints were filed after agreements on public sector wages had already been reached through collective bargaining," Flaherty said.

"New complaints continue to be filed, sometimes for the same groups that have already received past pay equity settlements. These represent large potential future costs to taxpayers. This costly and litigious regime of 'double pay equity' has been in place for too long. We are introducing legislation to make pay equity an integral part of collective bargaining."

Two-pronged strategy

Redirecting complaints from the commission to the bargaining table was just one of two big pay equity roadblocks announced by Flaherty. The other was an announced plan to impose legislated contract settlements on public employees for the next three years.

The net effect of this two-pronged strategy - if it stands - will be to derail pay equity cases entirely as long as collective bargaining is suspended.

Unfortunately, this aspect of the financial statement has been obscured by the larger political storm now surrounding the Harper minority government.

The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) has denounced the plan, calling it an affront to the principles of the Canadian Human Rights Act, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and international human rights standards that Canada is supposed to be upholding.

"The Harper government doesn't want to modernize pay equity, it just wants to eliminate its responsibility for providing a workplace free of discrimination, including wage discrimination," says PSAC president John Gordon.

While the Tory plan may sound innocent on the surface, making the employer and the union jointly responsible for pay equity, it is a formula guaranteed to fail because the government wields much more power than unions do, PSAC notes.

"It is completely unreasonable to expect federal public sector unions to be held accountable when the government has complete control," Gordon argues.

Fair blueprint available

Five years ago, a federal Pay Equity Task Force, after extensive consultations with government, business and labour, produced a report outlining recommendations for a proactive federal pay equity law covering all federal public and private sector employers.

"If the government wants to modernize the system, it has a blueprint for action in the Task Force Report," says Gordon. If the Conservatives actually respect the principle of pay equity, this is the way to show it."

NUPGE

The National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) is one of Canada's largest labour organizations with over 340,000 members. Our mission is to improve the lives of working families and to build a stronger Canada by ensuring our common wealth is used for the common good. NUPGE