Pay Equity Network
Pay Equity: at the heart of equality
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 3, 2007
OTTAWA – All three opposition parties spoke out today in favour of a new federal pay equity law after meeting with representatives of the Pay Equity Network, a coalition of central labour bodies, unions, women’s organizations and provincial pay equity groups, who were in Ottawa to lobby for a new law.
It has been exactly three years since a federal Pay Equity Task Force tabled a Report after commissioning reseach and holding extensive consultations with employers, unions and women’s organizations. The Task Force concluded that the current system, under the Canadian Human Rights Act, is not working. The Report recommended that the federal government move to enact comprehensive, proactive pay equity legisation. Proactive legislation already exists in Ontario and Quebec.
“We met with the leaders of the three opposition parties today and have received commitments from Stéphane Dion, Gilles Duceppe and Jack Layton, pledging their support for new legislation,” says Andrée Côté, a spokesperson for the Pay Equity Network. “They join the hundreds of women’s groups, unions and human rights organizations who have come out in support of the Task Force recommendations.”
The House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women has repeatedly called on the Harper government to implement the Task Force recommendations. Even the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women has urged Canada to take proactive measures to respect pay equity.
According to Côté, the Network’s meeting with one of Conservative Minister of Labour Jean-Pierre Blackburn’s advisors was disappointing. “The Harper government continues to refuse to implement the Task Force recommendations. Instead, they’re using the same approaches that were used in the 1970s and 80s without success.”
Proof of the problems with the current complaint-based legislation is that fact that it takes literally decades for a pay equity complaint to be resolved, often after protracted and expensive court battles. For example, a complaint filed in 1983 by the Public Service Alliance of Canada against Canada Post is still dragging on, 24 years later, with no end in sight.
“The Conservatives want women to believe that sending brochures to employers and sending in a few Labour Canada inspectors without pay equity expertise to look at employers’ salary practices will resolve the wage gap,” says Côté. “We’re here to tell them they are wrong. Voluntary compliance has not worked up to now and won’t work in the future. Women will continue their fight for economic equality until we have a new law.”
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For information:
Andrée Côté, Pay Equity Network spokesperson
(613) 241-7570, ext. 25
The Pay Equity Network is made up central labour bodies and individual unions, equality-seeking organizations and provincial pay equity coalitions, including the Canadian Labour Congress, the National Association of Women and the Law, the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund, the National Organization of Immigrant and Visible Minority Women of Canada, the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action, and the Pay Equity Coalitions of New Brunswick, Ontario and Saskatchewan.
