Not satisfied with eliminating the Court Challenges Program, cancelling child care agreements with the provinces, and cutting the budget and programming of Status of Women Canada, the Harper government’s new budget eliminates the right of women in the federal public service to bring pay equity complaints before the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

That women have been disadvantaged in the workplace because the market tends to undervalue women’s work is recognized internationally. This was acknowledged in the Canadian Human Rights Act of 1977 which included pay equality as a fundamental right. Section 11 of the act says there must be freedom from discrimination for male and female employees in the same workplace who are doing work of equal value. Pay equity is one way to redress systemic discrimination.

But enforcing pay equity is another story. Canada’s history on pay equity has been marked by complaints that seem to go nowhere and by long and costly litigation. This is because the onus is placed on individuals, or their bargaining agents, to file complaints. Adjudication of a complaint by the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers union against Bell Canada, on behalf of thousands of female workers who had been underpaid for many years, lasted for more than 10 years.

In 2000, under pressure from ad­vocacy groups, the Liberal govern­ment appointed a pay equity task force. The task force reported in 2004 and made a number of recommendations for adopting a more proactive pay system federally, including: extending pay equity to members of racialized groups, Abo­riginal peoples and persons with disabilities; requiring federally regulated employers to adopt a pay equity plan; extending pay equity to part-time, casual and “non-standard” workers; and establishing new monitoring and accountability mechanisms — none of which have
been implemented by the Liberal or Conservative governments.

Now we are sliding further back. The Harper government’s current bill — known as the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act — rolled into Bill C-10, the Budget Implementation Act, legislates wage discrimination. It undermines the substance while purporting to advance pay equity. The act fails to build in proactive accountability or monitoring of wage inequities, while allowing employers to assess the value of work with criteria like skill, responsibility and qualifications required, and including a market­ability dimension. Inequality resulting from the higher pay in male-dominated jobs becomes immune to scrutiny on the grounds that gender differences simply reflect market forces, not discrimination.

By embedding the act in the bud­get, the government has effectively forestalled public and parliamentary debate. To its shame the Liberal opposition, while invited by the Harper government to suggest amendments to the budget, has done nothing to oppose the measure.

In his near-fatal economic statement last November, federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said his government would seek to end what he saw as “double dipping,” due to pay equity complaints outside of collective bargaining. This element of the act shifts the burden of pay equity from employers to employees. Employers are not required to proactively end wage discrimination, but rather the responsibility is to be shared with unions that are expected to negotiate pay equity at the bargaining table.

As many academic staff know, once pay equity becomes a commodity to be traded between the union and the employer it disappears from sight. The same has already happen­ed to employment equity, when unions are often forced to negotiate an “equitable benefit” that should be a fundamental right.

Finally, the act forbids the Human Rights Commission from hearing pay equity complaints from federal public servants and instead makes it an issue for the Public Service La­bour Relations Board. Unions are not allowed to “encourage or assist” their members in filing com­plaints and could be fined $50,000 if they do. Without the support of their unions, it is difficult to imagine how individuals could gather appropriate evi­dence to legitimate a complaint.

Of course, this proposed legislation does not directly affect CAUT members who work in colleges and universities. Leaving aside our broad concern for social justice, the prob­lem is that the new act becomes an exemplar for the broader public and corporate sector. By effectively enshrining worst practices, the act makes our local struggles more difficult. Unfortunately, this egregious new legislation will be seen as the standard to which bottom-line fixated employers will aspire.

CAUT members have long recognized injustices that arise from salary differences among academic staff. To remedy systemic wage dis­crimination many academic staff associations have negotiated anomaly exercises or salary adjustment funds. These efforts, unfortunately, tend to take substantial time, fail to close gaps and are, at best, partial substitutes for strong legislation.

Recognizing pay equity as a fun­damental issue for CAUT members, CAUT Council adopted a policy defining pay inequity as discrimination in 2004. The policy calls for a broader conception of wage equity and an extension of pay equality to all historically disadvantaged groups. CAUT supports the pay equity recommendations outlined in the 2004 task force report and has called on the Harper government to implement them. The new act, by contrast, effectively enshrines inequality in the federal public service.