The Canadian National Newspaper: Ontario women win substantial pay equity raises

Ontario's 1988 Pay Equity Act led to significant pay gains for many but not all working women. These gains would never have been won without a law requiring employers to take positive steps to start paying "women's work" on the same basis as "men's work". Ontario's wage gap between male and female full-time annual earnings has narrowed by about 25% since 1986 when the Ontario government committed itself to passing a proactive pay equity law.

Pay equity plans identified substantial pay inequities where "women's work" was being paid substantially less than "men's work" because of systemic discrimination in traditional wage-setting policies. Many private and public sector employers, including the Ontario Government itself were required for the first time to recognize the true value of women's work and begin to pay for it. This was unprecedented.

Here are just a few examples of the inequities which were identified and the pay equity adjustments which were won:

-- secondary school secretaries received an annual increase of $7,680 based on their comparison with a male job class of audio-visual technicians;

-- female health technicians were compared to male transportation workers, leading to an increase of $2.79 an hour:

-- female-dominated mental health workers were compared to the male personnel officer's job, resulting in a pay equity raise of $2.20 per hour:

-- female-dominated police dispatchers were compared to the radio technical supervisors and received an increase of $7,179.00 annually;

-- a female job class of law clerk was compared to the male job class of investigator, resulting in a $4.28 per hour adjustment;

-- at a baked goods manufacturer, the female job class of personnel manager was compared to the male job class of service manager, resulting in an adjustment of $4.65 per hour.

No other single law in Canada has resulted in such concrete results for so many working women right where it counts in their pay cheques and later in their pensions. Women who received these adjustments were able to better support themselves, their families and the communities in which they live. Recognition of the value of their work contributed to empowering women and increasing their self-esteem.

Countless studies have shown that society and employers have ignored and undervalued the characteristics associated with women's work. Equal pay laws which relied on the most vulnerable members of the workforce to complain did not result in any significant progress in reducing the wage gap. Not surprisingly, without a proactive pay equity law, employers are unwilling to voluntarily increase their labour costs to end discrimination. Even with a law, numerous employers in Ontario have tried to ignore or minimize their pay equity obligations.

Lessons to be Learned from Ontario

Ontario's pay equity law continues to be internationally recognized as one of the world's most effective laws in redressing the wage gap. This is because of the comprehensiveness of its model which combines legislative, collective bargaining, adjudicative and enforcement mechanisms to arrive at an effective equity result.

Ontario's proactive model brings together the strengths of a human resource planning process and a human rights enforcement approach which allows employers and unions to work together to meet the law's time limits and obligations. This encourages a results-based, problem-solving approach and helps to avoid adversarial fault-finding. It recognizes that wage discrimination is not an individual but a systemic problem which requires a systemic solution. Placing the responsibility on employers also recognizes that it is unfair to place the burden of enforcing the law on individual women who are already disadvantaged. Because the law requires all employers to comply, it meets employers concerns that there be a level playing field for businesses.

Unions achieved the greatest successes in redressing the wage gap for women's work under the Act in terms of real dollars. This is because the Act required employers to negotiate pay equity plans with any bargaining agent whereas non-organized employers were left on their own to redress the wage gap without any outside control unless an employee complaint was filed. Unions played a particularly important role in negotiating plans to provide for pay equity in the traditionally low-paying female ghettoized service occupations such as hospitals, nursing homes, community services, shelters and home support services.

This is not to say that Ontario's law and enforcement process did not have weaknesses. Pay equity has been achieved for some but not nearly all women in Ontario. It is difficult at this point to assess the full impact of the Act as implementation periods provided in the Act are still ongoing. Numbers of women are still waiting for their full pay equity adjustments to be paid out as adjustments are limited to 1% of annual payroll in order to assist employers with the payouts.

Critical to the future successful implementation of pay equity in Ontario is addressing the needs of non-unionized women. Often disadvantaged not only by gender, but also by race, ethnicity and disability, non-organized women have for the most part been unable to effectively access the benefits of the legislation. This problem cries out for a strengthened law with monitoring, not no law as some critics maintain. Special supports must be given to non-organized women, such as funding for pay equity legal clinics.

An expert commission and hearings tribunal is also essential to effective enforcement. Commission staff provide valuable advice to employers, unions and non-organized employees in ways that helped avoid unnecessary costs, reduce time and promote consistency. High consultants fees can be avoided if employers are willing to use a commission's resources to help them comply rather than hiring a consultant to find loopholes. The Equal Pay Coalition is lobbying the Ontario Government to ensure that such measures are taken.

Can We Afford Equity?

Some argue that Ontario cannot afford to be leaders on "social justice" issues. They say that pay equity laws which have increased the real wages earned by "women's jobs" must be ended as a too costly frill that interferes with global competitiveness. What these critics are really saying is that employers should be given the freedom to pay discriminatory wages because society can't afford fairness.

Pay equity is not a privilege or a frill. It is the law. The right of those doing "women's work" to be paid on the same basis as those doing "men's work" is a fundamental human right of Ontario women which is guaranteed by provincial human rights laws and by international commitments made by Canada to ensure women's equality in employment.

Given that little progress was made by working women during the "good economic times", Ontario women are not ready to give up their right to economic justice so that employers can become collectively more prosperous at their expense. Instead, society's "best interests" must be seen as including the right of women to equality. Forward-looking businesses and governments should recognize that women workers are key to their economic futures. Ontario businesses need consumers with money in their pockets. Pay equity is one way to achieve that.

The world communities at the 1995 United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women agreed that equality for women and pay equity is not a luxury but a prerequisite for a sustainable world economy. Pay equity laws are there to make the market actually do what it says it does - treat and pay all workers fairly.