This text is part of the special Syndicalism section
A quarter of a century after its adoption, the Pay Equity Act has only partially succeeded in its mission to close the pay gap between men and women. The Centrale des unions du Québec (CSQ) is continuing its battle to make it more effective.
When the PQ government of Lucien Bouchard adopted the Pay Equity Act in November 1996, the tube The Macarena was playing on the radio repeatedly, Stéphane Richer and Shayne Corson were on a second lap with the Montreal Canadiens and Quebec had just lost their former prime minister, Robert Bourassa, who died a month and a half earlier.
So yes, it’s been a long time. “The entry into force of this law in 1997 was a historic moment, but it was not enough to eliminate pay inequities between women and men”, notes Éric Gingras, president of the Centrale des unions du Québec ( CSQ). According to the union organization, the average hourly wage gap – which was 15.8% in 1997 – remains above 10%. A woman collected on average 89 cents for every dollar received by a man in 2016, against 84 cents in 1997. A meager gain of five cents in nearly 25 years.
This difference remains more pronounced among the non-union members. Indeed, between 1997 and 2016, the gap in the average hourly wage between unionized women and men fell from 7.97% to 2.16%. Between non-unionized women and men, it went from 21.37% to 15.61%. In addition, other forms of discrimination can come into play. Racialized women, for example, received 59 cents for every dollar earned by non-racialized men in Canada in 2015.
Legal battles
The Pay Equity Act has nonetheless produced positive effects. It requires companies with ten or more employees to carry out an initial pay equity exercise and above all to assess its persistence every five years, which is called a “pay equity maintenance exercise”. The employer must report the results of these analyzes in a declaration.
Since the adoption of the law, the struggle has steadily shifted to the legal arena and led to changes to the Pay Equity Act in 2009 and 2019. In May 2018, an alliance of central labor organizations in Quebec won an important victory in the Supreme Court of Canada. The latter had invalidated certain articles of the law.
It also ruled that salary adjustments resulting from retention exercises every five years should be retroactive to the time the discrimination arose. Until then, employers who saw new pay disparities only had to adjust wages from the time of the audit, even if pay inequity existed long before that.
The Supreme Court held in its judgment that this system perpetuates the disadvantage of women over men. Women could experience wage discrimination for five years between retention exercises and, if the employer did not correct the situation on their own, they had the onus of proving fault, with no hope of receiving a wage adjustment for the entire period. duration of discrimination.
To be heard
However, this judicial gain turned into a half-victory, since the unions are today contesting the new version of the Pay Equity Act, presented in 2019 by the Quebec government to comply with the Supreme Court’s decision. . They particularly deplore the possibility of paying lump sums to employees, rather than retroactive salary increases.
“This does not really make it possible to correct the wage differentials and stop systemic discrimination against predominantly female jobs,” argues Éric Gingras. It also creates situations where the employer negotiates lump sums. However, a law applies, it cannot be negotiated. “
The CSQ also criticizes the slowness of the processes. In fact, pay equity maintenance complaints dating back to 2010 and 2015 still need to be resolved. In addition, the version of the Pay Equity Act filed in 2019 provides that the retroactive corrective for maintenance exercises will not apply to complaints filed before the entry into force of this new version.
The CSQ intends to make its voice heard in the wake of the 25e anniversary of the adoption of the law. “We will participate in an advertising campaign with other central trade unions and we will challenge each political party and all the deputies of the National Assembly, underlines Éric Gingras. We are also preparing other highlights to bring this crucial issue to the forefront. “