Pay Equity IS a Human Right

- Darlene Dziewit, President
Manitoba Federation of Labour

I watched with great concern as the Federal Conservative government announced that it would remove women's right to pay equity from the Federal Human Rights Code. Treasury Board Minister Vic Toews pronounced that such protection for women is too costly and time consuming, and as such, must be removed from the Code and into the realm of collective bargaining. He also cited the pay equity legislation that was passed in Manitoba in the mid 80s as a better alternative to Human Rights Code protection.

What bunk.

When a government announces its intention to remove protections afforded to any group from Human Rights legislation red flags should be raised. To use Mr. Toews' argument, it would then follow that if any other discriminatory practice, such as discrimination based on age or ethnic origin, for example, were to prove too time consuming or costly, then that too ought to be removed from the Human Rights Code. Then, I guess there would be more time and money to pursue other, less sticky or costly discriminatory transgressions.

Mr. Toews has touted Manitoba's pay equity legislation as another reason for removing equal pay for work of equal value from the Federal Human Rights Code. However, Mr. Toews seems to have only a half memory of the circumstances of that particular piece of equity legislation. It's time to refresh his memory.

The Manitoba model enshrined that the onus to ensure equal pay for comparable work was on the employer and not also on the unions. This was done so that an unscrupulous, powerful employer could not ram some less than equal pay scheme down its workers' throats. It seems to me that in difficult economic times, this might be a strategy by some employers today.

The Manitoba pay equity legislation covered only the public sector, and was bargained separate and apart from general negotiations. This was done to ensure there could be no attempt by the employer to force payment for the upgrading of women's wages from other sources within the collective agreement, such as from pensions or benefits.

In addition, it was decreed that no one's wages could be decreased to satisfy pay equity legislation. In fact, additional monies were set aside solely for adjustments to women's wages in order to correct the previous inequities. I wonder if Mr. Toews and Mr. Harper are willing to do the same for women under their proposal.

Finally, I would suggest to Mr. Toews that rather than using the back door to remove a Human Rights protection for working women who fall under Federal jurisdiction, he might want to consider increasing funding to the federal Human Rights Commission. And while he's at it, he may want to beef up the legislation to ensure that human rights complaints are dealt with in a timely matter, with no unjustified delays forced by intractable employers such as CBC and Canada Post, where complaints are 26 and 10 years old respectively.

This Federal Conservative government has repeatedly attacked women's rights through cut backs to women's advocacy organizations and lack of attention to women's needs. In fact, it is very telling that there was not a single reference to women in the entire Federal budget, even though women and their children will suffer disproportionately greater hardship than men in the current economic crisis. This is just one more example of decisions being made by adhering to skewed ideological values rather than by attention to the needs of the most vulnerable Canadians.

Shame on you Vic Toews.