CANADIAN UNION OF PUBLIC EMPLOYEES, LOCAL 2204
ONTARIO NURSING HOME ASSOCIATION
ONTARIO PUBLIC SERVICE EMPLOYEES UNION
PAY EQUITY ADVOCACY AND LEGAL SERVICES BALANCE
CANADIAN UNION OF PUBLIC EMPLOYEES, LOCAL 1528
CONTENTS
Thursday 21 January 1993
Pay Equity Amendment Act, 1993, Bill 102
Public Service Statute Law Amendment Act, 1993, Bill 169
Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 2204
Nancy Campbell, vice-president
Jamie Cass, education officer
Ontario Nursing Home Association
Paula Jourdain, past-president
Ontario Hospital Association
Roger C. Sharman, chairman, pay equity advisory committee
Paul LeMay, managing director, negotiation and consultation services, hospital employee relations services
Brian D. Siegner, vice-president, hospital employee relations services
Ontario Public Service Employees Union
Frank Rooney, assistant to the president
Janet Wright, negotiator, collective bargaining, assigned to pay equity
Pay Equity Advocacy and Legal Services
Senka Dukovich, executive director
Katerina Makovec, community organizer
Minh Pham, staff lawyer
Balance
Tricia Morley, member
Janet Gardiner, member
Jo Sereda, member
Sheryl Livingstone, member
Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 1528
Louise Primeau, president
STANDING COMMITTEE ON ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE
*Chair / Président: Cooper, Mike (Kitchener-Wilmot ND)
*Acting Chair / Présidente suppléante: Mathyssen, Irene (Middlesex ND)
Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: Morrow, Mark (Wentworth East/-Est ND)
*Akande, Zanana L. (St Andrew-St Patrick ND)
Carter, Jenny (Peterborough ND)
Chiarelli, Robert (Ottawa West/-Ouest L)
*Curling, Alvin (Scarborough North/-Nord L)
Harnick, Charles (Willowdale PC)
Mahoney, Steven W. (Mississauga West/-Ouest L)
*Malkowski, Gary (York East/-Est ND)
Runciman, Robert W. (Leeds-Grenville PC)
Wessenger, Paul (Simcoe Centre ND)
*Winninger, David (London South/-Sud ND)
*In attendance / présents
Substitutions present / Membres remplaçants présents:
Arnott, Ted (Wellington PC) for Mr Runciman
Caplan, Elinor (Oriole L) for Mr Chiarelli
Lessard, Wayne (Windsor-Walkerville ND) for Mr Morrow
Mathyssen, Irene (Middlesex ND) for Ms Carter
Murdock, Sharon (Sudbury ND) for Mr Wessenger
Poole, Dianne (Eglinton L) for Mr Mahoney
Tilson, David (Dufferin-Peel PC) for Mr Harnick
Harrington, Margaret H. (Niagara Falls ND) for Mr Winninger
Clerk / Greffière: Freedman, Lisa
Staff / Personnel:
Campbell, Elaine, research officer, Legislative Research Service
Hopkins, Laura, legislative counsel
The committee met at 0945 in room 228.
PAY EQUITY AMENDMENT ACT, 1993 / LOI
DE 1993 MODIFIANT LA LOI SUR L'ÉQUITÉ SALARIALE PUBLIC
SERVICE
STATUTE LAW AMENDMENT ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 MODIFIANT DES LOIS EN CE QUI
CONCERNE LA FONCTION PUBLIQUE
Consideration of Bill 102, An Act to amend the Pay Equity Act / Loi modifiant la Loi sur l'équité salariale, and Bill 169, An Act to amend the Public Service Act and the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act / Loi modifiant la Loi sur la fonction publique et la Loi sur la négociation collective des employés de la Couronne.
The Chair (Mr Mike Cooper): I call this meeting of the standing committee on administration of justice to order. We'll be continuing with the public hearings on Bill 102, An Act to amend the Pay Equity Act, and Bill 169, An Act to amend the Public Service Act and the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act.
CANADIAN UNION OF PUBLIC EMPLOYEES, LOCAL 2204
The Chair: I would like to call forward our first presenters for the morning, from the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 2204. Good morning. Just to remind you, you'll be allowed up to half an hour for your presentation. The committee would appreciate it if you'd keep your comments a little briefer than that to allow time for questions and comments from each of the caucuses. As soon as you're comfortable, could you please identify yourselves for the record and then proceed.
Ms Nancy Campbell: Good morning. I'm Nancy Campbell. I'm vice-president of CUPE Local 2204 and a full-time cook in a child care centre in Ottawa.
Ms Jamie Cass: I'm Jamie Cass and I'm an education officer with CUPE 2204 and I've worked in the field for about 18 years, both as an early childhood educator and a coordinator at a day care centre.
The Chair: Thank you. Please proceed.
Ms Campbell: We're a local union of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, CUPE 2204, based in eastern Ontario. All our members work for community-based child care programs. Our local is comprised of over 200 staff employed in 12 different agencies: early childhood educators, cooks, cleaners, clerical and administrative staff, coordinators, home visitors, resource teachers and integration advisers as well as teachers and supervisors working in specialized settings. Unionization is still not prevalent for the majority of staff working in child care programs, with the exception of employees working in the municipal sector. We felt it was important for you to hear from front-line workers and to know the impact this legislation will have on us.
Our local would like to focus on a few areas that will have serious effects on our membership. Particularly, however, we want you to know that we support the submissions of the Equal Pay Coalition and the CUPE Ontario recommendations as well as the Ontario Federation of Labour. We echo the need to cover workplaces with less than 10 employees by prohibiting discrimination in compensation systems on the basis of gender, support the changes recommended in the definitions section of the legislation and urge you to delete the sections of the bill that take away existing rights provided under the present legislation.
The Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care has also presented its brief, and we want to endorse its presentation and recommendations before this committee. Our local's an active member of the coalition. I think they summarize well the situation of the profession in the province as well as the pressing need for increases and salaries and benefits in the field, the impact of higher salaries and benefits on the quality of care and, finally, how clearly levels of compensation have been monitored and held back because of our reliance on parent fees.
We welcome the introduction of Bill 102, which will finally redress many of the outstanding issues that have been plaguing our profession for a long time. We feel that as a child care community, we've probably been waiting for this since the Liberal government first introduced legislation in 1986. We worked hard for that legislation and could not believe that we were not going to see any effects on our sector. Even though we have no comparator in our workplaces, no one could deny that we're in a low-wage female job ghetto that has been historically undervalued and underpaid.
Child care workers were further alarmed when the NDP government recently pulled its original amendments to the Pay Equity Act and delayed the first year of pay equity payments by yet another year, to 1994. We're here to tell you that we should not have to wait any longer and we urge you to change subsection 21.22(1) to January 1, 1993, to begin payments as originally promised.
Ms Cass: I want to talk for a few minutes about cross-establishment methods of comparisons. To tell you a little bit more about our local, we're made up of 12 different agencies and we bargain with nine of our employers together at a common table, and three employers have separate collective agreements. We want to use these hearings as an opportunity to give you a few examples of the concerns about the legislation from our point of view and the impact on the child care staff. We want legislation that makes sense to people, is easy to put in place and puts well-deserved money in women's pockets.
Our local believes that the most appropriate comparator is the municipality. In Ottawa-Carleton we've been working, I'd say since we were organized in 1978, to engage in trying to achieve wage parity with our municipality. They're doing the same kinds of work and it is something that our members in fact understand, so we urge you to ensure that the municipality is identified as the comparison or proxy organization for the child care sector. In fact, when we first looked at it we would have preferred to have female jobs in the all-female workplace compared to male jobs in organizations, and we do urge the government to revisit that original model.
A major concern for our local, though, is the section that defines what happens if there is not a similar key job in the proxy organization with those in the all-female workplace. The legislation is recommending a group-of-jobs approach, which would allow the proxy employer to choose a group of jobs that the seeking organization can use in its pay equity plan. We feel that this leaves much too much discretion with the proxy employer. The proxy employer in fact will have almost sole control over the group of jobs that is given to the seeking organization.
We're also concerned that municipalities that have decided to put no funding or resources into child care, and in fact do not cost-share their 20%, will continue to undervalue the whole nature of the service, the skill, effort and responsibility of the job of the early childhood educator when providing us with the comparators. It's unfair that this proxy employer will ultimately control who the comparators are for the child care employees.
We recommend that you go back to what was in Bill 168, which stated that where there were no similar jobs in the proxy organization to those in the seeking organization, you would go to the nearest geographical location where there are similar jobs.
We took a very clear example in our case with a day care we represent, Wise Owl Day Care in Pembroke. It's an all-female workplace located in Pembroke. The municipality offers no child care support, no subsidies. They do not cost. It's an approved corporation with the province. The city of Pembroke has made it quite clear that it in fact does not support the whole issue of municipalities and child care. When the Wise Owl employees are looking for their comparators, the city of Pembroke is going to have almost all the control to decide who are our comparators and to give us only those jobs that it feels are appropriate.
We say that we should be able to go to the nearest municipality that has child care workers in it and be able to make those comparisons. In our case it would be with the regional municipality of Ottawa-Carleton. That inherently makes sense because the provincial area office is the same office. It has integrity and the child care workers would understand what they were being compared to.
We really urge you to delete the sections of the bill that give reference to the group-of-jobs approach and amend it to allow seeking organizations to go to the next-closest geographical region where there are similar jobs for comparison.
We also wanted to deal with the capping of the payouts. I gather you've heard from a number of child care groups. This one tends to be a major issue. I think it became more major for us when we went back to our collective agreements and started to take some very real examples.
We put down in our brief two examples from our local, and those are the wage rates, let's say, after a person's been there for two years of work. We used the payroll and benefits of the centre. We came out with their estimated 1% of payroll. Using the number of employees in the first example, it would leave $248 per employee. Using this average, it would take the head teacher 33 years to achieve pay equity and the teachers 42 years. You can see how ludicrous it is for professionals working in the field to have to wait this long. If there is the political will, the Treasurer of Ontario can find these long-overdue pay equity payments. There must be a cap on the number of years it takes to achieve pay equity.
I'll point to our second example, again a real case, a community-based 74-children centre. In that case it would take the teachers 20 years and the head teachers 9 years. This is just the tip of it. I know you heard about a day care centre where it would take them 80 years. This we do not consider adequate legislation.
We also want you to note that in our two examples we didn't factor in benefit comparisons. Most of the non-profit child care centres do not have equivalent benefit packages with the municipality. In particular, we point to the pension plans, which are almost non-existent in the non-profit sector.
A limit on the number of years it will take to achieve pay equity is absolutely necessary if we're to see any real impact on wages in our profession. Child care staff enter the field because of their care and concern for the quality of care of our children. Most likely, they will leave the field because the value of the work they perform has not been recognized by society or compensated appropriately. Not only do staff live in poverty while they work, but they have a life of poverty assured to them upon their retirement.
We really strongly urge you to cap the pay equity amount so that workers have to achieve it by 1998 and we also strongly support the call to have all pay equity settlements in the public sector completed, as originally stated, in 1995.
One of the next issues I want to deal with is the whole issue of 1% funding to child care agencies, and this is particularly because of the way we're funded. If we see child care reform, I'm hoping that we'll in fact see some of these problems alleviated.
We have a number of child care centres that are close to parity with the municipality. Through a lot of hard work over the years with our municipality, with the kinds of increases that we've tried to make a political support for, we do have some centres that are close to parity. Funding and salaries have always had a direct impact on parent fees. This has meant that centres and boards of directors that have considered it a priority to raise salaries to be able to pay staff a reasonable wage have had to carry a burden of excessive parent fees.
As pay equity comes in at full provincial funding, it is important to continue the 1% of payouts to centres that have achieved parity with the regional municipality. This can then be used in the salary portion of the budget, holding the wages at the pay equity level while allowing other, already committed dollars to be used to decrease parent fees. This also ensures that those centres where fees have been held very low will not go on a better playing field by being able to now provide higher wages and maintain lower costs to parents. So we urge the government to flow at least 1% of the total payroll into the salary proportion of the non-profit child care centres at 100% funding, regardless of the current salary level.
Ms Campbell: I just want to deal a little bit with section 21.17. We find it difficult to believe the new legislation would place as much emphasis on confidentiality as it has in this section, the section dealing with confidentiality of information which the all-female workplace has from the proxy comparator organization.
In all cases, according to the government's definition of the public sector and broader public sector, we're dealing with public institutions or institutions which are operating on public funds, and in many cases this information is already known through collective agreements or public minutes of boards or council meetings.
The fines have the potential of intimidating workers and committee members working on pay equity plans. Information used to bargain other plans in the public sector did not have this confidentiality of information required, and the whole notion is unnecessary. We urge you to delete subsections 21.17(1) to (7).
In conclusion, we want to thank you for providing us the opportunity of presenting our recommendations. Bill 102 is really very important to the child care community. It finally allows us to feel included in the right to fair and decent wages that are not based on our gender. This is an equally important recognition for our profession.
The direct operating grant and the wage enhancement grant were two important steps by the government to increase the salaries and benefits of people working in the child care field, but the wage gap does still remain and the importance of public funding continues to play a critical role in striving to achieve equity. Escalating parent fees alone cannot pay for better salaries and benefits. Public funds must be allocated.
We want to re-emphasize that without a limit or cap on the number of years it will take for child care workers to achieve pay equity, this legislation will be of little benefit to staff currently working in the field and it will remain a principle of pay equity rather than a reality.
For us, pay equity is complementary and integral to other initiatives such as child care reform and employment equity. Child care reform remains for many of us our greatest hope, and we urge the government to ensure that child care reform is a top priority. Adequate salaries are an important component, and all research indicates the important role that consistent, stable funding plays in the quality of care. All these initiatives can be seen as a way of fighting back against the recession. If you begin to pay people their worth, you'll reap the benefits through taxes and additional spending power. Let's fight the recession creatively, not on the backs of the lowest-paid workers and our children's future. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you. Each caucus has about five minutes for questions and comments. Mr Arnott.
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Mr Ted Arnott (Wellington): Thank you for coming such a great distance to be here to present your concerns to us today. An excellent presentation. I think you very clearly indicated your support for some of the other groups that have come forward, but also your own specific concerns as they relate to your own organization.
I'm going to deviate a bit off topic with one of my questions. In your conclusion, you say: "All of these initiatives can be seen as a way of fighting back against the recession. If you begin to pay people their worth, you will reap the benefits through taxes and additional spending power. Let's fight the recession creatively not on the backs of the lowest-paid workers and our children's future."
There's a program that the Ministry of Community and Social Services has funded in the past, since 1983, called special services at home. You may be familiar with it; it's a program for families with children with developmental handicaps. I have been trying for two or three months -- probably there are two dozen families in the riding that I'm privileged to represent, Wellington, who can't get money for that program to fund it on an adequate basis such that their services are approximately equal to what they've been getting in years past, the services they need.
You're here because of your concern for children, and I guess I'm just exceedingly frustrated that I can't get this issue to the level that the minister will respond. I guess what I'm saying is there are a number of competing demands out there for government funding and justice is an important goal that we have to try and reach, but at some point there isn't the money there for justice, I suppose. How would you respond to that?
Ms Cass: I've heard that my whole working life. I've been working in the field since 1975. We have constantly been met with this whole issue, especially around salaries, because it really is what women often have the hardest time talking about, which is why it's taken us so long to see pay equity on the table. Often we're a sector that doesn't feel comfortable about putting our salaries out as an issue, and then as soon as you get the issue of the nature of the service put into the mix, which is what you're saying, the service that you provide versus your wages, it brings out an immediate kind of, "Oh, my God, not again."
I think we've had to deal with that. I think we've had to deal with it and in our local I think what we've seen is the benefit of paying people better. We are privileged to have unionized, to have worked hard, but we always do it hand in hand with the service issues. I think we've never lost sight of those competing interests, but having to put them together.
What we've also seen are the benefits of paying people adequate wages and so we've seen the benefits in terms of the children. We actually did a study on our local that looked at wages back in 1978. We had a turnover rate of 1.9 years. So every 1.9 years, the staff turned over. When we looked at it again in 1989, it was 7.9 years, the difference in terms of the length of stay that people stayed. All of a sudden, if we had an infant-toddler, pre-school kindergarten program, they knew the kids from the time they were infants to the time they went off to school and after. So we reaped the benefits in that in terms of quality of care.
I wouldn't stop struggling for your special-needs children and for integration services and we never stopped struggling for it, but I think we have to stop playing the two off against each other, especially when we talk about low-wage sectors. Somebody's making the money. The doctors are making the money. It's not us, but somehow everybody feels real great about keeping the guilt on us. I guess we react to it because we don't know what to do with it.
Mr Arnott: I didn't mean to project that.
Ms Cass: No, but it's the struggle. I think those kinds of services should be -- our union spends most of its time on political work, on lobbying for the wage enhancement grant, on the direct operating grant, on child care reform. We spend, I'd say, probably 10% to 15% of our time on negotiations because our parents aren't the ones who control the funding.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Arnott. Mr Winninger.
Mr David Winninger (London South): I too would like to thank you for your presentation and for your general support for the thrust of Bill 102. I apologize for not being here for your presentation in its entirety, but as many members of the Legislature know, you often have to be in more than one place at once.
I was a little concerned when I heard you cite the example of the Wise Owl Day Care Centre not having a comparator right in Pembroke because the municipality is not funding day care. I checked with the ministry just now and it has drawn my attention to number 30 in a schedule the ministry has issued, which indicates that if there is no comparator in the same municipality, you can go to the nearest municipality operating a day care facility for your comparator.
Ms Cass: Well, that's what we want.
Mr Winninger: I think that should satisfy your concern on that ground.
Ms Cass: That's section 30?
Mr Winninger: It's number 30, I believe, to the schedule. Perhaps the clerk can provide you with a copy.
Ms Cass: We do have it.
Mr Winninger: Oh, do you? Okay.
Ms Cass: Yes. I'll check the schedule, but in terms of what we've been hearing, and I know the position of the other organizations in CUPE is that with the group-of-jobs approach, that in fact won't be what happens. So if you're saying and you can assure us that in fact that is what happens, that is what we would want, that we'd go to the next municipality operating for child care.
Mr Winninger: I see the ministry official nodding his head in agreement.
Ms Cass: I think you've heard that from a number of child care groups, that that is one of their concerns, that there's some equity there.
Ms Sharon Murdock (Sudbury): Just to amplify that, if it was just municipality, then your concern would not be addressed, but because the schedule states that your proxy group is a municipality operating a day care, that particular issue is covered.
Since you agree with the Pay Equity Commission's submission, one of the things it talked about was maintenance. Once a proxy group is found and so on, they would like it to be maintained, but with the proxy group, if there's an increase in the proxy, then there would be an increase in the seeking group and so on.
I am wondering as a union how you feel about that, because looking at it, it would mean then that there would be no point in negotiating for wages any more. I'm wondering why you're supporting that actually. Why are you doing that when part of your function is negotiating?
Ms Cass: I think the whole issue of maintenance for our local is mixed, and I think there's a couple of things going on here. First of all, I'd say for the last 15 years we've basically been tied to the wage increases our regional municipality has got. We don't feel like we have rights to bargain, quite honestly, in many ways. We feel that the political action part of it really is where we see our increases.
In some senses you're talking to a local union that bargains with our parent boards and doesn't feel a whole lot of control over the bargaining process, which is why we're supporting government initiatives in discussions around broader-based bargaining and sectoral bargaining. For us, those are key in terms of being able to bargain with who is funding the service. In terms of that issue, it then starts to tie you into the wage increases.
Ms Murdock: Particularly if you legislate it. I mean, if you put that into the legislation, the government, this government but future governments as well, will be saying, "You're going to be tied in."
Ms Cass: And I think our concern -- I mean, we haven't put that in our proposal, and I think what we felt was that if you don't cap it, if you do not provide a cap, we don't know what's going to happen 43 years down the way. We do know the same staff will not be working in those jobs. We can assure you of that, okay?
Ms Murdock: God, I would hope not.
Ms Cass: They will be living in poverty. So I think that whole issue of the maintenance is problematic with us and I don't think we've worked through --
Ms Murdock: No. I wanted to hear that, though, because I didn't --
Ms Cass: We have not worked through it. I don't want someone to tie our hands in bargaining, but I must tell you very honestly, we feel like our hands are totally tied.
Ms Murdock: Because of the way the system works.
Ms Cass: Yes.
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Ms Dianne Poole (Eglinton): Thank you very much for a very articulate presentation today. Although we have heard from a number of child care groups, you have actually elaborated upon and provided us with new information, so I do appreciate that.
In the last page of your brief you say, "It finally allows us to feel that we are included in the right to fair and decent wages that are not based on our gender," and then, "The wage gap still remains."
It's actually quite timely that you make that point, because this morning in the Globe and Mail there was an editorial, which has been distributed to all members, and the subject is the "much ballyhooed `wage gap' between men and women." The submission of the Globe and Mail editorial is that these articles don't take into account main ingredients of the wage difference such as education, hours worked and merit.
They make the further statement that "One would expect that since society's attitudes towards women's work and education have changed relatively recently, the difference in average wages would be least among the young." I'm sorry, I read the wrong section here. It said, "Women with a university degree earned more, not less, than men with lower levels of education." They go on to say, "When one considers that a majority of those enrolled in Canadian universities are female, it's hard to imagine a future in which the wage difference will not continue to narrow."
I just would like to put on the record that Ontario employment statistics from June of last year showed -- and they had two categories, whites and other racial minorities -- that among whites, women with a university degree earned 66%, that's $31,000, of the income of white men with degrees, who earned $48,000, and that racial minority women with degrees earned 56%.
I submit that while the Globe makes a valid point, it's not only based on gender; it is levels of education, it is various other factors. They've really missed the boat. Even with women flooding into universities over the last decade, flooding into the professions, there still is a gender gap. Would you like to comment on that? I know in your profession, for instance, you have a lot of people with child care degrees, early childhood education degrees, and they're still earning pathetic wages.
Ms Campbell: Isn't that what pay equity's all about? When you get down to your plans, you look at skill, effort, responsibility and you take away all those things which may account for some difference. You start from a level playing field and then you try to account for that gap that still exists, and that gap really does still exist after you take into account all those other factors.
There are other reasons why there are gaps, but once you account for those, then there's no other excuse except based on gender, and we are a rather well educated sector. I think we've had a national study recently that has pointed to that. We don't see any other way of accounting for the abysmally low wages in the sector.
Ms Poole: I had one other question, if I have time, specific to the legislation. On page 3 of your brief you say, "We would prefer to have female jobs in the all-female workplace compared to male jobs in the other organizations." This has basically been a unanimous recommendation of all the groups who have come before us.
One of the very valid points made by OAITH, the Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses, is that if you are comparing female jobs to female jobs in a comparator organization where those female job wages have depended on a pay equity plan, everything leads back to the integrity of that particular plan. So if the original plan was flawed, then the child care organization, for instance, that would be borrowing from that to compare the female wages to the female wages would also be flawed.
Jamie, I know that you've been very involved with the coalition. I think Nancy mentioned it as well. I know that the coalition was consulted with very heavily on the various models. Do you have any sense of why the government changed from its original model, which included comparing female jobs to male jobs, to one that nobody seems to like because it goes away from the spirit of pay equity?
Ms Cass: I do know that in the consultation process for the pay equity bill there was an attempt to compare female jobs to female jobs and not even at the final male rate. I guess we saw some movement of at least comparing female jobs to female jobs but with the male rate of pay after the proxy organization has gone through pay equity. Again, for unions, they felt quite strongly about it because there are the resources to look at the male rates of jobs. We still would feel more comfortable to be able to do that.
I think you're right. It doesn't build on some of the inherent problems with different plans. Quite honestly, we have concerns about the plans in the regional municipality of Ottawa-Carleton. As a local union, it didn't really compare male and female jobs, so we're left with just sort of a total job evaluation plan which we will have to at some level -- we can't question their plan, we're going to have to go with it.
I guess it was a political decision not to, and it's our right to really lobby that we think it should go back to the male comparator and allow our organizations -- I think what we're seeing with this legislation is more and more of the rights being taken away from the seeking organizations to really have some control over the plan. In some way, that's fitting with all the other problems we see about having control over our sector. We don't support it.
Ms Poole: One of the principles of the current Pay Equity Act is the self-managed process, so really if this were amended, it would be in keeping with that original spirit too.
Ms Cass: Yes, but I urge you, more than anything, to put the cap on it. Without the cap, this legislation doesn't go anywhere for us.
The Chair: Ms Campbell and Ms Cass, on behalf of this committee, I'd like to thank you for taking the time out this morning and giving us your presentation.
Ms Cass: Thank you all very much. It was really a pleasure to come down and to make the presentation.
ONTARIO NURSING HOME ASSOCIATION
The Chair: I would like to call forward our next presenters, from the Ontario Nursing Home Association. Just as a notice to the committee members, our 10:30 presenters have cancelled, so you can note that. Good morning.
Ms Paula Jourdain: Good morning. How are you?
The Chair: Good. Just as a reminder, you'll be allowed up to 45 minutes for your presentation. The committee would appreciate it if you'd keep your remarks slightly briefer than that to allow time for questions and comments from each of the caucuses. As soon as you're comfortable, could you please identify yourselves for the record and then proceed.
Ms Jourdain: Yes. Thank you for having us today. My name is Paula Jourdain. I'm past chairman of the Ontario Nursing Home Association. With me is Laurie Clarke. She's the director of human resources for Extendicare nursing homes.
Before summarizing our brief and our comments on Bill 102, An Act to amend the Pay Equity Act, I will give you some general information about the nursing home sector, its regulation by government and the current economic climate. I will then outline some basic principles established by the nursing home association to guide pay equity implementation in our sector.
I will also demonstrate, through an explicit example, how the implementation of the proxy method of comparison without funding would result in a layoff of over 4,800 employees throughout the province and a reduction in patient care to a level which would place residents at severe risk.
The Ontario Nursing Home Association represents over 90% of the nursing home facilities and beds in the province of Ontario. Our members operate close to 300 nursing homes which serve 30,000 seniors in Ontario. We employ 25,000 people, the overwhelming majority of whom are women. In fact, health care aides alone comprise almost 60% of the staff in nursing homes.
Over 90% of the workers in our industry are unionized and there are close to a dozen different unions that we bargain with. The scope of our operations encompasses the entire province of Ontario. There are wide variations in the size of our homes and the ownership includes a variety of small single owners and multi-facility owners.
All homes, regardless of ownership or size, receive the same funding and must have similar staffing ratios. This widespread unionization, in conjunction with controlled funding, results in the development of industry-wide wage parity.
Nursing homes fall under the provision of the Nursing Homes Act which is administered by the Ministry of Health. The act and the regulations passed under its authority strictly control the revenue of nursing homes.
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These controls include the rate that can be charged to nursing home residents, the percentage of ward, private and semi-private rooms in a facility, the types of services covered under the Ontario health insurance plan's extended care program and the per diem payment that the Ministry of Health provides to nursing homes.
It is illegal for nursing home operators to charge residents fees that are not in line with government regulations. The regulations also specify the services and standards of care that must be provided to residents and establish a rigorous inspection process to ensure their implementation.
The implementation of long-term care reform later this year will provide envelope funding for nursing care. Each home will receive a set dollar amount for the provision of nursing care. Any wage increase not matched by a revenue increase will result in a direct reduction in the level of patient care provided by the home.
These controls on both the revenue and service side of our operations do not allow us the flexibility in implementing programs like pay equity. We cannot adjust our revenue or change the services we provide to our residents to offset the financial impact of pay equity however much we do support the general thrust of the legislation. Implementation must be managed within our existing base budgets, all the while ensuring there is no reduction in the quality of care provided to our residents.
The current economic climate in our industry is very poor. Sixteen nursing homes have gone into receivership since 1989 and many more are on the verge of receivership. Chronic government underfunding of nursing homes has created many of these financial problems.
Nursing homes have been advised that they will receive no economic adjustment for January 1, 1993, irrespective of pending arbitration which will affect a significant number of our employees. We estimate that this arbitration will affect over 40% of current employees.
We recognize that the province is also under severe financial constraints which will limit its ability to fund the major impact which pay equity will have on our sector. If no funding is provided and pay equity goes forward as outlined in Bill 102, there will be a major reduction in the level of patient care provided by nursing homes.
In the process of reviewing the proposed Pay Equity Act, the nursing home association has developed a number of principles which we feel pay equity should observe if it's to be effectively implemented in our sector. They include:
-- Maintaining the existing relative equity of the wage grids of our employee groups.
-- Preserving the industry-wide equity which currently exists in our wage grids because of the high degree of unionization and the collective bargaining in our industry.
-- Province-wide adjustments to maintain provincial equity in our industry. This principle reflects how we are funded and regulated. It is the reality of our labour marketplace and the pay equity process must reflect it or it will diminish the existing geographic equity of our industry.
-- Ensuring that through appropriate timing of the pay equity implement process labour market disruptions do not occur. Posting of pay equity plans and the allocation of government funding should be done uniformly across the industry and the province. This will prevent situations where some facilities manage to complete the pay equity process ahead of others and realize a competitive advantage by being able to recruit staff at increased wage rates; and
-- Pay equity implementation must be fully funded by the government to ensure there is no reduction in the quality of care provided to residents.
The ONHA originally supported the proxy comparison process if its implementation followed our major principles in the consultation paper. We felt it was well suited to application in our industry.
We now believe the proxy comparison, as defined in the current act, would put us out of business. Specifically, we are concerned about the selection of the proxy organization and the necessity to match the job rates of the proxy organization.
Using this system we would be forced to accept salary policy lines of another organization which may be funded differently than the nursing homes. The principles of salary administration are also compromised. The internal equity within an organization would be skewed by an external reference point. There is also no way that pay equity could be maintained over time.
The proxy method, as outlined in the act, is administratively cumbersome for both the seeking organization and proxy organizations and requires the provision of information that is constantly changing and not readily available. Confidentiality is also a major concern. While fines are provided for it will be impossible for organizations to use the information only for pay equity purposes.
The following example demonstrates how the implementation of proxy comparison could destroy the nursing home sector.
If an Ontario nursing home which currently receives approximately $78 per resident day was to use a Metropolitan Toronto home for the aged which is funded at $135 per resident day as a proxy organization, the following would result: The key female job class in both organizations, the health care aide position, would be compared. At present, the master labour contract covering over 40% of our sector has a wage rate for this position of around $13 per hour. The Metropolitan Toronto home for the aged wage rate for the same position is $18 per hour. If we match wage rates as identified by Bill 102, the cost difference for a 100-bed nursing home at the current staffing level approved by the Ministry of Health, which is currently 2.25 hours of resident care per day, would be $410,625 annually.
At current rates the implementation of this pay adjustment would require a reduction of 31,586 hours of care per year and the layoff of 16 full-time positions for each 100-bed nursing home and 4,800 staff across the province in the nursing department alone. The resulting level of care provided to the home's residents would be 1.38 hours per resident day. This level of care is below the minimum legislated by the Nursing Homes Act and would place our residents at severe risk.
We simply cannot match wage rates of proxy organizations without full government funding of the differential.
If nursing homes are forced to use proxy comparisons, then we must be able to match percentage increases, not wage rates. The pay equity adjustment received by the key female job classes in the seeking organization should be equal to the percentage pay equity adjustment received by the comparator job in the proxy organization. This same percentage increase would then be paid to all other female job classes. Using our above example, if the Metropolitan Toronto home for the aged health care aides received a 5% increase as a result of pay equity, then nursing home health care aides and all other female job classes in the nursing home would receive a 5% increase on their rate.
Allowing nursing homes to match percentage pay equity increases rather than job rates allows us to maintain the existing relative equity of the wage grids of our employee groups. If all nursing homes used the same proxy, we would maintain sector-wide equity and have consistent province-wide adjustments. However, every pay equity adjustment received by nursing home staff will result in a corresponding reduction in staff and resident care unless it's funded by the government.
In examining the list of scheduled organizations originally circulated by the Ministry of Labour, it would appear that provincial psychiatric hospitals and public hospitals are possible comparators.
The act is silent on a number of key factors regarding proportional value. Of most importance is the number of male job classes required in an organization to implement pay equity.
Most nursing homes have only one male job class, the maintenance position. For proportional value to be used in nursing homes, we must be allowed to proceed using only one male job class.
Some homes may have no male job classes as the maintenance function is contracted out. In these situations it is imperative that a male comparator be selected from a nursing home within the same municipality or county, a similar argument that was made by CUPE just before us. This will maintain sector-wide equity and prevent one home from experiencing wage adjustments that are significantly different from the rest of the sector.
If the act was to require that more than one male job class be used as comparators, then 80% of nursing homes would be forced to use proxy comparison. As pointed out above, using proxy comparators with the job rate requirement would be devastating for us.
Regardless of the method used to implement pay equity, its application may cause a unique problem in the nursing home sector. While we are considered public sector for the purposes of pay equity legislation, our homes are owned and operated almost exclusively by private sector companies. Many of these companies engage in business activities other than the operation of nursing homes.
For example, one of the large nursing home chains also operates a home care services division. Under the existing pay equity scheme, this part of the corporation would also be subject to pay equity adjustments by way of proxy comparison, yet its comparators in the home care field would not. The higher wages that may result from pay equity would significantly disadvantage our members' ability to compete in the home care industry.
A further, albeit more unique, example is a company that owns both a nursing home and a car dealership. If pay equity is implemented on a corporate basis, it would mean that a car salesman would be brought under the scope of the legislation in a way that was never intended.
Finally, the application of pay equity on a corporate basis will create problems for most of the management companies involved in the operation of nursing homes because they also engage in other forms of business which were not intended to be covered by pay equity.
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For these reasons, we propose that pay equity should be applied to the operating entity of a company rather than the corporate entity. This minor change in the application of the proposed amendments will avoid implementation problems for the companies operating in our sector. We also suspect that this issue will probably have arisen with your consultations with other groups as well.
The nursing home association supports the principle of pay equity and would like to see pay equity implemented in the nursing home sector in a timely and effective manner, if the principles of equity we have set out in this paper could be achieved. The timing outlined in the act is totally unrealistic. It is impossible for us to implement retroactive increases given the current funding crisis facing nursing homes.
We have grave concerns that the implementation of proxy comparison as outlined in the current act would result in the following if the funding of pay equity was not provided: The layoff of 4,800 staff members in our nursing departments alone and the reduction of nursing care to a level that would place nursing home residents at severe risk.
If full funding was provided by the government and the act remained in its current form, the government would be required to add over $410,000 for every 100-bed home. Across the province, this would result in an expenditure of over $123 million annually. The pay equity process outlined in the act may be relevant to competitive organizations which have a number of male and female job classes and which are able to match wage adjustments to revenue.
As outlined in the paper, nursing homes cannot adjust their revenue, and any wage adjustment must be matched by service reduction. The implementation of proportional value, using a minimum of one male comparator per establishment, would allow nursing homes to achieve the objectives of the legislation.
We support the importance of increasing the relative wage rates received by women but would suggest that for those female jobs which are primarily funded by the government, ie, health care aides, nurses, registered nursing assistants, that the government should consider setting sector-wide wage rates relative to funding. This would eliminate the need for significant administrative time and expense which would be required using a full pay equity review and which in turn would free up management to concentrate on the provision of quality care to our residents.
As CUPE stated just before us, we support sectoral bargaining. It's reality that the government is controlling our increases; we're not able to control them ourselves. Thank you very much for listening to our presentation.
The Acting Chair (Mrs Irene Mathyssen): We have about 23 minutes left for questions, and we'll begin on the government side with Mr Winninger.
Mr Winninger: I'd like to ask whether you've explored the implications of Bill 101 on long-term care to some of the arguments you made here. For example, on page 4, where you address the problem of comparing salary policy line for nursing homes to organizations that may be funded differently from nursing homes.
My understanding of the effect of the long-term care legislation would be to bring some equity to the per diems, whether you've got someone receiving long-term care in a nursing home or a home for the aged, which would make the proxy comparisons perhaps more valid in your view.
Ms Jourdain: Over a long term, I would have to agree with you. In the short term, I would disagree. Bill 101 will adjust our per diems. However, the municipal homes for the aged under the current prospectives of Bill 101 will still have the ability to provide additional funding. Any homes that are charitable homes or municipal homes can still receive enhanced funding through their supporting agency, whether it be the municipality or whatever.
At the present time the municipal homes receive a substantially higher wage rates than we receive. I would suggest that over time, as our funding levels do equalize, probably our wage rates will equalize throughout across. Whether it's male jobs or female jobs, they'll equate, but that will take some time and that certainly is not the case at the present time.
Ms Murdock: I have one quick question in regard to some of what you were saying on page 4 in regard to proxy comparisons. In that you agreed with the proxy comparison basically, the concept of proxy comparison, is it the fact that the group that would be chosen as the proxy comparator having to do that work and also having the decision? We've heard it from other groups saying that they have the decision to make the wage differential or the salary parity decision for the seeking group. Is that your main concern?
Ms Jourdain: Our main concern is to have to match job rates. There's absolutely no way we can match the rates of another organization because of certain --
Ms Murdock: Because of your funding?
Ms Jourdain: Yes.
Ms Murdock: But in terms of proxy and the concept of proxy, I'm not understanding you to mean that you disagree with that?
Ms Jourdain: If we could match percentage increases, we would be more supportive of proxy. It's still administratively very cumbersome and we still have concerns about confidentiality, but we would be more comfortable if we could match just relative percentage increases.
Ms Murdock: The funding aspect of it is your concern, rather than the principle of it or how it would be utilized.
Ms Jourdain: That's right.
Ms Murdock: Because my question was going to be, what other method would you suggest?
Ms Jourdain: The proportional will work if we can use one male job comparator. That's the other way.
Ms Murdock: In terms of the confidentiality, you heard the group before you express its viewpoint that the bill was overly concerned with confidentiality, which was unnecessary. We've had that exact same kind of view expressed by any number of groups all week who have said that we are too concerned with confidentiality. I know that one of the reasons we put that in was that we don't want any proxy employer feeling like its information is going to be spread willy-nilly throughout whatever.
Ms Jourdain: I think the group you had before you, CUPE, was representing union interests. In our situation, we would have to compare union and non-union jobs. The union information obviously is public knowledge. Their contracts are public knowledge. That would be why they wouldn't be as concerned, I would think. But the non-union and the management positions would be confidential and should remain confidential.
Ms Murdock: You think they should even be stricter then, that the sections of the act should even be more --
Ms Jourdain: I think we just have to be very careful about confidentiality and I think it's probably unrealistic to expect that it will remain confidential, given the requirements of the act and the information that has to be provided between the two organizations. That's why it's very crucial that the proxy organization that's selected -- that you find the right one.
Ms Murdock: Yes, okay. Thank you very much.
Ms Poole: Thank you very much for your presentation. You certainly, I think, have opened a few eyes today as to what the implications of this legislation are for your sector. I think it was on the final page of your brief that you talked about the implications if proxy were administered and you weren't fully funded.
Ms Jourdain: Yes.
Ms Poole: You also talked about the implications of what would happen if you were fully funded and what it would cost. Quite frankly, what you've provided us with today is more of an economic analysis than we have received from the government. We have asked them about cost, we have asked them whether they are going to guarantee they will pay the costs of not only the pay equity plan itself but also of implementing it, and there's been utter silence.
Ms Jourdain: Obviously we haven't even addressed the cost of implementing it here.
Ms Poole: That's right.
Ms Jourdain: We just have to pick that one up, but yes, this is the actual wage differential cost.
Ms Poole: I must assume from a comment you made in this brief that you were consulted by the government when it was drafting the legislation.
Ms Jourdain: Yes. We made a presentation last year at this time on the original brief and then we are back again.
Ms Poole: At the time that you submitted your brief to the government and they consulted with you, did you make it clear that bringing in the proxy method the way they were going to would be financially disastrous for your industry?
Ms Jourdain: Yes.
Ms Poole: Did you also ask them for some sort of guarantee that they would be picking up these costs?
Ms Jourdain: Yes.
Ms Poole: What I'm interested in is the response that they gave if they knew the financial repercussions. You've stated here it would cost an additional expenditure of over $123 million annually, and this is just for nursing homes. This is not including all the other proxy sectors.
Ms Jourdain: That's just our nursing department. That doesn't cover our other departments.
Ms Poole: Right.
Ms Jourdain: It doesn't cover food service, which would be another 20% on top of that.
Ms Poole: It doesn't include what they would pay out for proxy comparators, for instance, for the child care sector or the shelters or libraries or the home care sector? What you're basically saying is that this could be astronomically expensive, and yet it appears, from what the minister said on Monday, that they've done no economic analysis. Certainly, they have not shared anything with you.
Ms Jourdain: We haven't received any information on that.
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Ms Poole: Nor any assurances that in fact the government would --
Ms Jourdain: No. As a matter of fact, we received a questionnaire -- I guess it was sent to all organizations -- with regard to assistance in achieving pay equity. It was exclusive of for-profit enterprises, so we would be excluded, it's our understanding at this point in time, from any financial assistance. That's why we have major concerns.
Ms Poole: In your brief, you made it clear that as of January 1, 1993, you were frozen.
Ms Jourdain: That's correct.
Ms Poole: You received no new assistance, even though your costs had significantly escalated and there were implications from arbitrations. That is one of the major concerns I have with what this government has done. They've gone ahead and said, in a very political way, "We are going to proceed with proxy; we are going to do this wonderful thing for women," yet they are going to do a number of things. They are going to either put the province out of business with the deficit increasing significantly; they're going to put the private sector in your area out of business --
Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): Busy government.
Ms Poole: We don't know what they're going to end up --
Mrs Elinor Caplan (Oriole): They don't know what they're doing.
Ms Jourdain: We can't argue with the principle of pay equity.
Ms Poole: No.
Ms Jourdain: You can't argue that. The reality of the financial situation facing the province and the reality of fully funded organizations like -- administratively, this is going to be so expensive, just administratively. Nurses are nurses are nurses. All nurses are funded by the government in some way or another, and the same with the child care workers. It's a set group. As opposed to spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on evaluating all of them, why doesn't the government say, "We think child care workers should be making X and nurses should make Y," and God, why not add the doctors in there too? I don't care, You know what I mean?
The reality is that we don't have control either. CUPE was sitting here, saying, "We don't have control." We're the employers, saying, "We don't have control." The government is the one that's controlling the purse-strings and it's the one that has to establish the level of service, because there's a direct correlation. Whether it's child care, whether its nursing homes, any of these service businesses are controlled by the government's input, so the governments are the ones that can determine both the wage rates and the level of service they want. They have to make that decision.
Ms Poole: So that if they proceeded with wage enhancements for these female jobs, basically in ghettos, then that may be a much simpler way to do it, a much more direct way to do it.
Ms Jourdain: Yes.
Ms Poole: Secondly, it would also ensure that the government would be picking up any cost and that the government could do it in a fiscally responsible way. They could have a set period when they say the guarantee is there that these women's wages will be raised, give them that security to know that it's going to start now and it's going to continue, but at the same time have some control.
Ms Jourdain: Yes.
Ms Poole: Quite frankly, it sounds like they really didn't know what they were doing.
I just have one last question. We had a brief from the Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses yesterday. So far, we've only heard from three groups that would be affected by proxy: your group, the shelters and the child care workers. The child care workers are very supportive of proceeding with proxy, although they aren't very enamoured of the way it's being done. The shelters were very critical of proxy and thought that without the additional resources, it was just going to add a burden. You have in essence reiterated this.
The final line from the Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses' brief was, "In conclusion, and to state our case most plainly, we wonder if the cost of achieving pay equity will prove to be greater than the results." Their concern was that they would end up laying off women and creating harm to the sector if the resources weren't there. I must assume from your comments you'd share that.
Ms Jourdain: Yes.
Ms Poole: The Ontario Nurses' Association also said that it rejects the government amendments regarding proxy. It sounds like a number of the groups representing women are not as sure as this government seems to be that proxy is the solution. Thank you very much.
Mr David Tilson (Dufferin-Peel): I must say that this is a topic that's been of great interest to me, and I've been waiting for someone like you to appear.
Mr Arnott: You've waited four days.
Mr Tilson: I've waited four days, yes. I might say your brief is excellent. If I speak in the House, you may hear part of it read back because it's such a good presentation. I congratulate you for it. Many of us get personally involved in this topic as our hair gets greyer, and also we have parents. I have a mother who is in a retirement home in Orangeville which is attached to a nursing home. It's privately run, so you get to talk to the staff and the nurses about the problems, the reduction. When I speak, I don't want to be speaking in a detrimental fashion of this particular residence, because I think it's excellent, but clearly the problems are the same throughout this province: lack of funding. It's a never-ending problem.
The owner of this particular residence had another residence in another place, I think, that had grave financial difficulties. I've had chats with him and I believe that these people can run these places more efficiently than the government can. Aside from this issue, I get concerned when nurses come to me and say: "So-and-so works in a government-run place, and my wages aren't anywhere near hers. An RN over there is different than an RN here." They even compare themselves to nursing assistants, RNs being paid the same as nursing assistants.
I watch legislation approach like this, and notwithstanding the problem, the inequities of pay equity -- although I, too, was interested in the Globe editorial this morning, as I'm sure you were, and there may be room for debate on that as well, but it raised some good issues.
I'd like you to spend a little more time, for the time that's allotted us to question, on the concern I have for the continuation of retirement homes and nursing homes, the privately run ones in particular. As our population gets older, as we all get older, we start wondering where we're going to go, and we start wondering where we're going to put our parents and those types of areas. I hear of retirement homes and nursing homes that are simply going down the tubes. They can't afford to operate for whatever reason. I get concerned, as you do, about the quality of care. Again, I hate to talk like this because it's as if I'm being critical of the health care, and I'm not. I think the particular residence my mother is in, for example, is an excellent nursing home, but it's quite obvious that the funding is being emphasized in another area. The funding is being given to government-run operations. That's okay.
I honestly believe that this government, or any government, cannot run long-term health care. They can't do it. They don't have the money for it. I think they're suddenly realizing that. When they were in opposition, they may have thought that, but they're now in government, and I think they're suddenly realizing it's impossible for them to do that, notwithstanding their philosophical decisions that were made a year ago or -- I forget when the decisions were made to change the funding. I'm sure you could spend some time on that.
Finally, if I can get to the area I'd like you to respond to, acknowledging all these lack-of-funding problems, acknowledging all that, you referred somewhat in your brief to where you wonder, you're postulating where we're going to go. If the funding isn't there now and we're going to have this pay equity, notwithstanding the inequities you're talking about, comparing yourselves to other jobs, whether they're female, male or whoever, notwithstanding that argument, if the funding isn't going to come now, what's going to happen?
I'm not talking about jobs. We're talking about justice for all. I am concerned about my mother, as you are too. I'm concerned about her care. I'm concerned about the fact that the quality of care is going to deteriorate, that there isn't enough money there. It's fine for nurses and day care people and other people to come in here and say, "We're being treated unfairly," and yes they are, but what about the rest of the people? What about my mother? What about your mother? What about your father?
Ms Jourdain: I think that Bill 101, the nursing home amendment act, which is trying to equalize the funding between nursing homes and retirement homes and bring us under a common piece of legislation, is really a forward-looking document, and we are excited about the implementation of that.
Albeit we'll be presenting a brief to them with comments on it, we look forward to the implementation of long-term care reform. We support the government's goal of moving to community-based care, but we also know that there's always going to be a role for facilities. Those facilities should be run on an equal ground, whether it be government-run or privately run, with the same funding so that we can show the kind of care that we can deliver. Obviously, that is our fundamental priority now, to ensure that we get equal and fair funding so that we can provide the quality of care to our residents. That's our number one goal.
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Mr Tilson: But the difficulty is that it's fine to have all these wonderful papers. This very legislation says: "Sorry, we're broke right now. We'll have to wait three years or two years or whatever." Aren't they liable to say the same thing, "Yes, we'll give you some more funding, but right now we're not in very good shape"?
Ms Jourdain: One of the things that Bill 101 does that the NDP has been very courageous in implementing and is still being courageous in implementing -- I hope it doesn't go down the tubes -- is the increase in the co-payment rate, so we're putting more responsibility on to the recipients of the care. By and large, in my experience in my job -- I manage three homes -- most of those seniors do have funds and they are able to add more. I think the change in co-payment that's being proposed is a courageous move that I'm sure will be politically difficult but will add more money to the system through the recipients. I think if we can stick to Bill 101 and get it passed, albeit with whatever amendments are required, that's a major step forward.
Mr Tilson: All I know is that there are substantial increases to the seniors in this province who are living in these places. The increases they're paying monthly are being increased substantially for whatever reason, and I fear there's only so much money. I use this with almost every delegation that comes forward. There's only so much money in the pot and I --
Ms Jourdain: But the seniors are starting to pay for more of their own care. Right now it doesn't matter how much money you have. You go in and you're practically totally funded by the government. That's really not fair if you have the money to provide for your own care. The system that is being proposed whereby the amount that you would be paying would be relative to the amount of income you take in looks like it's a fair system. I think that's a major step forward, but we've got to get this thing through. It's already been delayed and delayed, so the key point is to get it implemented.
Mr Tilson: I understand, and that's what this bill's all about, of course: the issue of delay. I guess my big concern with the topic you're here about today is, where's the quality of care going to go with respect to long-term care and what effect will the implementation of pay equity, given this government's -- fine, as I say, all these papers are coming out -- given what appears to be delaying, unless it just lets the deficit go wild, which is another alternative for it; it could just let the deficit go wild and implement it, because if it doesn't do that, there's no money, unless they tax us all to death.
Hence I get back to my first concern on the topic that you have before this committee, that the quality of care in long-term care is going to deteriorate unless there are big dollars generated. The implementation of pay equity, the way it's been presented now, without all those moneys, is going to cause the seniors in our province to suffer.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Tilson. Ms Jourdain and Ms Clarke, on behalf of this committee I'd like to thank you for taking the time out this morning and giving us your presentation.
ONTARIO HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION
The Chair: I'd like to call forward our next presenters, from the Ontario Hospital Association. Good morning. Just a reminder, you'll be allowed up to an hour for your presentation. The committee would appreciate it if you'd keep your remarks slightly briefer than that to allow time for questions and comments from each of the caucuses. As soon as you're comfortable, could you please identify yourselves for the record and then proceed.
Mr Roger C. Sharman: Thank you, Mr Chairman. I'd first like to introduce my colleagues, Mr Paul LeMay, who is managing director of the negotiation and consultation services of the hospital employee relations services of the Ontario Hospital Association, and Mr Brian Siegner, who is the vice-president of hospital employee relations services for Ontario hospitals. My name is Roger Sharman, and I'm the chairman of the Ontario Hospital Association pay equity advisory committee and also president of the Orthopaedic and Arthritic Hospital here in Toronto.
We thank the committee for the opportunity to appear before you this morning. The OHA is a voluntary association of all 223 public hospitals in the province of Ontario, and further information on OHA is attached as appendix A.
The hospitals of Ontario are collectively one of the largest employment sectors in the province, with some 160,000 full-time and part-time employees. Wages and benefit costs represent the largest component of any hospital budget, between 70% and 80% of all costs. Any cost increases relating to employees, therefore, have a considerable impact on hospital budgets, particularly in the present climate of recession and government fiscal restraint.
Cost increases typically involve matters such as wage and benefit settlements or arbitrated awards, increases in UI, WCB and pension assessments, health and safety training and, of course, pay equity.
We want today to deal directly with the matter before you, which is Bill 102, and also to draw to your attention some matters not addressed in the bill but which are of crucial importance to our sector.
By way of introduction, let me say that hospitals have had an opportunity to respond to Bill 168, the predecessor of this bill, and we appreciate that a number of our concerns have been addressed by the government in the new Bill 102, particularly with respect to proxy comparisons.
We also appreciate the changes in implementation dates, not only with respect to proportional value and proxy comparisons, but also the extension to January 1998 for achieving pay equity. Although we still feel it would be better to include a specific proportional value methodology in the act itself, our purpose in appearing before you today is more to focus on three issues that go beyond the proposed amendments. The first relates to an issue commonly referred to as stacking, the second to maintenance and the third to funding.
Stacking: It's been our understanding that the purpose of the Pay Equity Act is, in brief, to provide a scheme whereby a female job class that is paid less than its male comparator will have its pay rate increased to equal that of the male comparator.
I would bring to your attention a matter involving Glengarry Memorial Hospital in Alexandria and the Ontario Nurses' Association. The Pay Equity Hearings Tribunal, in a decision dated June 9, 1992, held that a pay equity adjustment of 37 cents per hour, this amount representing the difference in compensation between the female job class and its male comparator at that hospital, must be paid as of January 1990, in addition to the negotiated wage. This decision was given even though the new 1991 negotiated nursing wage rates resulted in compensation for the female job class exceeding that of its male comparator. The text of the complete decision is appended to these remarks.
Hospitals believe very strongly that the decision was wrong. They have applied to have it judicially reviewed. The Ontario Nurses' Association, however, believes that "...any pay equity adjustment is separate and payable in addition to the collectively bargained rates of pay."
While hospitals have had success in reaching agreement on pay equity plans with many of the unions representing their employees, they have had virtually no success in reaching agreement with ONA. It is clear that this Glengarry decision only compounds and complicates matters and serves but to further delay completion of pay equity plans for nurses.
We would ask that this committee address the issue. We would ask that you consider making changes to the bill to clarify that pay equity adjustments should not be stacked on top of negotiated increases to achieve a result whereby the female job classes are in fact paid more than the male comparator. We submit that such situations violate completely the original aims and internal logic of the Pay Equity Act itself.
Maintenance: The act requires that every employer shall establish and maintain compensation practices that provide for pay equity. The pay equity office is of the view that employers will be required to track the pay relationship between each female job class and its male comparator for ever. We would appreciate wording in the bill that would make it clear that there's no requirement to continue to track these relationships once pay equity has been achieved.
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Funding: OHA has consistently brought to the attention of the government the need for funding to pay for pay equity. To date, the Ministry of Health has provided some funding for hospitals with completed pay equity plans. While the costs of pay equity adjustments for hospitals cannot be known until all pay equity plans are completed -- and the largest group of employees with plans outstanding are nurses -- we believe it is critical that you understand that any shortfall in the funding of pay equity can only impact adversely on areas of patient service.
We thank you very much for your attention. That completes our presentation, and we are prepared to answer any questions you may have.
The Chair: Thank you very much. Each caucus has about 20 minutes for questions and comments.
Ms Poole: Thank you very much for appearing before us today. I think the Ontario Hospital Association made a round of visiting caucuses last year. I know you came and made a presentation to our particular caucus and one of the things you discussed was pay equity. I think the Ontario Hospital Association made it very clear that it felt transfer payments from the government had not been sufficient in the last number of years to cover the pay equity adjustments you were making in your sector.
I wonder if you would comment on the whole area of transfer payments. What is going to happen if further pay equity provisions are put in for your sector without the funding to match them?
Mr Sharman: It's difficult to speculate precisely. As you well know, hospital budgets are flat-lined for the next two years. That knowledge we have in writing. Obviously, any increases in costs will have to be managed in a flat-lined budget. I think one can only predict that services would be cut and some jobs would suffer accordingly. It's very hard to speculate. It depends a great deal of course on the magnitude of the issue in terms of how much we are going to have to pay and whether there is any funding to help with that problem.
Ms Poole: Would you perhaps like to be a little more specific for 1992, or for 1991 if those figures are a little more accessible for you, since 1992 just ended. What kind of funding did you get from the provincial government for purposes of pay equity?
Mr Sharman: I couldn't answer that. I'm not sure if either of my colleagues can.
Mr Paul LeMay: I can't give you the precise numbers off the top, but I think it's fair to say that the numbers the Ministry of Health has set aside to pay out completed pay equity plans have certainly been sufficient to address the pay equity plans that have been completed, and there has not been a shortfall in that respect.
The difficulty is there is still the unknown of what the final cost for previous years is going to be. Our best expectation is that there is going to be a shortfall between the numbers Health has set aside, which have not yet been utilized, and what the ultimate costs are going to be.
To try to put a numeric framework on it is a bit difficult, but 1% of payroll for hospitals is in the order of $53 million for the upcoming fiscal year. The funds that Health has been setting aside, as I understand it, are between 0.5% and 0.75% of the payroll, depending upon the year you're addressing. So you're looking at a shortfall on an annual basis of somewhere between $12 million and $26 million order-of-magnitude numbers.
Ms Poole: Is it a matter of giving on the one hand -- for instance, the government could say, "These funds are specifically targeted for pay equity" -- yet on the other side of the coin, if the transfer payments have been flat-lined, it has taken away? While publicly there appears to be that support for pay equity, your increases in other areas have had to come from somewhere, so the final picture means there have been significant cutbacks.
Mr LeMay: Exactly. There have been cutbacks, yes.
Ms Poole: I think Mrs Caplan has some questions.
Mrs Caplan: Do you have the statistics on how many of the 223 hospitals have completed the successful negotiation of a pay equity plan?
Mr Sharman: There are very few. I don't have the actual number. Paul may have. You will appreciate that almost every hospital that has Ontario Nurses' Association certification does not have a completed plan. Only those hospitals that are not certified with ONA -- there are about 40 -- have that potential. Of course, many of them are very small and are waiting for the proportional pay and proxy pay to come through. So a very small number have a completed plan.
Mr Brian D. Siegner: If I may clarify, with respect to pay equity, it's fair to say that we're referring to agreements concerning the Ontario Nurses' Association, which does represent the vast majority of nurses who are unionized. With respect to other unionized employees and non-unionized employees, our sense of it is that the vast majority of plans are either agreed to or implemented. In fact, I think our sector was the first to have a multi-employer plan with the Service Employees union. So a lot of work has been done. The one group that remains incomplete is with the ONA.
Mrs Caplan: For those that have negotiated and completed plans in the other sectors, did you find, as they were completed, you were able to use the job-to-job comparison in all of those plans successfully? Was the estimate of the cost, the 1% over the four to five years that was contemplated by the pay equity legislation of 1987 -- I'm asking about what the experience has been with that legislation, because this bill that's before us is looking to make some substantive changes to that legislation.
Mr Siegner: Certainly with the groups other than nursing it's fair to say there were male comparators found and there were pay equity adjustments for a number of female job classes.
Mrs Caplan: Do you know of any of your hospitals that were using or contemplating using or had begun to negotiate using the proportional value method, which is permissive? In other words, it doesn't say they must use it in the existing legislation, but they could use it. Do you know of any of the plans that were settled or negotiated that used it or any that are under active negotiation now that have begun using it?
I guess the time line I'm looking for is when the former Minister of Labour, Mr Phillips, announced in March 1990 that proportional value was going to be included in legislated amendments. It was my understanding that many employers began to incorporate that in their negotiations.
Mr LeMay: It may be, Mrs Caplan. It's difficult to be precise, because there's a huge range of pay equity plans out there and we do not have a database that relates to what each hospital has done. Against that backdrop, building on Mr Siegner's comment, even where we have completed pay equity plans and have found comparators for many female job classes, it would not be uncommon at all to find that within those plans there may be one or more female job classes for which there was not a comparator and where you will have to go back in and reassess the situation under the proposed amendments.
The next question, dealing with the practical application of proportional value -- I'm sure there are some hospitals that have identified some rough-and-ready methodology of saying: "We think there should be some adjustment here. Even though the job-to-job comparison methodology has not delivered an adjustment, we're trying to maintain some relativity from job to job." Whether they've gone through and simply done it in a rough-and-ready manner, whether they've gone through and given one female job class the same adjustment that a related female job class has been given, I'm sure you'd find a variety of actions that have been taken. In that respect, it certainly would be helpful to have those kinds of adjustments grandfathered as being appropriate.
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Mr Arnott: Thank you, gentlemen, for coming in today to express the concerns of your association. I think you've raised three excellent points.
The stacking provision you mentioned I think is very clearly outside the intent of the government's legislation dating back to 1987.
Maintenance is a very important concern to me, because if you listen to the advocates of this brand of pay equity, they feel there are going to be efforts put forward to achieve true pay equity, to eliminate discrimination based on sex. At some point, I suppose, if the government's efforts are successful, we achieve true pay equity at some point, and then I assume you close that pay equity off because there's no greater need for it. But if they are under the impression that we've got to be vigilant for the next 2,000 years, I have questions about that.
And you raised an important point about funding: that the government is ultimately going to be paying for this. Many of my questions through the course of the past week have been related to cost. I submit to the government that there has not been a defined cost for the implementation of pay equity, a figure that has been presented, of what it has cost the government and our society over the past six years now since the passage of the Pay Equity Act. I believe it's my responsibility as a member representing people in Wellington county, before I make a decision on this, to see what it is going to cost them, yet we have witnesses coming forward who make a claim that this is justice. Well, justice at times is a subjective concept, and we have to see what these things are costing before we go ahead with them.
Mr LeMay: In fairness, Mr Arnott, from the hospital's perspective we do not have a sense that either proportional value or proxy comparison will add significantly new costs, because in many cases through one form or another hospitals have an expectation that they will be able, under the existing legislation, to find an adjustment for most of their female job classes. It's not that there will not be future costs, but the larger portion of those costs has proceeded.
The costs certainly do continue to be significant not only within hospitals but even within the bureaucracy required to track the maintenance issue. If you're going to retain a pay equity office until the year 2052 or 2500, you obviously have ongoing costs that you have to question the value of. It's not a question of being opposed to attempting to achieve pay equity; it's more in the context that once that job is done, you should be carrying on in those new relationships without having to follow this kind of bureaucratic approach.
Mr Arnott: Certainly everyone supports efforts towards true pay equity and total elimination of discrimination. I guess where we differ with the government is the way it is going about it. Can you tell me what it has cost hospitals in Ontario, an aggregate number since 1987, to implement pay equity? Does anyone have any idea, the Ontario Hospital Association?
Mr Siegner: It's very difficult for us to quantify that. If I can explain, part of the reason for that is that we have a significant portion of our employees, represented substantially by one union, who are not settled in terms of a plan. We had estimated, I believe, back in the late 1980s, that the cost of the legislation as we saw it then, ballpark, would be about 5% of payroll over its term. That was an estimate. We haven't really got the experience at this point to be able to confirm whether that's going to be high or low. Certainly, as my colleague just pointed out, the amendments will add something to that, but it's even more difficult to quantify that.
Mr Sharman: I think it's fair to say that the concern about stacking is that it would be more expensive to the Ontario hospitals than proportional and proxy pay. That's just a feeling, but I think it's a very real feeling of concern in that regard.
Mr Arnott: The Ontario Nurses' Association has told this committee that there is enough money being expended within the health care system to allow for continued efforts towards pay equity. I guess what they're saying is that there are efficiencies which have yet to be achieved within the system so that patient care will not suffer, but pay equity, according to this bill, won't cost anything additional if we find it in additional efficiencies. What do you have to say about that?
Mr LeMay: I think the reality is that you will have additional cost. The question is, where do you get that money from? It has to come from somewhere, so if you're not being flowed additional funds, that means you have to find them elsewhere in your budget. It's very easy to claim that there are more efficiencies that can be achieved. I think it's been widely recognized that hospitals have constructively addressed the practical funding problems that exist and are consistently attempting to find new and better ways of delivering the quality of service that's required. I think it's a given that you will continue to find new ways to improve service delivery, but by the same token, it's very difficult to anticipate being endlessly able to deliver service in a more efficient way and yet be constrained in your budget and have no shortfall anywhere. I'm sorry, but it's just a bit too optimistic a view, I think.
Mr Gary Malkowski (York East): Thank you very much for your presentation today. It was very short and sweet. I understand you have shared some of your concerns with the ministry staff concerning the cost of achieving pay equity in the public sector and the possible administrative burden which may be imposed on hospitals as proxy employers. However, I would like to point out that we are balancing our firm commitment to pay equity with the legitimate concerns of private and public sector employers during a recession. That is why we have been forced to extend the deadlines by which public sector employers must achieve pay equity and why we have proposed a proxy method of comparison which narrows the number of organizations a seeking employer can approach. I'm wondering if you would like to comment on this.
Mr Sharman: We have no objection to try to provide pay equity for those employees who work in institutions that don't have a male comparator. We think the approaches taken are imaginative and should achieve the intent of the act. Our concern has always been with the administration of the regulations, if you like, or the statute itself, to try to achieve the aims. We certainly have no quarrel with the aims and we support them in principle. Our concern has been how, and the administrative burden.
Mr LeMay: If I might add to that, as we've appreciated the changes that have been made on the administrative side with respect to proxy comparison, when you think of it from an individual employer's standpoint, typically one is loath to share one's salary data with any other employer; it's a rare occurrence, other than on a consensual basis. Now by statute it will be required that this information be shared.
Hospitals have accepted that that is necessary and are not unduly troubled by it. They have been concerned, however, that where you require, under section 14 of the existing Pay Equity Act, that the employer and its unions each negotiate a pay equity plan, the result of that plan is then binding upon the hospital and its employees; that when you are going to be involved in a proxy comparison approach, if the hospital is the proxy comparator and if it is providing information to the seeking organization, it definitely is concerned that it does not then suffer a challenge to its pay equity plans which have been negotiated or which have been put in place under the Pay Equity Act. They don't want to be in the position where those plans can now be challenged by some other employer, some other union, some other third party not involved in the operation of that establishment. That's one of the concerns we have had and we think has been addressed.
Mr Malkowski: As a supplementary, I'm wondering if you could also tell me what the benefits would be to the female employees in the workplace in your organization and how you would see us reducing the administrative burden on you.
Mr LeMay: The concern we've had has been that you be minimally intrusive in terms of seeking information. Quite frankly, we think the amendments to the bill go a long way in that respect, because they are asking you to identify a similar job and to provide information with respect to that job and, if you do not have a similar job, to provide information on a range of similar jobs so a pay line can be done.
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As long as that is the extent of the requirements, the one other idea we had that we thought could be helpful would be to give the proxy employer the opportunity to seek an extension. The time limit as written in the bill now is 60 days for provision of that information. In many cases, that may be sufficient; that may also be a function of what else is going on in the institution at the time and how many requests from seeking organizations are there. That's the one area where it may be possible to improve the act from the hospitals' perspective.
Ms Murdock: It's interesting, because you're the first and only organization for the entire week that has liked the extension deadline, number one, which I think says something.
Another thing is that you're also the only organization -- well, to go back a little bit, OAITH, which is the interval and transition housing, raised the whole concept of relying upon the integrity of a proxy plan that was of another establishment and suggested that one of the amendments be that a third party should be able to say that the plan is not up to the standard they would like or whatever, which you have said is one of your concerns. That has since been followed by a number of other organizations. I take your point, though. I know that was one of the reasons it's in as it is. We wanted to at least have the provision to look at other plans, but without having the ability to interfere with them once they've already been decided. I heard very clearly what you said and I will take that back.
I wanted, however, to go into the maintenance aspect with you, from a different perspective from what you put forward. I don't know if you were here earlier when I asked the question. In terms of the tracking for ever, I can understand the concern, but there is a concern that everybody goes out and does their job-to-job comparison, their PV or their proxy, as the case may be, for their particular organization; then 10 years, five years, whatever, down the road, we end up with a differential again between male jobs and female jobs and we're back where we were when pay equity was introduced. What I'm asking you is, how does one overcome that potential disparity?
Mr LeMay: If I may attempt to respond to it, pay determination always has been a complex issue, and that's really what we're speaking to here. In the hospital environment, it's a heavily unionized environment; many major unions are involved, whether you're speaking about the Ontario Nurses' Association, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, the service employees in the national union. You are talking major unions.
Pay determination, until the advent of the Pay Equity Act, was largely a function of collective bargaining between the employer and one of those unions or a number of others. Where the parties were not able to reach agreement on the outcomes, you then went off to a third party known as an interest arbitrator, who then determined what your wage rates should be.
Against that backdrop, the Legislature determined that nevertheless, you have pay inequities that are systemic and that are there. Going through the process, our hope and our expectation is that you will identify those inequities and that they will be eliminated.
You are then in a position where each union understands what has happened to the relationships between jobs in their bargaining units and, in some cases, to comparators outside their bargaining units. They are then, in our view, amply able either to negotiate with their employer or, in the final analysis, to proceed to interest arbitration, where you do have a third party who can resolve the issue.
In that context, you would have to assume there's malicious intent for there to be any slippage back. Quite frankly, from the hospitals' perspective, they don't think there has been malicious intent. They certainly know that from the employers' perspective there has not been any conscious effort to build in systemic pay discrimination, and we don't think on the union side there has been any conscious effort to do that. We don't envision a world where you're going to need someone looking over your shoulder to make sure you don't slip back into some form of discrimination that was not intentional in the first place.
So with respect to the hospital environment, where you've got already a third party that assesses the appropriateness of your positions, but beyond that generally, once you've identified the problem, our hope and our expectation is that you don't need to maintain it. Otherwise -- I mean, I hate to use the term, but it popped up when the act first came into place, that people were concerned about the "pay police," and that's exactly what you're at. You then are in a scenario where you're going to have pay police and you are going to have to have them on a continuing basis. I'm not sure what the cost of your pay equity office is now, but it's certainly not going to diminish if it's going to be charged with that responsibility on a continuing basis.
Ms Murdock: To carry what you've just said a little further, would you say that those organizations that are unionized would have less need for a maintenance requirement? Because you don't have that same relationship in the non-organized areas.
Mr LeMay: You may not, but in reality the economy is not a completely managed economy. It's managed in many respects, but it is not a completely managed economy, and employers are invariably trying to address two things: They are trying to ensure that their compensation arrangements for their employees are sufficient to attract the quality they require, and they're trying to ensure that they're not paying too much. Whether they're unionized or whether they're not unionized, they're constantly attempting to test the market in terms of what's there.
So my expectation would be that over the long haul, you won't have a reversion to an old system, that once you proceed to address the problems -- and I think you've got a far higher consciousness in society now than you had 10 years ago; the world is not the same as it was then.
Mr Siegner: If I can build on that too, it's definitely applicable in our sector. The vast majority of employees in the hospital sector are female; therefore, the vast majority of the union members are female. Having had the consciousness raised in terms of the systemic issue through this act, I think it would be difficult for a union to then revert back to intentionally systemic discrimination, because the majority of members of that union would in fact be females who have benefited directly or indirectly from the legislation. So that would be very difficult, small-p politically.
Ms Murdock: Right. I see that within the unionized setting. I see that there could be reversion in the non-unionized setting. It's interesting too, the consciousness aspect, because the whole discussion since 1986 has raised the consciousness of society generally, not just those organizations that have had to work their way through job-to-job comparisons. Then you get an article in the Globe and Mail today where -- I think they think they were talking about pay equity, but they were talking about wage discrimination, which is different. So obviously there's still a whole educative process that is required out there.
I thank you very much. It's been really interesting, and we appreciate your time.
The Chair: Seeing no further questions, Mr Sharman, Mr LeMay, Mr Siegner, on behalf of this committee I'd like to thank you for coming this morning and giving us your presentation. Thank you very much.
This committee stands recessed till 1:30 this afternoon.
The committee recessed at 1130.
AFTERNOON SITTING
The committee resumed at 1351.
The Chair: I'd like to call this meeting back to order. For the committee's information, we've had a cancellation this afternoon. Our 2:30 has cancelled, so we should be doing fine. We'll proceed now to a response from legislative counsel, Laura Hopkins, to Ms Poole's question from yesterday.
Ms Laura Hopkins: I thought instead of just jumping straight to the answer to the question I'd describe the background a bit so my answer would be intelligible. I find the act to be fairly intricate and hard to follow and I thought the answer would be pretty cryptic without setting up the background a bit.
The act as it reads now requires that certain employers determine whether pay equity exists, and if pay equity doesn't exist, it requires the employers to make payments in order to bring about pay equity. Right now under the act there's only one method that's authorized to determine whether pay equity exists, and that's the job-to-job method. If an employer has to make payments to bring about pay equity, the effective date for starting to make those payments is set out in section 13 of the act. As you know, the job-to-job method will provide for pay equity to be determined in relation to some but not necessarily all female job classes.
The bill authorizes the use of a second method to determine whether pay equity exists and of calculating the amount of any payments that might be required to bring about pay equity. This second method is the proportional value method. The proportional value method can be used to determine whether pay equity exists not only for all those job classes that are covered by job-to-job but for additional job classes that can't be covered by job-to-job for technical reasons. So it's important to remember that proportional value will address new female job classes.
Under part III.1 of the act in the bill, employers are required to use proportional value if they have any female job classes that can't be addressed using the job-to-job method. They're required to use proportional value in those circumstances, and part III.1 creates new obligations on employers in relation to those additional job classes. When it comes to those additional job classes, if employers are required to make payments, the effective date for beginning to make those payments is also set out. It's set out in section 21.10. But it's important to keep in mind that this series of effective dates only applies when it comes to obligations relating to the new job classes not previously covered.
In addition to requiring employers to use proportional value in those circumstances, the bill would also authorize employers to use proportional value in the circumstances where they could have used job-to-job. So proportional value can be used to cover the same classes that could have been addressed through job-to-job. The new part allows an employer to replace an old job-to-job plan with a new proportional value plan.
When an employer replaces the old plan with the new plan, the employer doesn't get to use the new effective date for making payments. The employer isn't forgiven from meeting the requirements under part II under the existing act. The effective date for all those classes covered under part II remains the old effective date back in section 13.
That's the end of the background.
I understand that Ms Poole's question spoke to the situation of an employer who should have prepared a pay equity plan under part II under the current act and didn't and who should have made payments under the existing act and didn't. We lawyers sometimes refer to that kind of person as a bad actor so I'm going to talk about this person as the bad-actor employer.
The question had two parts to it and I'm going to answer the second part first because it seemed to me to be easier to approach it that way. I want to talk about the bad actor's obligations before the bill comes in force, under the existing act, and the bad actor's obligations after the bill comes into force.
After the bill comes into force, the question was, could the bad-actor employer prepare a proportional value plan and say: "This is a new plan. These are new obligations, so I get to use the new effective date under part III.1"?
The short answer to that is no. If the bad actor should have made payments according to the effective dates established under section 13, he's still bound to meet that earlier date, in relation to those classes that should've been covered and could've been covered by a job-to-job plan. So the bad-actor employer, after the bill comes into force, is still required to fulfil his or her obligations as they existed under the act before the bill came into force.
The second part of the question was, can the bad-actor employer simply prepare a proportional plan and take advantage of any lower payments to job classes that are available under the proportional value method than the bad actor would have had to make under a job-to-job plan, or does the bad-actor employer have to do a job-to-job comparison and make job-to-job adjustments for that pre-bill period and then can the bad-actor employer use the proportional value calculation for the post-bill period? I'm afraid I'm lapsing into jargon here because I'm seeing some puzzled faces.
The bill doesn't make any special provision for transitional rules that address the situation of the bad-actor employer and that's not unusual. You don't usually address in a bill the situation of somebody who has failed to comply with the law in the past, so I'm not surprised that the new part doesn't make any special provision addressing this.
As a technical matter, the bad-actor employer is still required to meet the obligations it had to meet before the bill came into force according to the act as it reads now. As a technical matter, the bad-actor employer is still required to prepare a pay equity plan based on job-to-job and to make payments according to the timetable in the existing act.
That situation isn't changed when the bill comes into force. The bad-actor employer isn't excused from not having done what it should've done before the bill came into force.
The bill also makes sure that female job classes that were entitled to receive payments under the job-to-job method get at least that much under the proportional value method. That's what subsection 21.2(2) does. It creates a floor that affects the bad-actor employer.
In summary, my advice to the committee is that we don't need to add a provision to the bill to ensure that the bad-actor employer understands that its obligations before the bill was passed remain. All that provision would do would be to say, "The law is as the law always has been, and we really mean it." That sums it up.
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Ms Poole: Thank you for your legal opinion; it's been very helpful to us. One question that I have relates to the fact that many presenters have come before us who have obviously interpreted it to be a problem. We had a large number of briefs that actually referred to the need for an amendment. Is there a way that we could tighten up the language somewhat in that particular section so that it is very clear? I realize you've said that technically the act ensures that the bad actor both was covered before this bill came into force and will be covered when Bill 102 comes in.
But I'm concerned that sometimes employers might not necessarily go by technicalities; they go by their own interpretation. Sometimes they might have a pay equity plan actually in place before they find out that technically they're not able to do it. Have you looked at the particular section with reference to the fact that there might be ways we could tighten up language, or do you just think that we should leave it as it is?
Ms Hopkins: I would be hard-pressed to find a way of reiterating the obligation in a way that makes it clearer. Since the courts generally consider that any provision in an act is there for a reason, if we were to add a provision that reiterates the obligation, there might be some confusion about the nature of the obligation itself, so we might be taking risks.
I wish I could say I could give some comfort by suggesting an additional provision to those folks who are concerned about it, but I can't. It may be that this can be reiterated by the commission in the materials that are distributed to interested employers.
Ms Poole: I think it's going to have to be very important that the communication strategy makes it clear that the employers are obligated to go through job-to-job, if they were originally covered by that section, prior to going through the proportional, because, as I say, it certainly was an item of confusion for many people appearing who, I would assume, had benefit of legal advice for their organizations. It's good that you've clarified that. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms Hopkins.
ONTARIO PUBLIC SERVICE EMPLOYEES UNION
The Chair: I'd like to call forward our first presenters for this afternoon, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union. Good afternoon. Sorry about the delay. Just a reminder that you'll be allowed up to an hour for your presentation. The committee would appreciate it if you'd keep your remarks slightly briefer than that to allow time for questions and comments from each of the caucuses. As soon as you're comfortable, could you please identify yourselves for the record and then proceed.
Mr Frank Rooney: My name is Frank Rooney. I'm assistant to the president at OPSEU.
Ms Janet Wright: I'm Janet Wright, a negotiator in collective bargaining assigned to pay equity for the province.
The Chair: Please proceed.
Mr Rooney: I'm here today to give you OPSEU's views on Bills 102 and 169. In short form, Bill 102 contains much with which we agree, so what we have to say about it is by nature of refinement. Bill 169, on the other hand, in our view, is an odious piece of legislation, and I will focus the major portion of my remarks on Bill 169. In very short form, we think that it is a very bad piece of legislation that should be withdrawn. Once I have finished, we'll be happy to answer questions. My colleague will answer questions regarding Bill 102.
I'll start with my remarks on Bill 102. A majority of OPSEU's 105,000 members are women, including workers in every sector of Ontario's public services. OPSEU has a strong history of promoting equity for our members and for our entire community. We join with many opponents of gender discrimination in welcoming the improvements found in Bill 102. As a founding member of the Equal Pay Coalition, we commend its detailed brief on Bill 102 and fully support its recommendations. We also endorse the submission of the Ontario Federation of Labour.
There are a few specifics in Bill 102 that I would like to mention. We believe small workplaces should be covered. The act needs to overcome its discriminatory omission of workplaces with fewer than 10 employees in order to formalize the right of women workers everywhere to complain about wage discrimination.
We are distressed that crown employees are losing rights under Bill 102. The bill ends rights previously held by public sector women to have the pay equity tribunal determine if the province is the pay equity employer. In conjunction with the Bill 169 amendments to the Public Service Act, we regard this as a backward step in the struggle for pay equity.
We believe that equity that has been achieved should be maintained. In the decades since legislative initiatives towards pay equity began, public intolerance for wage discrimination has increased, yet the gender wage gap has shrunk very little, from about 40% in the mid-1960s to 30% in 1991. Bill 102 will limit employers' obligations to maintain pay equity, and this will undermine the modest gains achieved by women.
Pay equity is not a luxury; it is a right. Pay equity also costs money. OPSEU believes that women who have been unable to secure male comparators have borne that cost. The recession is not a reason for delaying and for forcing them to bear that burden any further.
We welcome the proportional value comparison method for developing a pay equity plan. Far too many women have been denied their rights for lack of male comparators, but we are upset that the bill allows the province to declare that an organization does not form a part of the public sector. It repeals existing wording that permits the government to add organizations to the public service, in the schedule, and lets the province remove organizations. This is a step in the wrong direction. It will compromise women's rights to have the provincial government recognized as their pay equity employer.
Let me now turn to Bill 169. I want to say to you that we are very distressed to be before this committee making a presentation on Bill 169, because we believe it is a totally misdirected initiative which flies in the face of everything this government has said it stands for. It is, in very short words, an appalling piece of legislation.
Bill 169 purports to regulate the routes public employees can take to achieve pay equity, but it goes far beyond protecting the government's liability as an employer for pay equity purposes, as regrettable as that alone would be. It cuts off an avenue for justice which has been taken by ambulance workers in the decision of the Ontario Public Service Labour Relations Tribunal involving OPSEU and McKechnie ambulance, and by children's aid society workers in a decision of the pay equity tribunal involving CUPE and the Kingston Children's Aid Society.
Both the labour relations tribunal and the pay equity tribunal, acting independently on the facts of the cases before them, concluded that the government of Ontario was the real employer under common law in these cases. These decisions, in the case of the Public Service Labour Relations Tribunal, have resulted in more equitable wages and working conditions for employees of that agency, McKechnie ambulance, and other ambulance services in the province.
I want to take a little time to review the McKechnie decision. The Ontario government covers the total cost of ambulance service outside of Metro Toronto, but the service is a wild patchwork; salaries and benefits for equally qualified ambulance officers who do the same work are all over the map. Ambulance services may be provided by the province, by a municipality, by a hospital, by a volunteer organization or by a so-called private operator.
Finally, in 1991, following the decision of the Public Service Labour Relations Tribunal, 32 private ambulance services were recognized as crown agencies. This allowed the union to enter into appropriate central bargaining on behalf of the employees in those services, dealing for the first time with the agent who is most directly in control of the purse-strings: the government of Ontario.
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The results of that bargaining have been very good for the province. It has brought labour peace to a sector where there was a very fractious history of labour relations dating back some 15 years and has allowed the employer, the government and the union to get on with the job of addressing issues of quality in ambulance service that are pressing for all of us and for the people of the province.
Bill 169 would undo this progressive move. It would undermine the decision of an independent tribunal. Bill 169 amends the Public Service Act so that a person is not a civil servant or a public servant or a crown employee unless expressly appointed as such by the Lieutenant Governor in Council or other officials representing the crown.
Bill 169 also makes a mockery of the government's policy to promote employment equity. The workers employment equity is designed to assist -- women, visible minorities, disabled people, native people -- are often the ones who work for underfunded transfer payment agencies. Bill 169 protects the government from liability for pay equity for employees of those transfer payment agencies.
Over the years Conservative, Liberal and now New Democratic Party governments have moved to diminish the public service by various means. These efforts have been called deinstitutionalization, divestment, downsizing, diversification, contracting out, communitization and degovernmentalization. The true goal, underneath the $25-dollar words, is to pass the job on to small, inadequately funded agencies with few resources, where employees have less bargaining power. It's cheaper that way. The savings come from the paycheques of the workers who provide the services.
The small service agencies are headed by volunteer community boards that are strapped for dollars and working in a volunteer environment, so they strenuously resist paying wages and benefits that are the standard for similar work in the public service.
What's the result for the people of the province? Services deteriorate. Services deteriorate because it is harder to attract and retain dedicated and competent staff. When better jobs come up, they grab them. In many agencies, someone with nine months on the job is the most senior employee. This harms the continuity of programs and personnel, which is particularly essential where clients may need long-term relationships in order to start changing their lives or to build better lives for themselves. It can lead to preventable tragedies.
One of our members, a woman named Krista Sepp, was murdered in her first week on the job in a home for troubled adolescents. In that home at that time, the most senior employee on the job had about eight months' seniority.
The lack of depth in an agency team means that training and staff development in those agencies go by the boards. The other side of the coin is government accountability for tax dollars. The McKechnie decision of the public service tribunal made the government accountable to taxpayers for money spent and services provided by transfer payment agencies.
This stated intention of Bill 169 is a giant step in the wrong direction. This government was elected to enhance justice and equity for working people in the province. It is a government which has taken the step of broadening access to collective bargaining for most workers through its laudable amendments to the Ontario Labour Relations Act, so why is this measure coming before the Legislature?
The stated intention of Bill 169 is bad enough; the unstated results of Bill 169 are pernicious. First, Bill 169 creates a new class of employee with no bargaining rights at all. Under Bill 169, an individual employed in the service of the crown will not be a crown employee unless expressly so appointed. With this change, many public service workers could be employed directly by the crown without any right to collective bargaining. These new unclassified employees will be caught in exactly the same legislative limbo that engulfs part-time employees in the community colleges. They are unable to organize under the Ontario Labour Relations Act because they are employees of the crown. On the other hand, they are unable to get union representation under the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act because they are not expressly designated as crown employees.
It is ironic that your government is committed to amending the Colleges Collective Bargaining Act in part precisely to eliminate the legislative limbo that exists for part-time college employees and, at the same time, is creating a new and equally bad bargaining limbo for its own employees.
Second, Bill 169 allows the government to create crown agencies whose employees will have no bargaining rights whatsoever. Bill 169 would cut off access to collective bargaining for employees of such crown agencies -- they could be ambulance services or children's aid societies or even the new provincial gaming commission; I don't know the official name -- because it puts regulatory control on the designation of crown agencies. It ensures that employees of those agencies have no right to claim that the crown is their employer, thus barring them from organizing and gaining representation rights and collective bargaining rights under the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act. The stroke of a legislative pen completely removes any hope of choosing a bargaining agent and entering into collective bargaining for large numbers of employees in the broader public sector.
Third, Bill 169 will allow crown agencies to decide which of their staff members, after December 18, 1991, can be union members. I know of no other labour law, certainly in this country, that allows a chief executive officer of an organization to decide who can be a union member and who cannot. Under other laws, the law defines bargaining units, the law sets out the criteria for exclusions for supervisory status, confidentiality, professional status and so on, and if there's a conflict over that, there is an independent tribunal to adjudicate. Bill 169 will let a designated crown agency hire some employees as expressly appointed crown employees with collective bargaining rights and others without the express appointment, and those others will have no rights.
It's hard to imagine a piece of labour law that gives more power to an employer to direct or influence or define a bargaining unit. Compare it, for example, to the section of the Labour Relations Act that says any union that is unduly influenced by the employer cannot even get rights as an employee organization. If you look at the heads of some of the agencies that have been designated as crown agencies already, you will know that there is no point in anybody in this committee having any illusions as to how the head of the designated crown agency will use that power and authority in relation to its employees.
Our objections to Bill 169 are profound. We most sincerely urge you to scrap it. This presentation is not a lengthy one, because we don't see any purpose in proposing alternatives or amendments to this legislation. To do so would be to express a preference for being attacked at gunpoint rather than at knifepoint, when the issue is that the attack itself on employees we represent and employees who work in the broader public sector and who may work for the provincial government directly is unacceptable. Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you. Questions and comments.
Mr Arnott: Thank you very much for your presentation. Particularly with respect to Bill 169, you've used very harsh language. You called the bill odious in your initial presentation. There's one part of the bill that I expect you'll find particularly odious, one that I find particularly odious. One feature of this NDP government that I find particularly odious, and have over the last two years, is its willingness, on a selective basis, to put a sneak provision in the end of a bill which means it takes effect as of the date of first reading: retroactive legislation. Bill 4, the rent control bill; Bill 118, the amendments to the Power Corporation Act; the Sunday shopping law, which still has not come before the House for second reading, all took effect the date of first reading.
Mr Malkowski: On a point of order, Mr Chairman: Could we not focus on the topic here at hand? Let's not get into other things, please.
The Chair: Mr Malkowski, you don't have a point of order. He can use whatever line of questioning he chooses. It's his time.
Mr Arnott: I find it particularly offensive when we have a government that's led by a Premier who, as Leader of the Opposition, called himself a social democrat throughout his career, who constantly talked about the rights of the opposition and the important democratic elements. This bill takes effect the date of first reading, December 18, 1991. How do you feel about that?
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Mr Rooney: I want to say that even if the bill took effect on the day it was proclaimed, we would still be opposed to the bill.
Mr Arnott: When a committee is dealing with a bill we should be having an opportunity to present amendments and so forth, and we find that when a bill has taken effect upon the date of first reading, the committee proceedings are even more of a joke than they usually are in this place.
Mr Rooney: I wouldn't want to comment on the character of committee proceedings in this place. That's for the members of this Legislature to decide. My job here is to come and present our point of view. I take it that people came here to listen to me, that this presentation is not a joke and that people are intending to take it seriously and to discuss the issues in the presentation.
Mr Arnott: I'm expressing my frustration, I guess, when bills do take effect on the date of first reading.
Mr Rooney: We are certainly frustrated in part that this bill takes effect on the date of first reading; no question about it. But compared to the other frustrations, to use a modest term, that I have outlined, I think the camel's back was broken long ago in terms of our view on this bill. Certainly the retroactivity of it is a problem, but the other problems are as severe if not much more so.
Mr Arnott: I want to thank you for coming in. I've learned a great deal from your presentation.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Arnott. Questions? Mr Lessard.
Mr Wayne Lessard (Windsor-Walkerville): I want to thank you for your presentation. You certainly left us with no misapprehension about your views with respect especially to Bill 169. As I was listening to the line of questioning from Mr Arnott, I couldn't help but wonder whether he was going to be suggesting an amendment to withdraw Bill 169. I wonder whether they might do that.
Mr Rooney: Sounds good to me.
Mr Lessard: As I indicated, I understand your feelings with respect to that, and one of your concerns is with respect to the relationship of employees who may not have the rights granted under the Ontario Labour Relations Act. I know this probably wouldn't cause you to support the bill, but what if we were to provide an amendment that would give some guarantee that persons not defined as crown employees would be deemed to be subject to the provisions of the OLRA? Do you think that would be something that would be agreeable to you?
Mr Rooney: I think that would go some distance to meeting one of the objections, but I want to remind you that our objection is not only to what we regard as the unstated and perhaps unintended effects of the bill but also to the stated and intended effect of the bill. In the area where it is conceivable that a crown agency could be caught in a legislative limbo, if it is not the intention of the government to catch crown agencies in a legislative limbo from a labour relations point of view, then we think you should try and be clear about where it is that you expect them to land. That is one of the objections we have to the bill. But there are several others including, as I said, an objection to the stated purpose of the bill, which we think is just wrong.
Mr Lessard: You would agree with me that Bill 102 at least would be extending pay equity to many women who previously weren't able to have access to it and provides a couple more methods, the proxy method and the proportional value method, in the public sector. Do you think there would be a need for crown employee determinations in the future, given the fact that those other options would be available?
Ms Wright: I would say that, more than likely, the largest percentage of our problems would be solved by the application of proportional value and cross-comparisons, provided of course that the suggested amendments from the Equal Pay Coalition and the Ontario Federation of Labour, which we support, would go along with it.
With the administrative horror -- "horror" might be a bit harsh but that was my first reaction when I first looked at it -- we would have to go through under the cross-establishment, which I know is called "proxy," but I've been thinking "cross-establishment" for so long that I will still continue to refer to it as that, if it continues that way, there is a definite need, because it leaves us again in all kinds of limbos and in employers' decisions and employers' whims or inexperience or lack of dedication to justice under pay equity.
If it doesn't get fixed, we definitely do need the crown. The tests that have been set out at the pay equity tribunal are so rigorous -- and in effect, yes, we were successful in some of them. Not at CASs, because we hadn't filed on any CASs; we were in other sectors. Unfortunately we got caught in the retro, so as my colleague said, the retro does have some implications for us, but we were also in other areas unsuccessful on orders. Again, it's obviously not going to cure everything, because there are areas that will definitely still make the test on 169.
Mr Lessard: Can you give me some examples?
Mr Rooney: I'd like to just add that 169 is clearly not only concerned with pay equity and that there is -- I think this was discussed yesterday with some representatives of CUPE -- a series of other issues that were raised in the McKechnie decision of the labour relations tribunal that I spoke about that 169 addresses which have nothing to do with pay equity, and those reasons are as much reasons for the withdrawal of 169 and for our opposition to its stated purpose.
Mr Lessard: Can you give me some examples of areas other than CAS workers where you see that need that you were referring to? One of the things we're trying to get a handle on, I guess, would be the numbers that we might be talking about, if this were a procedure that were continued to be available.
Ms Wright: I could not honestly give you numbers, because a lot of our cases did not continue after the introduction of 168, with the December 18 date thrown on them. Review officer meetings were held, awaiting the outcome of Kingston-Frontenac CAS. We still have outstanding orders that were held in abeyance and I don't know how they would have ruled. Possibly you should be asking review services what the ruling would have been, based on the tests. I cannot accurately give you a number.
There aren't thousands. It's not a move that is going to bankrupt the province. It's not a wholesale grab on what people have called parity. The whole intent on the tests for the province as the pay equity employer was to be able to achieve fair compensation for women who had no access to any male, and there was nothing in the current act that allowed us, and there are still, under the amendments to 102, areas that would not allow us, for complete fairness, in our opinion, the way 102 was structured.
Mrs Caplan: I'm really pleased to hear from you today. I'm aware that you had a meeting last spring -- I'm not sure if it was with you or other representatives from OPSEU who met with my colleagues Mr Phillips and Ms Poole, at that time asking how you felt about 169. At that point in time OPSEU was not sure that it was opposed to the legislation.
In my own cynical mind, since I've been a member here in this Legislature, that kind of position has always led me to believe that perhaps some backroom deal had been cut, and you may recognize as you review Hansards that I've made some statements to that effect in the last little while. If that's not the case, I want to publicly say to you today that I was left with that impression, and I'm not surprised with your presentation today. I was surprised that we didn't hear that from you last spring.
Just as preamble, I would ask if anything had changed between last spring and this presentation and the fact that we hadn't heard from OPSEU in particular as to how it felt about Bill 169. This is really the first that we've been made aware of the strength of your feelings.
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Mr Rooney: I would say that our position has not changed. When the bill was introduced, we explained to our members publicly in our newsletter, which I actually believe is still mailed to all MPPs, that we were opposed to the bill, that we thought it would have a serious detrimental effect in relation to specifically the impact of the McKechnie decision of the labour relations tribunal and that it was, in terms of what we regard as the unstated and perhaps, as I say, unintended effects -- it's not clear to me whether they were intended or not. We were waiting for advice from counsel and we had some extensive discussions with our own counsel about that in order to be clear that it thought there was a serious possibility that that was going. But our position has not changed from the day the legislation was introduced.
Mrs Caplan: I know the meeting took place on June 10, and it's since then that I've been suspicious. I'll leave that to speak for itself.
I've said publicly -- I said it during second reading and I've restated it here at this committee -- that I believe Bill 169 has very little to do with pay equity and that there is another agenda that it addresses which, it has been suggested, might be better dealt with in discussions around the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act which I know are taking place right now.
I've also said, and I know we don't agree on all matters, that manageability of the public service is important and that some of the potential for having the size of the public service increase dramatically -- you used the term that you didn't believe, as it affected pay equity, that it was thousands of people and it would not bankrupt the province.
I appreciate your pointing that out because there have been some suggestions that other decisions or the potential for who is a crown employee could lead to a doubling or a tripling or a quadrupling of the size of the civil service. That's untested and unproven, but certainly I think as taxpayers you would agree that would be a concern to all taxpayers in the province.
That's a real problem that I believe appropriately should be debated in the right context. You've mentioned the Canadian Union of Public Employees brief before this committee, and I've already mentioned to you that I'm a little suspicious and cynical by nature. On page 5 of their brief they say: "Cynically, it has to be asked whether it was hoped that any discussion of this bill" -- referring to Bill 169 -- "would be lost, given that the focus of discussion would be on Bill 102." I'd ask you to comment as to whether you believe they're right in their cynical suspicions, as I am in mine.
Mr Rooney: I have nothing to say about anybody's cynicism. I myself am not a cynical person. As I explained to Mr Arnott, I take things at face value, and when somebody says something to me, I normally believe what he says until he acts otherwise.
I do, however, want to comment on the question of the potential size of the public service --
Mrs Caplan: Please, that was my next question.
Mr Rooney: -- because the reality is that those hundreds of thousands of employees out there -- I've seen the reports in the media too about how the public service could double or triple or quadruple in size and so on. Those hundreds of thousands of employees out there are the employees of the government. They already are in one way or another, and the government is responsible, through the short route or the long route, for the salaries they are paid, for the working conditions they work under and, often, legislatively responsible for the services they deliver. It's precisely that common law test which was applied in McKechnie, which was applied -- a slightly different common law test but none the less a common law test -- by the pay equity tribunal. It's a fairly straightforward recognition of reality.
When the government assumes that responsibility, that is, says, "Yes, we, the government, are responsible," then that gives it, I think, a measure more control over the size of the public service, a measure more control over the size of the wage bill, because the government does not have a dozen or two dozen or an enormously large number, hundreds, of individual agents, whether they are designated crown agents or not, out there negotiating on its behalf and then turning around and coming back to the Ministry of Health or the Ministry of Community and Social Services or the Ministry of Correctional Services, the three largest transfer payment agencies, saying: "Here's the bill. Pay up." The government can give some direction to that process, and that allows for an effective management of the labour relations climate.
I think that's what's been seen in the ambulance sector in the last two years since the recognition of the ambulance services as crown agencies and the efforts made by this government -- and I have to compliment this government on its efforts -- and by the Ontario ambulance operators' association, as a group of crown agents, in effect, and by the three unions in the ambulance sector to try and manage that situation jointly.
It's been very effective. There has been labour peace. There has been a sense of working together towards addressing some problems that are problems with the ambulance service across the board. I think those kinds of things result directly from the government assuming its responsibility in relation to that particular sector, which came about as a result of the tribunal decision.
Mrs Caplan: I hope I'm not being simplistic and, as I said, we don't always agree on everything, but what I've heard you say is that you wouldn't have any difficulty if the size of the technical Ontario public service cohort doubled or trebled in size. That would not give you any concern, either as a taxpayer or as --
Mr Rooney: Let me say that as a taxpayer, I'm paying for those people already. I pay for them through the transfer payments this government gives. You were a minister in charge of a ministry that gave transfer payments. I know there's another person here who was a minister in charge of a ministry that had a large number of transfer payments. Those transfer payments go from this government, and from your government and from the other party's government before that, to those agencies and they come out of my pocket and your pocket and the pocket of everybody sitting in this room. What I'm saying is that I recognize that the government, as the funder, has a responsibility to me as a taxpayer to manage those payments effectively, and I think it can manage them more effectively by taking that responsibility head-on.
Mrs Caplan: I appreciate your point of view. I think it's fair to say that the fact that the province funds colleges, universities, municipalities, hospitals, as well as individual program areas -- it's said that some 70% of the provincial budget actually funds those kinds of organizations you just referred to -- would have enormous implications on the general and overall not only delivery of service but management. I guess the point I'm making is that this is a much bigger issue than just pay equity.
Mr Rooney: Absolutely.
Mrs Caplan: You agree with that?
Mr Rooney: I agree that it's a bigger issue than pay equity.
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Mrs Caplan: And as you and I may not agree what the solution is today, we're not going to have that opportunity to debate that, because it's in Bill 169 where it says, "for the purposes of pay equity or any other purpose." That is very deceptive. It does not allow for the proper debate. If that's something the government wants to do, it should be done openly in a public forum so we can hear and discuss and consider what those implications are. I'm suggesting that the correct public forum is with the reforms of the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act which are under way right now. I believe it is detrimental to the public policy development and also to future labour relations in this province, not only with OPSEU but with all those who are going to be affected by this kind of legislation, to have this snuck through as an addendum to this piece of legislation.
Mr Rooney: I agree that the bill is not only concerned with pay equity. But the Legislature is a public forum, this committee is a public forum, and certainly, from my point of view, this committee is a perfectly appropriate place for you and me to have this discussion, and as there is a pay equity impact -- I think we will both grant that -- that's fine.
I would also like to say that to my recollection, the issues raised in Bill 169 are at least touched on in the employer report on the reform of CECBA. Perhaps you would want to talk to some of the members on the other side about that. But again, from OPSEU's point of view, transferring those issues into the current Ministry of Labour consultations on reform of CECBA, I suppose puts them off for a little while, but I doubt the government is going to necessarily change its view on them, certainly not from the indications we've had. Frankly, our position, in those consultations in any case, would be, "No, don't do it." That's why we're coming here to say the bill should be withdrawn.
Mrs Caplan: I know Ms Poole has a couple of questions.
Ms Poole: Thank you for your presentation today and specifically for addressing Bill 169. We haven't really had much in the way of an in-depth analysis of Bill 169, as most of the focus has been on Bill 102.
Speaking of which, I'm then going to take you to your brief on Bill 102, to page 3 of your brief under, "Don't force women to pay any longer." The government has billed 102 as a major step forward for women and beyond anything any other government has done for pay equity. The Liberal government, as you know, had announced it was going to proceed with proportional, but the current government said, "We're going beyond that, because we're going to add proxy in the broader public service," so this was going to be a major step forward with more pay equity for more women.
However, I think you've raised a very valid point on page 3 where you state, "The government is retreating from Bill 168, in which the implementation deadline for public sector wage adjustments was January 1, 1995." In fact, it's a retreat to further back than that, because the current Pay Equity Act, 1987, provides that the deadline for public sector wage adjustments was January 1, 1995.
My question to you is, if on the one hand the government has added more women in the public service entitled to pay equity but on the other hand has taken away rights from women in the public service who, under the current act, were going to receive benefits of pay equity by January 1, 1995, isn't it a matter of robbing Peter to pay Paul? There's no doubt it's going to be a fairly costly enterprise, and in order to pay for their promise of proxy, what they've done is to draw back and pay less for the public service for the period January 1, 1995, to January 1, 1998, when pay equity was supposed to have been achieved. I'd like your comment on that.
Ms Wright: I think it's a little different from robbing Peter to pay Paul. Previously, in Bill 168 -- it's not stated here but it has been stated by our other affiliates that proportional value would have been introduced as of January 1, 1992, and would have had the same effective date as the job-to-job. So it's two-pronged.
There are fiscal realities. It's always been stated, "We can't afford pay equity," for years and years and years, "it's going to bankrupt everyone." The theme stays the same, the tune changes a little bit, the lyrics change at times, but the Pay Equity Act had stated it was there. We knew there were flaws. It was something we'd worked with for the last five years. We knew it was there, it was established, and we knew there would be a review and we could fix the things that were broken. All our people who have had job-to-job, and the majority of our members, were expecting that it would be 1995.
Given also the current trends at the bargaining table of 0%, 0% and 0%, never mind 1% and 2%, and the downsizing of the transfer payments, a lot of them have a schedule that says: "Great. I'm not getting any money that way, but at least my pay equity is going to show that I have some justice. I can't get anything in collective bargaining. We understand that. We don't like it." But now even that's gone and that's an insult. It's bad enough that a lot of their colleagues didn't get it and would have to wait until 1992 and 1993 and possibly later, with a 1995 and then totally extended on the cross-establishment -- I just get frustrated -- now they're losing it. It's a take-away. It's a right they had and it's been taken away.
It doesn't do any good within bargaining units that have been affected by it. Some people already got money because they were able to do pay equity under job-to-job and have received their payouts. They have colleagues in the bargaining unit who did not have a direct comparator. We split bargaining units already, and the same thing's happening when there is a suggestion that one is being robbed to pay for the other. I wouldn't want to think that was the effect. I don't know what the intent was. I have no idea. I don't dare to presume why it was extended.
The Chair: One more brief question, Ms Poole.
Ms Poole: My submission is that that's exactly what's happening, that the government, in order to give with the proxy, had to take away from the job-to-job in the public service. They couldn't afford both, and it was a way of fulfilling a political commitment they had made. I don't know whether they honestly thought that people weren't going to notice what they were doing.
My other question for you relates to the economic analysis. So far, the government has been unable to tell us whether any economic analysis was done, either what it would cost to implement proxy in the public sector or, for that matter, what it would save by not keeping the promise of public sector wage adjustments being realized by January 1, 1995.
Did the government consult with you when it made this very major amendment to Bill 168, saying it was going to delay implementation by three years? Did they consult with you and did they give you any economic analysis, or have you done any economic analysis on what the impact of this is going to be?
Ms Wright: No, we weren't consulted on the extension. I couldn't give you an economic analysis because it involves the posting of pay equity plans using proportional value and cross-establishment; and to be able to do proportional value technically, as you've heard all week, there has to be access to male jobs in the establishment, which is something that's been denied to us because we had no right to go to an employer already and say we'd like to bargain pay equity using proportional value. Now, I've done it on some occasions where an employer was progressive. I sold them on it last year, saying, "Bill 168 is coming and it's going for reading, so trust me."
Ms Poole: It is permissive, but you need progressive employers to believe that they should go ahead and do it.
Ms Wright: Yes, exactly. I could not give you a costing, because, number one, I don't know what the male wages are. I have no idea what the scores would be and what a wage line would look like, or anything.
Who knows? Probably previous governments or even this one, through employer surveys, would have a much better handle on what that would be if they had the time and the resources and the ability to spend hours going through all of them. Yes, you could probably do something. It might be someone's great PhD thesis, but it's tremendous to try to figure out how you would do it.
Ms Poole: Let's hope it's the government's PhD thesis, because we need the information.
The Chair: Mr Rooney, Ms Wright, on behalf of this committee, I'd like to thank you for taking the time out this afternoon and bringing us your presentation.
Just a reminder to the committee and the audience that our next presenters have cancelled. That's the Ontario Coalition of Visible Minority Women. But we have noted that the presenters after them will try and be here by 3 o'clock. This committee will stand recessed for 10 minutes.
The committee recessed at 1451 and resumed at 1524.
PAY EQUITY ADVOCACY AND LEGAL SERVICES BALANCE
The Chair: I call this committee back to order. Good afternoon. Our next presenters are from Pay Equity Advocacy and Legal Services. Just a reminder to the presenters that you'll be allowed up to an hour for your presentation. The committee would appreciate if you'd keep your comments to a bit less than that time to allow time for questions and comments from each of the caucuses. Your microphones will come on automatically, so there's nothing that has to be done.
To assist the presenters, I understand we have several people there who are visually impaired, so if we could, we'll go around the room and the committee members will identify themselves. I'm Mike Cooper, the Chair of the committee.
Mr Curling: I'm Alvin Curling from the Liberal Party.
Ms Poole: I'm Diane Poole and I'm the Liberal critic for women's issues.
Mr Arnott: I'm Ted Arnott and I'm here representing the people of Wellington.
Ms Murdock: Hi. I'm Sharon Murdock, parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Labour.
Mr Lessard: I'm Wayne Lessard. I'm the parliamentary assistant to the Management Board of Cabinet.
Ms Akande: I'm Zanana Akande from the riding of St Andrew-St Patrick.
Ms Harrington: Hi. I'm Margaret Harrington. I represent Niagara Falls.
Mrs Mathyssen: Good afternoon. I'm Irene Mathyssen, MPP for Middlesex.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Ms Murdock: And there is one other member who will be presently coming who will be sitting at the end, Gary Malkowski.
The Chair: Now I've lost my train of thought. Oh, yes. For the record, could you please identify yourselves and then proceed.
Ms Senka Dukovich: Thank you very much. We're pleased to be here to present our views to your committee. As you've indicated, this is the Pay Equity Advocacy and Legal Services, known as PEALS, but we are here as well with one of our client groups, so I'll proceed to introduce myself and the rest of our clinic.
My name is Senka Dukovich and I'm the executive director of this clinic. Katerina Makovec is our community organizer. Minh Pham is staff lawyer with the clinic. We also have members from Balance. Balance is a support service for blind adults. Balance teaches these adults skills and helps to integrate them into the community. They are Tricia Morley, Jo Sereda, Sheryl Livingstone and Janet Gardiner.
We propose first to tell you about our clinic and we hope not only to leave time for questions but to have a few minutes so you may hear directly from one of our client groups. We have given you a little brochure which we have available for people who don't know about us.
Pay Equity Advocacy and Legal Services is a non-profit legal clinic with a special focus on women and pay equity issues. We are part of the Ontario system of community legal clinics, which are ultimately supervised by the Law Society of Upper Canada, the Ontario legal aid plan, through the clinic funding committee. This is to ensure quality of services for all clients.
The system is comprised of general and specialty clinics. PEALS is one of the specialty clinics. You may have heard of others, such as ARCH, the Advocacy Resource Centre for the Handicapped, Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic, Toronto Workers' Health and Safety Legal Clinic or the Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto. These are some other examples of the specialty clinics. I believe in Ontario we have about 71 general community legal clinics and specialty clinics.
As such, we are an independent community organization with a volunteer board of directors drawn from women's groups and members of the public. This board oversees our day-to-day operation, and we are the only clinic in Ontario that specializes in pay equity. Therefore, we purport to serve the entire province, and we do in fact have cases in places I hadn't heard of until I joined the clinic. The staff at PEALS includes two lawyers, a community organizer and support staff.
PEALS was established in December 1991, so we're just doing our statistics in the coming month in response to a lobby of women's groups and anti-poverty organizations. Women in lower-paid occupations and women facing racial, cultural or language barriers are usually the most likely to benefit from pay equity. These are women who do not usually belong to a union and cannot afford legal advice.
As we know, the system for non-union women is a complaint-based system under our act. It has been recognized that the cost of bringing a complaint through the legal process of the Pay Equity Act is prohibitive for those women who do not have the resources of a union to represent them. It is also very time-consuming to gain a full understanding and have some expertise which is necessary to go through the complaint process, and we provide women with legal representation, advice and information as well as referrals to other agencies or other clinics if that's appropriate.
We are in contact with women whose employers may be at any stage of the pay equity process. Our involvement can be providing women with advice on how to write job descriptions and not to overlook features of women's work, it can be providing them with summary advice, or of course representing and guiding them through the complaint process, both at the review services stage and acting as counsel before the Pay Equity Hearings Tribunal.
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We also provide public education. We speak to groups of women in English as a second language classes and in programs preparing them for entering the labour force, to community college students and to law students. Further, we speak to women working with other women. We go to conferences of umbrella organizations such as OCASI, which is the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, or NAC, the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, which includes many women's organizations, to talk about pay equity and our experiences. Now I'd like to ask for the participation of other members of the clinic, and I'll turn to Katerina Makovec to continue.
Ms Katerina Makovec: I would like to speak a little bit more about our perspective. The primary mandate of our clinic is to help and represent women who do not have a union. We are in daily contact with women who do not have anybody but themselves to represent them in front of company directors or company lawyers. Our clients come from typical female jobs. They are clerks, health care workers such as registered nursing assistants, rehabilitation workers, nurses, secretaries, child care teachers, social service workers and others.
Some characteristics of the clients and women we reach out to are as follows: difficulties in understanding what pay equity is; difficulties in assessing their rights under pay equity; having English as a second language; multiple discrimination in the workplace, not only pay equity, but for example, also racial discrimination; real fear of being dismissed or penalized if they assert their rights under pay equity. Some of the clients we represent have already been dismissed.
Non-union women in the workplace represent the vast majority, almost 80%, of all working women. Women in unions have lower salaries than men in unions and this wage gap is even larger for non-union women. In 1986 the average salary for a full-time working woman in Ontario was almost $21,000, and in 1991 it was almost $27,000. On the other hand, the average salary for a man working full-time was $32,000 in 1986 and $38,500 in 1991.
Low earnings of women mean that those of us who are single parents are most likely to be poor; 80% of women who are single parents earn under $30,000 each year. In 1989 in Canada the average total income, including earnings, government and support payments for female lone parents, was $28,560. For male single parents, the average income was almost $10,000 higher. We have all these statistics from the Ontario women's directorate.
This leads us to the conclusion that women are the working poor. Therefore, legislation such as pay equity is vitally important to bring women just and fair wages and reduce poverty among women and children. Increased wages of women will in turn be an investment in the economy. Women are consumers and spend money on goods and services.
We are proud to live in Ontario, which has the most progressive pay equity legislation in the world, and we salute the government for its dedication and work towards improving and extending the pay equity legislation. However, we see some areas in the new Bill 102 that need improvement; some areas need to be deleted, some need to be changed and some need to be strengthened.
One of the areas we would like to talk about is the language and terminology, because from our experience in dealing with non-unionized and lower-income women, we know that the pay equity language needs to be non-legalistic, correct and sensitive to women and equality issues.
Some of the terminology from Bill 102 will be used in materials intended for the broader public. Therefore, we would like to see some of it changed. For example, we would like to bring forward the term "cross-establishment" for "proxy," just as the term "equity" is not generally understandable among many women we reach. For example, if I make a contact with a community agency, the workers would ask me, "How do you spell `equity'?" They don't know the concept and they don't know the word either. The term "proxy" may turn out to be a similarly unfortunate choice. We would like to see the term "benchmark female jobs" used instead of "key female jobs." The word "key" may imply that the key jobs are already more valuable and therefore seat a bias into the process right from the beginning. Also, we would like to see the term "all-female organization" exchanged for "seeking employer," for similar reasons, the negative connotation of "seeking."
The other area we are quite concerned about is that the act does not cover workplaces that have under 10 employees. We are disappointed that the proposed bill does not extend pay equity to all women. In today's restructuring economy there are many women working in small workplaces in the private sector that have less than 10 employees. As I said, the current act exempts these smaller employers from pay equity responsibilities, and there are no provisions or indications to include them in Bill 102. It is not fair to deny rights to women who happen to be hired by a small company or organization. Why should we create wage gaps among women themselves and polarize further the labour force in terms of income? It is enough struggle to work for closing the wage gap between male and female jobs, and we do not want to be closing wage gaps only for some women and widen another among other women.
There was one very positive section which we were very glad to see in Bill 102, and that's the section about posting a notice. We think it's very good and we would also like included on the notice the telephone number of the Pay Equity Commission's hotline.
Our concerns are also centred about the fact that Bill 102 weakens some of the existing rights set in the 1987 Pay Equity Act. We believe this is an error the government can easily remedy. We will highlight some of the areas we are concerned about.
The current act requires the public sector to achieve pay equity for women in 1995. It is not fair to extend the time limit until 1998. It is a step backwards and shows a precedent that it is perhaps not wrong to take away from women. It illustrates once more that even at the end of the 20th century, when the government needs to deal with the economic situation, women are those who are manipulated and considered an easy target, supposed to carry the burden of the recession.
Bill 102 includes a new section on maintenance. We would like to see this section deleted because it weakens the current act. It authorizes the government to set limitations on maintenance of pay equity by regulation. What is required to maintain pay equity should be determined only when conflict arises and only by the commission and the tribunal on a case-by-case basis.
Currently, the act allows to determine the government as an employer for pay equity purposes. This enables a greater number of female jobs to find an appropriate male comparator, as there is wider choice. If it is legislated, as Bill 102 proposes, that the crown cannot be determined as the employer, then the potential for pay equity rights of many women will be circumscribed already, before they start. These women not only have had to wait longer to start and achieve pay equity, but they also would be limited as to the choice of the male comparator.
Now I would like to ask our lawyer, Minh Pham, to present some comments on other areas.
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Ms Minh Pham: At this point, we would like to offer our support to some of the submissions from other organizations you have heard from already. Submissions have been made to you by the Equal Pay Coalition and also the pay equity office. They concern the enforcement of review services orders by the pay equity office.
We support the changes proposed by the pay equity office to add clause (d) to subsection 32(1) of the current act. This addition of clause (d) would allow the pay equity office, where it has requested a hearing before the tribunal under section 34, to be a party to the proceedings before the tribunal.
Again, as our clients are non-union women and have few resources, they are clearly in a disadvantaged position compared to their employers, who can easily afford lawyers when it comes to trying to have a review officer's order enforced. We, as a clinic, try to participate with the pay equity office in trying to resolve pay equity complaints at review services etc. The pay equity office, after thoroughly investigating the complaint and writing the order, if we find that the order cannot be enforced unless there's a complainant who then has to take up the courage to bring the complaint to the pay equity tribunal, then many of the rights that have been afforded these women under the Pay Equity Act are lost.
Then the women feel reprisals from the employers, so they would be very reluctant to complain in their own right, and as their lawyers, even though we do try to help as many women as possible, the real fear of dismissal is a deterrent to them asserting their rights.
Besides adding the pay equity office, we would recommend that the bill not be amended to include any other persons entitled by law to be parties. We believe it is appropriate for the act to specifically list the parties to a hearing, as it presently does. That means the employer, the objector, a complainant, the bargaining agent and the pay equity office. We feel that if we are to extend entitlement to standing, as the bill does, to allow other groups and organizations that think they have some interest, however remote, in the outcome of the hearing to become parties, this would make it even more difficult for non-union, unrepresented women to come to the tribunal to try to enforce their rights.
There have been a few attempts on the employers' part to have other smaller units or other groups than themselves try to come to the pay equity tribunal to claim that they are in fact the employers of the women.
Another proposal: We also propose that section 34 be amended so that settlements cannot contravene the act. We propose that section 34 be amended with the following subsections:
"(5) An order of a review officer is not revoked except by a decision of the tribunal or an agreement by the parties relating to the order.
"(6) No employer, employee or groups of employees or bargaining agent may waive any rights or disregard any obligations under this act.
"(7) The pay equity office can request a hearing before the hearings tribunal with respect to a contravention of subsection 34(6)."
The intention of subsection (5) is to allow parties to settle issues which have been the subject of a review officer's order and subsequently an application before the tribunal. We very much encourage settlement efforts of parties to applications before the tribunal, provided that the settlements do not contravene the act, so as to ensure that the rights of women workers are not thereby sacrificed.
We work with non-union women and one of the great fears they face is retaliatory action by the employer. This is supposedly dealt with under section 9 of the act, as it is at present, but as Katerina has mentioned, we do represent women who have been ostracized, harassed, threatened and even fired. The fear they have of some form of retaliation by employers for pursuing their pay equity rights is very real and justified.
Unfortunately, we cannot give them the assurances they deserve and need that the act gives them meaningful protection against retaliation if they formally complain. This is because section 9, as it has been interpreted by the Pay Equity Hearings Tribunal, imposes an unreasonable legal onus on employees. It is essential that section 9 be strengthened so that the legal onus is not put on the employee, as it is now, to prove that the employer's actions were motivated by the pay equity complaint initiated by the employee.
We propose that there be a provision included in Bill 102 similar to a provision that exists right now in the Ontario Labour Relations Act, which provides under enforcement subsection 89(5) that where the employee has suffered some form of punishment or retaliation, the "burden of proof that any employer or employers' organization did not act contrary to this act lies upon the employer or employers' organization."
We submit that it is necessary to add such a provision to the Pay Equity Act which will correct the employment relationship where there is an inherent imbalance of power. In the case of non-union women and most vulnerable employee groups, such an amendment is definitely needed and ought not to await full review of the Pay Equity Act in 1995.
Ms Makovec: There are still other concerns that we choose to comment on today. Bill 102 includes some sections that are not necessary and some sections that need clarification. As you probably notice, we do not attempt to provide you with an exhaustive list of our concerns and only highlight the most pressing ones. As we mentioned previously, the brief submitted by the Equal Pay Coalition, which we endorse, is quite exhaustive and sufficient. Our highlights are about the other changes we would like to see.
Bill 102 allows us to amend the appendix to the schedule. There is a provision under the current act that the appendix can be expanded, and therefore we do not need a section that would allow removing an entitlement for pay equity. We would like to see this section removed.
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The penalties for contravention of subsection 21.17(7) seem too severe. These are penalties for revealing information that was obtained from another public sector agency. We think this is information on public sector jobs, so most of this information is public knowledge already and we would like to see this section removed.
The section on changed circumstances is not providing the same protection to non-unionized workers. This oversight should be corrected.
The government has committed itself to start with paying the pay equity adjustments in the cross-establishment as of January 1993. Now Bill 102 proposes to postpone the date for one more year. This means that the government expects women in the lowest-income categories to wait and carry the burden of the recession. For them the recession has been taking place all their lives. There are surely other sectors more easily equipped to carry the burden of the current economic restraints. Later in our presentation, you will hear from one of the transfer payment agencies that is affected by the delay.
I would like to comment shortly on the methodology in the cross-establishment. We do not like the idea of comparing women to women to men. The principle and the idea is that female jobs are compared to male jobs and therefore we would like to see a methodology developed that would compare them directly. But we know in practical terms this methodology proposed in the bill may be more workable than the ideal that we would like to see.
We would like just to refer again to the brief of the Equal Pay Coalition and support its arguments.
I would like to ask our executive director now to say some concluding words.
Ms Dukovich: We of course are very pleased to see the expansion of the Pay Equity Act to cover more women employees. We have expressed some of our concerns with the bill and we trust they are going to be heard and there will be corrections made.
We have to some degree limited our comments regarding the current act. We know that the act is scheduled for review soon. Therefore, we would like to urge the government to start with reviewing the act now so that the review will be finished by 1995.
I don't have an idea of how much time we have. I'll leave it the Chair, but I wonder if we have --
The Chair: You still have about a half-hour left.
Ms Makovec: Yes, we have more than half an hour. We are doing very well.
Ms Dukovich: Oh, good. I don't have a watch.
I would like now to ask the other people here, who are the people from Balance, to add their experience and comments.
Ms Tricia Morley: My name is Tricia Morley. I work for a small non-profit organization. In the first go-around with pay equity, we were only nine female employees who didn't fit in, so nothing really needed to be done about it. In following up, in reading newspapers and trying to find out how we fit into the spirit of pay equity, we realized that we were a transfer payment agency, but that again was hard to get clarified when we went to the pay equity board. Are we public? Are we private? A lot of this sort of stuff is confusing.
In 1991, as a representative of the Balance staff, I went to the pay equity consultants and asked them if they would apply in the spring of 1991 to have us considered a transfer payment agency or find out if we were so we can compare ourselves to government workers. I personally have worked for the government and as a rehab counsellor I was paid $10,000 more than I am paid now as a rehab teacher. I know the difference in working for the government and working as the poorer cousin in a transfer payment agency.
We are a small organization and the first thing the staff say to me when I suggest we go and speak to pay equity and find out what we can do and find out if we can somehow increase our wages is that they're concerned their funding will be cut, there will be retribution, they won't have any jobs at all because there's a recession and everybody's cutting back. There is a lot of realistic fear there.
So the under-10 issue -- we lost out. Traditionally, we have teachers who are blind people themselves who actually taught other blind people in the history of rehabilitation, and the other factor is they're either visually impaired or they're women. So the whole occupation has been traditionally systemically women's and poorly paid. A lot of charitable organizations started out as charity and good volunteer works, but a lot of women today are sole supporters and it's important that our wages reflect the work we do in the community.
The other issue was that when I did go and ask if you compare it to a transfer payment agency -- I don't know, it took a while. When they finally got back to us, they said the legislation was changing and they'd closed that door. You could no longer request to be compared to the government. They said it was being discussed in the House and they would hopefully pass that in the spring of 1992. This is now January 1993 and what I hear today is that it's again being changed and then again being delayed. We have one lady on staff who will retire next year, so by the time it does get around to happening it won't be of any benefit to her.
I could give more information on the background of the agency, if people have interest, but I won't take up your time. I realize this has been a long four days for you and it's the end of the period.
There was some question originally whether we were public or private and that would keep bouncing back and forth. At the moment, they've said our only hope is possibly with some sort of a proxy comparator outside. So we're sort of left in limbo at this point. Depending on your input, I'm sure, and how this legislation actually pans out, we'll again try to see how we apply. Thank you for your time.
Interjection.
Ms Morley: I also have a part-time job teaching at a college in Brantford. I commute once a week to Brantford because I have two children and I'm the only income parent in the family. I enjoy my work very much and I love where I work, so I really am reluctant to leave it, but because of financial reasons I'm having to look at other things. It takes away from the value of the quality of the time with my family and increases my working hours and what not and stress in life, but that's all personal. You do what you have to do to keep things going.
I've asked two participants of the program that we actually offer -- a visually impaired adult in the past didn't have much support when it came to moving out and living in the community independently. They could take training programs, but when you actually moved into the community, there's a lot to learn to be totally independent. Traditionally, people lived at home with their parents and when the parents are aging, it was a sibling or family member, or eventually maybe a nursing home, as with many situations.
I originally worked with the CNIB, but people who work there felt there was a need to create a new service to help people to break away from being dependent on institutions, being dependent on family, and the Balance organization was started. What we do is, if adults over the age of 18 want to live independently and apply to our program, we assist them with housing. We give them the rehabilitation training and home management, mobility training, to learn how to get around the community; community access integration so they can get connected to the community and learn how to do things independently. That's the focus of what we do.
I've asked a couple of participants and suggested, if the spirit moves them, because they're a little bit nervous about speaking here, if they would like to say something about what the service has meant to them in their lives, if that would be of interest to your honours.
Mrs Caplan: Mr Chairman, I know how intimidating appearing before committees like this can be. I've been in this Legislature now since 1985 and have participated on a lot of committees, and I want to tell the people who are here today that no one has ever been bitten and no one I know ever left this place feeling worse than when he came in. Most of the committee members I've served with are friendly. You can agree on whether you like us or not. We sometimes don't like each other.
But I would welcome, and think that it would be very helpful and useful for all the members of the committee to hear directly from people who are potentially affected by this legislation. So I would encourage your delegation to speak to us, and there's nothing whatever to be nervous about.
The Chair: Thank you for those words of encouragement, Mrs Caplan.
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Ms Janet Gardiner: Thank you very much. My name is Janet Gardiner. As a fairly new participant to the program, I'd like to say a few words about how it's affecting me and giving me the confidence to feel part of the community and part of the city of Toronto.
I've just recently moved here and one of the preconditions of being involved with Balance is that you must be a resident of Metropolitan Toronto. Now, for those people who are living outside Toronto, it means in the first place moving from your home town, wherever that may be, and finding accommodation immediately, which Balance assists in very well, I might add. In my case particularly, it took much less time than either of us, the staff or myself, figured it would. The whole process went very well.
I've been involved now for almost four months, learning, as Tricia said, about home management and taking care of an apartment. This is my very first experience with doing that on my own. I have, in the past, lived with family friends and a common-law spouse for a while, and to have the experience of managing and taking care of one's own place and all the expectations, excitements and fears and all the things that are involved with it are challenging but also very exciting.
I see Balance as a very unique kind of program in that unlike other rehabilitation agencies, it's very individualistic. It prides itself in modelling the program to the participant and the participant's individual circumstances and needs. It's been, like I say, very effective in terms of beginning to build my own confidence and my own sense of myself.
Living with family, you often get dictated to or disempowered, I guess is the word that's being used these days. Being involved in an agency that is objective and doesn't have any personal or emotional stakes in your success or things like that makes it much easier for me to work with someone who isn't personally involved with me.
I just want to say also that the concerns the committee has addressed involving this issue of pay equity could certainly affect us as participants along the line. If staffing is reduced or cut, or staff feel the need to take other employment because of pressures like this, I think that would be a real loss to all of us. I ask you to consider that when you study this and make your recommendations.
Mrs Caplan: You don't have to worry about the microphone. Just sit back and relax. As long as you're sitting down, it won't be a problem.
Ms Jo Sereda: My name is Jo Sereda. I'd like to say something that Balance has done for me that I don't think I would have got through another organization. Other than learning how to take care of my place, I also got some help looking for some volunteer work which I'm finding very fulfilling. I do some work for West Park Hospital.
Interjection: That's okay; just relax.
Ms Sereda: They also started a -- how do I get out of here?
Interjection: Okay, just relax. Just relax.
Ms Sereda: Tell them for me, please.
Interjection: I don't think she's going to continue. She's going to --
Ms Sereda: I will, but I can't.
Interjection: Not yet?
Mrs Caplan: Take a few minutes and relax. Everybody's a little nervous in this place. There's no reason to be concerned about it at all. Everybody's friendly except the Chairman.
The Chair: I'm just cuddly.
Mrs Caplan: That's right. He says he's just cuddly.
Mrs Irene Mathyssen (Middlesex): Mr Chairman, could I ask her a question?
The Chair: Would you go with a question?
Ms Sereda: Yes.
Mrs Mathyssen: Jo, my name's Irene. I was listening to Janet and one of the things I was wondering about was how your lives have changed, because it occurred to me that if you were living at home for a long time, you were a child. Now you're an independent adult. I just wondered what that has meant to you. Has it made your life different?
Ms Sereda: Well, I was just coming to that. One thing I wouldn't have found out about if I had been living at home with my parents is pet therapy, pet visitation places. I have found another place to take my cat to play with other people in nursing homes. I also know how to take care of it. If you can't look at how other people are taking care of pets, you sort of need a little help in learning how to do it and finding some ways of getting around.
Mrs Mathyssen: Did you find that taking the pet to the nursing homes was good for the people in the nursing homes?
Ms Sereda: Yes, I have found that. It also feels good. I also feel good because I know I'm giving something to the community and not just sitting there warming the couch.
Mrs Caplan: How long have you been in the volunteer program now?
Ms Sereda: One job I do isn't pet therapy. I started working at West Park Hospital about, I think, three years ago, in its occupational therapy department. I just started with another nursing home a few months ago, I think last fall.
Mrs Caplan: From your experience, do you think that the pet therapy in those environments is more successful than some of the other occupational therapy programs that you saw over the three years?
Ms Sereda: No, not particularly; they're both important.
Mrs Caplan: They're both important.
Ms Sereda: One gives you work -- the point that I think I'm trying to make is that some other organization might have just left me to fiddle around and find something else to do in the community. I might still be at home trying to figure out what to do.
The Chair: If I may offer a suggestion now, maybe we could go to the questioning from the committee members. Each caucus has about five minutes for questioning.
Mr Malkowski: I'm speaking through an interpreter. My name is Gary Malkowski and I'm using my staff interpreter, so that's whose voice you're hearing. I'm deaf.
I wanted to talk a little bit about pay equity legislation and the impact that will have on your agency and talk about the foundations of pay equity and your budget. Once legislation is passed, do you feel it will affect your staffing of your agency, and if it will, what kind of concerns would that look like for you?
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Ms Morley: I'm not so concerned personally about the staffing and the budget. I know what I'm doing is a very valuable service, and I have confidence in it. I have a colleague who happens to be visually impaired and that was her comment. I think that has some reflection on where women and disabled people come from, that fear is their first reaction to any change, and fear is their first reaction when anybody asks them to speak out in what may not necessarily be a friendly manner and may be contrary to the powers that be.
I invited her to come today. She's very busy and I think it was just too much to take on. This all happened kind of fast. I didn't have time to really work on this and bring people around to understanding how important it is for people to speak and come and talk. Everybody's nervous; I'm nervous. But as a group, maybe it's got something to do with being women. We're not used to standing up and saying what we want and expecting people to listen to us and not be punitive.
Mr Malkowski: May I ask a supplementary question? I think it's an important point and concern that you raised. From your own experience as an agency or with others, could you talk about the groups of women? When you compare it with other disabled women, do you believe that disabled people make less than the others in terms of the women's community?
Ms Morley: Do you mean disabled compared to women?
Mr Malkowski: Yes.
Ms Morley: In our organization, it depended on when you started with the organization and at what level you came in, but because of the recession, because we have no control over the funds and because we're not allowed to do fund-raising for wages, we have no control over wages. So we're at the mercy of whatever the executive director negotiates with the government. I'm not really sure about the other staff members. I don't think they're paid differently according to their disability. If they were, everybody else on staff would get really ticked off. We try to advocate in what we do.
Mr Malkowski: Thank you very much. That's helpful information.
Ms Murdock: I appreciate the comments, particularly from the client group, but I'd like to ask some questions of PEALS because you were mentioned this week, and it was quite evident that not very many people know about you, and that's unfortunate. So the communications plan in that regard is going to have to change.
I notice on your brochure that it says "Wage Justice for Women" across the top and the bottom; a good point to make. I wanted to know, under the present act on job-to-job, do most of your queries come from groups that are having difficulties with job-to-job or are they information queries in terms of trying to find out how they do job-to-job? I presume you haven't started PV or proxy.
Ms Dukovich: Pardon?
Ms Murdock: You haven't started PV or proxy yet?
Ms Dukovich: No, we haven't. I guess you're asking what kinds and generally for an overview.
Ms Murdock: Yes. What is predominantly the kind of queries that you get, and are they all based in Metro?
Ms Dukovich: No.
Ms Murdock: I know that you cover all of Ontario.
Ms Dukovich: No, not at all. First of all, I would say most of our clients are from outside of Metropolitan Toronto. I'll give you some names: Wingham, Valley East, Belmont, Methuen. I have various quarterly reports in terms of our statistics: Windsor, Welland, Niagara.
Ms Murdock: Are they the same kinds of requests?
Ms Dukovich: No, they are various types of issues; for example, a concern about the retaliatory action, which would be a section 9 concern, that we referred to. Questions about cases on who is really the employer, the gender neutrality of the plan: "We have a pay equity plan but it didn't give us enough money," or "It gave us no increase. Is it right?" Other issues might be gender dominance -- the employer decides that the job is not a female job class -- those kinds of issues, so everything from job evaluation to who's the employer to how the plan was done. "There was no plan at all." We get those complaints, no posting at all, and investigation into that.
Ms Murdock: On the changed circumstances, I just wanted you to know that there was an oversight regarding section 14, you're right, so it will be corrected.
The Chair: Ms Poole.
Ms Poole: First of all, welcome to the committee. We're glad you came today, and I guess a particular welcome to PEALS, because you're actually in my riding at 40 Eglinton East.
Ms Dukovich: Yes.
Ms Poole: Does Balance share the same address?
Ms Morley: No, we're in Etobicoke, around Dundas and Islington.
Ms Poole: Welcome to you anyway, even though you're not from the Eglinton area. By the way, I'm Dianne. I introduced myself a bit earlier.
One of the things I've found is that there have been a lot of groups that have come to us and said that they're not really happy with the complexity of the legislation, particularly some of the wording that's used, and they find it confusing. Quite frankly, I identify with those comments because I find it very confusing language. But I was just wondering -- and perhaps I could ask some of the folks from Balance to answer this. I think it was Sheryl who didn't have a chance to speak yet. Maybe we'll ask her to answer this one.
I'm not sure that using terms like "cross-establishment," "employer" and "benchmark" are all that much of an improvement. I find them personally still very confusing and I just wondered, from your perspective, do these terms have a whole lot of meaning for you? Do you think it makes everything as clear as crystal?
Ms Sheryl Livingstone: No.
Ms Poole: Okay, I'm glad I'm not alone.
To the folks from PEALS, you're probably about the 15th group that has suggested this particular terminology, so I know you've been talking among one another, and many of you are members of the same organizations, but have you talked about any other possibilities? I'm not quite satisfied that this terminology is a whole lot better than what went before it. It might be for the consultants and for the people who are really well versed in pay equity, but for most of us I'm not sure it's much of an improvement.
Ms Dukovich: I guess the legal community and process and drafting still need to go some way to become less technical. Our suggestions are at least, if you will, in the lingo of the day, more politically correct, we would say. But we do think there could be more improvement in all legislation, including this type of legislation, in terms of readability or accessibility to the non-legal community. I think that's what you're asking about. Does anybody want to add anything?
However, we do think the language we're suggesting takes into account, is more sensitive to, if you will, equality issues and this area, and is a little bit clearer. But I guess when you're talking about job evaluation --
Ms Poole: You mean this is as clear as it gets?
Ms Dukovich: As we've said, it takes a long time and it is a complex area. When we get in front of the Pay Equity Hearings Tribunal -- we have a case, for example, that we've just concluded that has had, I would say, between 40 and 50 days of hearings, so they're very lengthy processes, if you get to that point, and there's much expert evidence in these cases. That's another issue in terms of, why the costly legal process? This whole area is full of consultants and experts, so in some respects it is inherently a technical area.
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Ms Poole: I'd just like to thank again the women from Balance for coming and sharing your stories with us and also for agreeing with me that you don't understand the terminology either, which makes me feel much better, and also the women from PEALS, not only for coming and sharing your stories and giving us some new information, for instance, regarding the tribunals and retaliatory measures and things like that, but also because you're doing very good work. You were commended quite nicely, I think, by the Pay Equity Commission when it was here. I know you work very closely with them. Keep up the good work. We're glad you're there.
The Chair: Mrs Caplan, you have about a minute left.
Mrs Caplan: I'll try to be brief. There are a couple of questions. This package of legislation has been described by a number of presenters as being regressive and a step backward in a couple of areas. I'd like to explore one with Balance, because I think it might help us to see how this would affect you as an organization. You have how many employees?
Ms Morley: Nine.
Mrs Caplan: What is your overall total annual budget, approximately?
Ms Morley: I'm not really sure.
Mrs Caplan: Could we say that your budget is $500,000?
Ms Morley: Less than that.
Mrs Caplan: Less than $500,000. Under this legislation, because it removes the deadline for implementation, pay equity would be --
Interjection.
Mrs Caplan: Well, they've said that's what they would require. The interjection was from the parliamentary assistant. What you've said is that there's not a job-to-job comparator. I just want to make sure we're clear. There's no job-to-job comparator, so for your organization the deadline obligation has been removed entirely and the only obligation for achievement of pay equity for your group would be 1% of payroll for as long as it would take. I notice some heads from PEALS nodding. All right. If your budget is less than $500,000, the obligation for a pay equity implementation on an annual basis would be $500 or less. Is that correct, from PEALS?
Ms Pham: One per cent.
Mrs Caplan: One per cent would be less than $500 a year, correct?
Ms Makovec: No, I think $5,000.
Mrs Caplan: It would be $5,000 a year for the entire organization. I just want to take a look at this. From your experience, PEALS, given an organization like this with nine people and with that size of budget, do you have any experience as to how long it might take for this group to be able to implement and achieve pay equity, given a plan that would be developed for it?
Ms Morley: It doesn't sound too promising.
Ms Pham: It's important in this case that the agencies would be classified with the employer, that is, a public sector employer, because right now, under the act, that's how they would have been perceived, because they are under 10. But if ever it comes, then we're looking for -- I have seen statistics that say about $350,000 is the average budget and so we are looking at about $350 per person for 10 employees. We have had some success in cases where our women employees have had settlements of about $12,000; adjustments over the one year are sometimes $5,000. If we're looking at something like $350 per year maximum, then it could mean 10 years.
Mrs Caplan: It might take 10 years for a group like this to have its plan implemented because of the removal of the deadline and the obligation for 1% of payroll per year?
Ms Pham: Yes. That means that the gap really never gets close because, as I say, the difference, the wage gap is somewhere between a few thousand dollars. We have seen that. Our average success has been around $2,000.
Mrs Caplan: I think that --
The Chair: Thank you, Mrs Caplan.
Mrs Caplan: I just want to pointed out that this is an example of why this legislation, as proposed, is a giant step backwards, as seen by many of the delegations.
Mr Tilson: I would like to thank the committee for coming and giving its presentation. I have no questions.
The Chair: On behalf of this committee, I would like to thank the Pay Equity Advocacy and Legal Services and Balance. One final comment?
Ms Dukovich: I wonder if we could just respond to Mr Malkowski's question. I know he did address Balance about it but it's an important question: the issue of people with disabilities, the extent of their participation in the labour force and what the wage gap was there. We are very concerned about that.
I think we're all aware from what we understand in the statistics, there's a very low rate of participation, first of all, in the labour force, by women with disabilities, and even for those in the labour force, I think we are concerned that the earnings are very low. But the problems we are talking about, women coming forward with complaints, are again doubly compounded with those who suffer other types of discrimination, so I think it's very hard for those people to come forward.
We would be very interested, as is the Advocacy Resource Centre for the Handicapped, interested in discrimination wages against those people with disabilities. I think that's an area we might well be involved with in ARCH, in terms of its access to those people and us as a pay equity clinic being able to assist them. I think we will have to do the outreach, because again it's very difficult, for a whole host of reasons, for those people to come to us.
The Chair: Thank you for that piece of information. Once again, I want to thank you for coming out and giving us your presentation this afternoon.
Ms Dukovich: Thank you very much.
Ms Poole: You see, nobody bit you and nobody attacked you. We're all relatively friendly. I guess we're in a good mood today.
CANADIAN UNION OF PUBLIC EMPLOYEES, LOCAL 1528
The Chair: I'd like to call forward our next presenters, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 1528. For the information of the committee, there will be no written brief on this presentation.
Good afternoon. Just a reminder that you'll be allowed up to a half-hour for your presentation. The committee would appreciate it if you'd keep your remarks slightly shorter than that to allow time for questions and comments from each of the caucuses. As soon as you're comfortable, could you please identify yourself for the record and then proceed.
Ms Louise Primeau: My name is Louise Primeau, I'm the president of CUPE, Local 1528, and I'm from Sault Ste Marie, Ontario. I want to begin by saying that I deliberately didn't prepare a brief so that I didn't look like I'm an authority on the topic and so that you wouldn't be overly strict with the presentation I'm going to make.
Mrs Caplan: You're in very good company. There are very few people here who are authorities either.
Ms Primeau: Oh, great.
Ms Poole: On anything.
Ms Primeau: Great. I'm also going to be holding you to no biting of me. The same rules apply as to the previous speakers.
Mrs Caplan: We have the same rules for everybody.
Ms Poole: I don't know. We've been restrained for a full hour.
Mrs Caplan: That's right. We don't discriminate around here.
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Ms Primeau: I want to commence by saying that pay equity, the topic itself, is such a complex and kind of ever-unsurmountable topic in fact that we debated at length whether I would come to Toronto to present or not.
Our local is a very small local. We're 60 members or thereabouts; it fluctuates from time to time. I work for the Algoma health unit -- I'm a social worker -- and our particular group that's coming forward has about seven classifications within the collective agreement.
We're not a very homogeneous group professionally but our concerns are actually on the threshold of just having completed our pay equity contract, and I think I'm here for therapy. I want to say that it has been a very, very difficult exercise for our local, and that is precisely one of the reasons I'm here. I debated at length whether I was going to come through the voice of my local or whether I was going to come through various other voices to be here, because I'm quite an activist in the community.
To tell you the truth, we had exchanged with the employer in 1987 our desire to negotiate pay equity, and it was in July 1992 that we finally signed our contract, on the eve of our employer leaving the agency. It was a very difficult exercise in so far as I think we were not all at the same stage of our development in trying to reach an agreement in pay equity, and for this reason alone I want to talk to you about some of the complexities that have faced our particular group.
First of all, I'd like to begin to say that as I proceed I'm going to be talking about some of the proposed changes that are in the new act and how I see they're going to affect our local.
It was a very difficult task to do the job evaluation in itself. When we sat at the table with the employer, I think we had some advantage over the employer, as we had anticipated the pay equity legislation and therefore we were somewhat ready and the employer was not. In my mind, I think that has to be one of the key factors in negotiating probably a good contract and I think the employer should be obligated and obliged to have some education, because when you come to the table, unlike collective bargaining, I think there should not be an adversarial approach to pay equity.
I think it's most regrettable that pay equity had to be legislated. I'd like to believe that people are all of the same mind and recognize that there has been a wage discrimination and a historical discrimination against women in terms of paying fair remuneration for the work that they do. Nevertheless, that's not the case, and I was most excited at the legislation. I didn't quite comprehend when CUPE was talking many years ago about the difficulties within the act. I didn't quite understand until we walked through this exercise.
First of all, when we sat at the table with the employer, we recognized that we are a predominantly female work site. We are 170 staff, or thereabouts, at the health unit, and approximately 155 are women. Of the other various groups, there is one classification that came within the scope of our particular collective agreement, and that's the inspectors.
At the onset, we tried to negotiate with the employer who indeed was the employer, because we knew many women within our local would be exempt from the legislation, and that was the result of our findings. Because we did not have appropriate male comparators, therefore, out of the 60 people within our local, 50 women were exempt from any pay equity adjustments. Therefore, I feel very strongly that there is a need for the proportionate and the proxy comparators.
I feel I was somewhat enlightened in fact, prior to even understanding that these were proposed changes to the future act. This is something we had actually discussed with the employer, believing that this was the only way we were going to remedy some of the inequities within the health unit staff. We were not successful in our bid to do so, and I want to talk to you about those changes that you're proposing.
For the purposes of our particular group, I want to say we have gone through a tremendous anxiety-producing exercise at the health unit. We have been threatened throughout the process that the pay equity would cost us jobs, that indeed if we were unreasonable about pushing the employer to pay more quickly than it was able to do, we would be faced with some layoffs. Indeed we were, I think, 10 minutes away from that very act. In fact, the commission is going to be visiting us on Tuesday about some of these things.
Nevertheless, I'm here to just talk about why at present the act -- first of all, I want to reiterate and probably lend my support to the remark about: "It's a very difficult act to comprehend. It doesn't read very easily and it's hard to follow."
One of the suggestions my local would like to table is that it's our belief the job evaluation measuring tool should be standardized. Why I'm suggesting that is that most of our energies at the beginning of the process were taken up in even trying to agree on a tool that was going to reflect the job skills within our agency. When we agreed on the tool and the committees came forward, the second element we were faced with is that the employer's committee was really not empowered to do very much.
I think the legislation should speak to that as well. When you send a committee forward to negotiate with a local or with interested parties, those who are at the table should, in essence, have a mandate to actually not only negotiate but represent who they're supposed to be representing. That was a great big barrier in our agency.
The employer did not really want to be at the table but did come to the table, and we negotiated a settlement. To date, we haven't achieved the settlement because the 1% of the payroll was not set aside. The 1% gives me great concern, because I think it in some ways restricts any movement you have in any kind of way. The employer understood, by the legislation saying 1%, that there was nothing to negotiate, that it was a mere calculation and that was that. In fact, we were virtually denied an opportunity to sit across from the employer to discuss how that 1% was going to be divvied up and the stages at which the implementation was going to occur.
The 1%, in my mind, is very restrictive. If you take an agency as small as ours -- 170 people of which 155 are women -- and if we do proceed with the proportionate and proxy comparators and you divvy up 1%, that in my mathematical mind ends up being a box of Kleenex for each worker. I certainly don't think that's a way of remedying the inequities within this particular work site.
The other thing that has occurred to me in terms of the proportionate method of comparison is that I believe very strongly that if there are no male comparators within your work site immediately and then you go on to the next level of comparison, if you use the proportionate method per se -- because in many of the organizations I've been attached to, the hierarchy is generally male. When you look at the entrance wage compared to the top-end wage, I find it difficult to believe there could be perhaps, when you evaluate the entrance being at one particular level and then the top-end, there might be four times the job evaluation value to the top-end but it might be 10 times the earning capacity as the entrance.
When we look at this proportionate value, I have some concerns that for sure it's going to disrupt some of the relationships in an organization. I think they're disturbing anyway and need some disruption, but again, I'm concerned. Because of the state of the economy, I know there has been some suggestion in the act that there be a delay in the implementation of the changes to the proxy and proportionate comparison. I don't believe it's fair to ask women to be burdened any further -- already having a low income to begin with -- to delay rectifying the problem when we now have the knowledge, skills and methodology to do so.
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I just want to open one of my brief notes about the proportionate method. When we finalized our job evaluation exercise, it became disturbing to us to note in numerical order that if you do not have a male comparator, you are going to be exempt from redress. There was nothing in the act that said to the employer, "You're going to have to look at the anomalies this exercise has produced." There were obvious, glaring anomalies within our structure and there's just very little we can do through this particular exercise.
It was again very anxiety-producing for the CUPE members within my local that not everybody understood the exercise and what was intended. They thought we had the leverage or the power. All we had to do was enlighten the employer that they were underpaid and that was going to be it. We were all going to have a cheque in the mail the next day. As you know, that's not the case.
It really produced havoc in the ranks. People thought their union perhaps underrepresented them, perhaps underevaluated their job, perhaps overevaluated some jobs. I think in order to re-establish some fairness and equity, absolutely the most moral thing that has to be done is to proceed with proportionate and proxy comparisons.
I'm not going to talk a lot about the proxy comparisons. Although I understand them to a degree, I think because we have the health inspectors in the local and they're predominantly and historically male, that's going to end up being the comparator for our local.
When we looked at the job evaluation system and we rated and weighted certain values, once that was negotiated fairly among the CUPE committee representing the local and the employer, we did not believe the employer could be empowered to come back and say, "We don't like the end result of what you've produced and we're going to change things around." Indeed, that is what has happened at the health unit.
I want to speak a little bit about the necessity of maintenance. I know there is an element in the new proposals that will weaken that component and I think that is going to make us vulnerable once more. We're going to have to go over our exercise once more if we do not put in a maintenance plan that actually legislates the need to review very regularly and very systematically so the gap doesn't widen once more. If the gap does widen, it seems to me this exercise was one of futility and certainly very non-productive.
There's one last point I want to make about the proportionate method of comparison. That sounds very good in theory; however, if your male comparator turns out to be one that has regionally and provincially not done well in terms of collective bargaining, that means we're faced with a comparator that probably is also underpaid. In our local that's very much the case. When we go to bargain, I think maybe because we're isolated, we don't always do that well in terms of setting standards and moving ahead.
Our local has just recently come through an eight-week strike. It was not one that was financial in nature, it was more one that was principle in nature. Therefore, our relationship with the employer is sometimes strained.
This proportionate aspect concerns me a little bit. It would then mean that the salaries will be fair in terms of the internal structure, if you want to look at the pay equity component, but I don't think it would be fair if you looked at our organization and compared it to perhaps another health organization where they might have had a more progressive relationship with the employer and more progressive bargaining. Those people have had pay equity settlements that will be very different than the ones we have.
I think I'll stop there, if you have some questions. I'm 15 minutes right on.
The Chair: Each caucus has about five minutes.
Mrs Caplan: We appreciate your coming down from Sudbury.
Ms Primeau: Sault Ste Marie.
Mrs Caplan: Sorry; I know what a sensitive issue that is.
Ms Primeau: Well, Sudbury's my home town, so I'll forgive you.
Mrs Caplan: I appreciate that.
You started out by suggesting you were a little bit nervous in coming before this committee and also explaining the complexities and technicalities of the whole concept of pay equity. I'd like to compliment you. You're a very articulate spokesman. It was very helpful to the committee to hear from someone who has sat and negotiated a pay equity plan. I'm aware of how difficult it is with any new piece of legislation to enact that and implement it.
I was really proud of the legislation that was brought forward and passed in 1987, but it's good to hear from someone who worked with it. As in any new concept that is as complicated as this, it's also good to know that people working out in the field have mastered it as well as you have. I want to compliment you, because I think you've done the committee a great service though your explanation of what you've gone through.
The concerns we're hearing about this legislation, Bill 102 and Bill 169 -- we've heard this from some -- is that while there are some concepts in this legislation which sound very good, the tradeoffs, as they've been described by some, or the Peter-to-Paul payment system my colleague Ms Poole described has led some to believe -- CUPE was here and the bottom line for it was that it was not worth the effort because it was a step backwards. We heard that from the Ontario Nurses' Association, that its members would not benefit, that this legislation was regressive and would not result in positive improvement to a plan, which while not perfect, has been working now for a few years.
I'm wondering if you're aware of the positions taken by the Ontario Nurses' Association and CUPE and whether you've looked at Bill 102 from the standpoint of your own members who have dealt with and negotiated a plan, recognizing that it delays the use of proportional and proxy by three years, removes the obligation for maintenance, and as was pointed out to us, affected some of those fundamental principles of the legislation as it was originally -- I know a lot of people were disappointed with some of those aspects of it and I wondered how you felt about it. I'm not talking about the complexities of how a plan is implemented, but am dealing now with the principles and provisions of this particular bill.
Ms Primeau: I want to say first of all that I'm very pleased the presiding government is going to move with pay equity. I think it's heroic in the current climate. They're going to be challenged by those saying, "This isn't the time." Nevertheless, I think it's a moral obligation to proceed. I think the 1987 legislation fell very short. It was very innovative, it was very timely, but nobody could possibly have comprehended the magnitude of the legislation until they worked through it.
I have to say, as far as the health unit goes, that I know ONA, my colleagues in the health unit, are not at the same stage we're at. They resisted negotiating with the employer and defining who the establishment was in the beginning because they believed they were going to get boxed in. I can't speak for that group; I can speak for mine.
As far as the proportionate and proxy comparisons are concerned, I don't see any other alternative to rectifying the historic, predominantly female wages that have gone on at work sites. I don't know. In fact, as I said earlier, I thought I was somewhat enlightened, because that's something that I proposed the employer consider, not knowing this was something that was likely to come before any committee.
Three years ago I said to the employer, "If it turns out that the exercise produces that there are no comparisons for clerical staff, will you consider the inspectors as a comparator and come up with some formula with a pro-ratio kind of a thing?" So I feel like I was maybe a little ahead of my time.
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Mrs Caplan: You mentioned three years ago. One of the concerns that has been expressed is that in March 1990 the former minister announced, as a matter of public policy, that proportional value would be a forthcoming amendment, and many employers included that in their discussions of the plans. The plans have gone forward and the payouts have begun.
The suggestion is that this legislation is rewarding those who didn't negotiate and is allowing them an additional three years, whereas those who went ahead in good faith and negotiated job-to-job, and in many cases included proportional value, because they recognized it would maintain equity within their job classification system, are now being penalized.
Ms Primeau: Yes, I happen to agree completely with that mode of thinking. I do not believe that a day longer is reasonable. I believe that it was incumbent upon agencies, employers, everybody to get ready for the exercise, get prepared, put the 1% aside, and move ahead. It's unfortunate if we were not all of the same mode of thinking. That is regrettable, but the day is here where we have to address inequities, and I think to defer or to delay is an injustice, particularly since we're now acknowledging -- if anything, that's what the legislation did. It came forward and it said, "We recognize that there has been wage discrimination."
The difficulty in the exercise that my group encountered is that once we finally said, "Okay, we're at the table; whether we're here willingly or not, we're here, and we're going to do this," the most difficult thing is to get everybody on side to recognize a value of a predominantly female job.
Mr Tilson: Ms Primeau -- I trust I pronounced your name correctly?
Ms Primeau: It is.
Mr Tilson: Thank you for coming. You have given a different perspective, from someone who's negotiated a plan, and we'll be watching the results of that. I think you indicated the commission is coming to your city and it'll be interesting to see the results of that. I wish you well.
There has been some discussion today on the editorial in the Toronto Globe and Mail, which you may or may not have seen. It's probably a little controversial, particularly from the feminist point of view. I'd like to read to you portions and ask your comments.
The person who wrote this editorial indicated that there were essentially three ingredients that were necessary to understanding the wage difference: (1) education, (2) hours worked, and (3) marriage. Then whoever wrote this goes through and talks about those three things. One of the statements that was made was: "Sex discrimination in wages -- paying a man with the same qualifications more than a woman to fill exactly the same position -- is against the law, and has been ever since Bob Rae was in short pants."
Interjection: When was that?
Mr Tilson: When was that? I don't know when that was. However, it's the conclusions to this editorial that I find interesting. It talks about the third of the topics that were raised by this writer: "But the biggest factor is marriage. The earnings of single women, single men and married women working full-time are roughly comparable. But the earnings of the average married man rise above those of everyone else. That is the only real `wage gap.'"
Then the editorial concludes by saying:
"But why is it that many married women work only part-time, or adopt less time-consuming (and less well-paying) full-time careers? Are they forced to by their husbands? By circumstance? By entrenched social attitudes? Do many, for a whole variety of unquantifiable reasons, freely choose this path, thinking it best for their families?"
It is interesting, in the concluding moments of the hearings of this committee, although we are going to be getting into clause-by-clause, that many of these topics have not been raised. We've simply dealt with the fact that there are inequities between women and women. We've heard from nurses who have said that there are inequities between certain nurses in certain areas and other nurses in other areas, female nurses. Of course, most of the emphasis has been on the inequities in wages between men and women. That, I'm sure, is the main intent of this legislation, and perhaps quite rightfully so. But there are other issues, these other issues, and it could be said that many of these topics do contribute to the whole subject of this wage discrimination.
You have indicated that you are an activist. Good for you. We need activists to keep people like legislators in this place on their toes. I'm glad you've said that you are that and that you're prepared to come and tell us your views. Is it possible to legislate attitudes, to change the way people think, to change not only the way men think but the way women think? This legislation, I believe, is designed to do that. It may be a start, and many people say that it's not moving fast enough, that this inequity exists now and we can't wait till the time frame that these people are putting off, that we can't afford to wait, that we've waited since time began for this, that we simply can't wait any longer. My question to you, again, is, can we legislate attitude?
Ms Primeau: The simple answer is that we have to. Unfortunately, we have to. I wish we lived in an ideal world where we did not have to have the intervention of government, but I believe that government is there, in some ways, to help the disadvantaged groups, to legislate. There is a barrage of legislation: human rights, employment standards, minimum wage, all these things. It is regrettable to say they would not be there if they weren't legislated. There's just not a progressive mentality that would say: "Yes, this is your worth. We recognize your worth and so be it. Voilà, this is how we're going to do it." I'm saying that this pay equity is absolutely essential.
Mr Tilson: The problem is that we're not just trying to educate men and how men think; we're trying to educate how women think.
Ms Primeau: Oh, I agree.
Mr Tilson: The last paragraph that I read, they're wonderful questions this committee has never dealt with. When we're talking about the subject of pay equity, it's too bad we haven't dealt with these questions. It's too bad this government hasn't addressed them. I'm not so sure that I think we should be legislating how people think. I think perhaps it should be more a matter of education.
I realize that you as an activist may disagree with that, because it may well be that the other process is moving too slowly, that the activist's view says: "This is to get things moving. Otherwise, we'll be for ever getting things changed." But they are interesting questions. Why is it? When you think of married women working and the percentage of married women working, many of them only work part-time and do adopt less time-consuming and less-well-paying full-time careers. Isn't that too bad, particularly when the same article -- I have no idea whether it's accurate or not; I can't even --
The Chair: Mr Tilson, please --
Mr Tilson: I'm sorry. There is particularly the question, of course, of these younger women. Fifty-three per cent of full-time and part-time university students are women and yet these attitudes continue to exist.
Ms Primeau: If I'm allowed to say, I'd like to add that it is irrelevant whether I work part-time or my colleague works part-time. The value of my job is what's at stake. Whether I work three hours a week or I work 103, I should get paid exactly the skill level of responsibility and the other factors and those components. That should be recognized. Unfortunately, it has been ingrained in us as women to devalue.
Mr Tilson: Exactly.
Ms Primeau: I think when you pointed out in terms of our committee -- I said earlier that our committee was not all men. We have to educate ourselves as well, but all of these other factors are for some other committee and some other issue to be dealt with. When I look at my work, I am asking for government intervention, in a sense, to look at legislating something that is going to protect and I guess dissipate the wage gaps.
Mr Tilson: Your comments have been most interesting. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Tilson. One final question, Ms Harrington.
Ms Poole: On a point of order, Mr Chair: I've been quite well-behaved this afternoon, but Mr Tilson just raised the Globe article and the questions that the Globe asked. I'm very perverted because I spent my lunch hour drafting a letter to the editor and I will probably simmer if I don't put this on the record.
Mr Tilson: Let's wait and read about it in tomorrow's paper.
Ms Poole: It'll never get printed.
Mr Tilson: Well, do it another time. If she is going to be entitled to the time, I wish to have more time.
The Chair: You're right. There is no point. Thank you, Mr Tilson. Ms Harrington.
Ms Margaret H. Harrington (Niagara Falls): I want to comment very briefly on the question that Mr Tilson raised. I believe it is up to us, as legislators, to provide some leadership, but we cannot be out of touch with the rest of society. We have to constantly be in touch with where people are at, but we do have to provide that leadership. This is why I believe it is so important to have women involved in politics.
My other thesis is that women also have to have economic power in order to be treated as equals in this society. Of course, this is what this is all about that we're dealing with this afternoon. Economic power means they have to have some independence, some choice in their lives, and they can't do that unless they have an economic base, as you all know from many different circumstances.
I want to ask you, and I also I just want to note that the recognition of part-time work, as credible and essential, is part of what we're trying to go towards as well. How do you see the importance of trying to get 50% of women in politics to carry through in changing attitudes?
Ms Primeau: It's very essential. I have to say that most of my life I've been disadvantaged in some way. I'm a late bloomer, if you want. I went back to school as a mature student. I've only been in the workforce -- this is my 12th year in the field. I had but a grade 8 education. I was economically dependent, and when I made some choices I guess I was very naïve in looking at social work, because I hadn't looked at the wage differences. I assumed that if I needed five years' university, I would be paid fairly and equitably, and that at some point in time I would be able to absorb that major student loan I had done.
I have made just humongous changes in my life. I believe women have to be politically active and that you have to come forward, but that's not easy for women to do. I know that when I come forward on behalf of my local, there are not 55 other women standing behind me willing to do that. Some people are more complacent. They don't want to rock the boat. They want the end result, but in our local it's sometimes very difficult to say what you have to say in a very non-threatening way. I think sometimes it's just critical. You have to be there and do it. That's why I'm here.
Ms Harrington: Thank you for coming.
The Chair: Thank you, Mrs Harrington. Ms Primeau, on behalf of this committee, I'd like to thank you for taking the time out this afternoon and coming and bringing us your presentation.
Seeing no further business before this committee --
Ms Murdock: We come back, not next Monday but the Monday following, at 1:30 in the afternoon. Is that correct, Mr Chairman?
The Chair: I'm just about to announce that. Before I do, though, I understand we have somewhat of an agreement that all the amendments would be in to the clerk by Monday morning, February 1, so that they'd be presented to the committee on Monday afternoon.
Having no further business, this committee stands adjourned until February 1 at 1:30 pm.
The committee adjourned at 1705.