No. 41                                                                   May 1, 2000

We’re finally reaching the end of a very long road. It has been over 15 years since the pay equity complaint on behalf of members in the Clerical and Regulatory (CR) Group was filed in late 1984. And there were times when we wondered when it would ever happen. But it finally has happened. The first in the series of pay equity cheques are being delivered to current and former PSAC members.

There is no disagreement between the Alliance and Treasury Board that employees who are with separate employers are entitled to receive retroactive pay equity payments for any time they were employed directly by the federal government during the retroactive pay equity period. Where the parties differ is in the application of the pay equity agreement to the separate employers themselves. While Treasury Board is prepared to discuss ongoing pay relativities, it has indicated it is not prepared to provide the funds to separate employers to cover retroactivity and interest.

In March 1990, Treasury Board arbitrarily made ongoing and retroactive pay equity adjustments to employees in the CR and Secretarial, Stenographic & Typing (ST) groups. Separate employers, whose jobs and pay rates are closely aligned to federal public service pay and classifications, argued that they needed to keep pace. As a result, separate employers were authorized by Treasury Board in late 1990 to make similar adjustments in order to maintain the salary relativity. Some separate employers also implemented adjustments comparable to the 1998 special pay adjustments negotiated at Tables 1 and 2. These negotiated adjustments reflected, in part, the amounts required to close the wage gap which had been confirmed by the 1998 Human Rights Tribunal decision.

The extension of the 1990 pay equity payments to separate employers created an expectation among affected employees that they would also receive any future federal pay equity adjustments. The PSAC has taken the position that the federal salaries on which the wages of separate employees are, or were based, were found to be discriminatory by the Tribunal and the Federal Court. By extension the salaries paid by separate employers are also discriminatory and must be adjusted. Employees who were transferred to separate agencies moved with salaries which were less than they should have been. No employer should benefit from maintaining discriminatory wage rates, nor should retirees’ pensions be based on discriminatory rates.

The Alliance is continuing to examine the ways in which it can pursue and resolve this issue. Meetings are being held with separate employers to discuss the issue and determine the employer’s position. One of the avenues which may be pursued is a court challenge under the equality provisions of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Treasury Board seems to be confusing the issue of the folding-in of pay equity adjustments into salaries with the principle that pay equity adjustments are pay for all purposes. The Tribunal had ordered that the pay equity adjustments be recalculated year by year from 1985 on and ordered that the adjustments be folded-in to salary rates effective July 29, 1998.

If salary rates should have been higher - as the Tribunal determined they should have been - then anything related to salary has to be recalculated accordingly. Treasury Board’s only comment before the Tribunal was that it would create an administrative burden to have to do all these recalculations.

While the parties agreed to replace the recalculation of overtime, acting and promotion situations between March 8, 1985 and March 31, 1994 with a 5% lump sum of the total pay equity adjustment for that period, in order to speed up payments and reduce the amount of work involved, the principle of the pay equity adjustments being pay for all purposes remains.

It should come as no surprise that Treasury Board is on another track. It is refusing to apply the salary protection provisions in all cases. For example, the Alliance is arguing that for some members, the revised rates of pay for CRs exceed the lower levels of Administrative Services (AS), Welfare Programmes (WP) or Programme Administration (PM) positions. Members acting in these positions during 1985 to 1994 would have been entitled to a higher salary in their substantive position than they received in the position in which they were acting. As far as the Alliance is concerned, this is a salary protection situation.

The pay equity payments will have an impact on women taking maternity leave, on all pay equity recipients who are on unemployment insurance, who are receiving social assistance benefits such as welfare or provincial disability payments, who are receiving worker’s compensation, old age security payments or the guaranteed income supplement. The union is currently examining these situations and considering strategies and actions to minimize any negative impact the payments may have.