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Tony Poland, LegalMatters Staff • Though the intention may be promising, it is still too early to accurately predict how long it will take to see the impact of new federal workplace equity legislation on women in the workplace, says Toronto employment lawyer Ellen Low.
Last month, Minister of Labour Filomena Tassi announced that Canada’s Pay Equity Act will come into effect on Aug. 31.
The legislation states employers in federally regulated sectors with 10 or more employees will have three years to identify and correct pay disparities within their workforces.
“When you look at the average hourly wages among full-time and part-time workers, for every dollar that a man earned in Canada, a woman earned 89 cents,” Tassi told iPolitics. “I think we can all agree that’s not acceptable. That is something we needed to change.”
Failure to comply can result in fines of up to $50,000
Failure to comply with the Act can result in $30,000 in fines for employers with up to 99 employees and $50,000 for larger workforces.
With three years for employers to comply, it could take some time before meaningful change occurs, says Low, principal of Ellen Low Employment Law.
“We’re going to have to continue to take a look at it. However, when I read through the proposals and the commentary with respect to it, the assumption is that there will have to be adjustments to correct the pay imbalance,” she tells LegalMattersCanada.ca. “It will be interesting to see how it plays out and if it will resemble Ontario’s legislation by the time that it is done.
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“This effectively codifies pay equity provisions and includes some practical steps about things that are going to have to be done in order to comply with the legislation.”
The law, which was passed in 2018, affects about six per cent of Canadian workers, or 1.3 million people employed in federally regulated sectors including most Crown corporations as well as those in banking, air travel and railways.
Low says federally regulated workplaces must now post notices regarding the establishment of the pay equity plan.
‘People are reluctant to talk about compensation’
“It is a step in the right direction. People are reluctant to talk about compensation,” she says. “It is traditionally written into employment contracts that your compensation is confidential and it is actually a breach of the contract to talk with your colleagues and peers about how much you earn.
“There is this culture of secrecy. Even if you do the same job as I do, you don’t ask how much I am making and you don’t tell me. Perhaps we assume we are making the same amount of money, but statistically, we know that that’s not true,” Low adds. “It has been shown that women don’t ask for raises. And we know that generally speaking, women do not put themselves forward for promotion.”
She says as is the case with any new employment legislation, there will be questions. Provinces have their own labour regulations and in Ontario workers are protected by similar equity laws along with provisions in the Employment Standards Act, 2000 and the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario.
“Employment law can be confusing and the average worker may not always have a clear understanding of their rights. The interplay between ‘equal pay for equal work’ and pay equity is nuanced and those who discover they are making less than their male colleagues for the same, or similar, work would be wise to seek out an experienced employment lawyer,” says Low. “An employment lawyer is there to provide guidance when there have been violations of the human rights code or workplace legislation.”
