N.B. Coalition Disappointed Tories, Alliance Reject Pay Equity Bill
The New Brunswick Coalition for Pay Equity says it will continue to push for pay equity in the private sector and hopes to see more collaboration from the government after the provincial government rejected a motion that would advance a bill to ensure that.
The Coalition’s Executive Director, Johanne Perron, said the move is disappointing. It’s especially ironic given a federal legislation to ensure pay equity in all federally regulated workplaces received royal assent just a day before, she said.
“It means that sometimes things don’t go as fast as we want. But we’re not giving up because we see results as well,” she said. “We are convinced that pay equity legislation is necessary to ensure that the right to equal pay for work of equal value is respected in the private sector.”
The motion, put forward by Liberal MLA Monique LeBlanc, would have sent Bill 4, a proposed legislation to amend the Pay Equity Act of 2009 to include private sector employers with 10 or more workers, to the Standing Committee on Law Amendments.
The Liberal Party and the Green Party voted in favour but the governing Progressive Conservative Party and the People’s Alliance voted against.
New Brunswick has pay equity legislation for the public sector, but not the private sector. Up to 70 per cent of employed women are in the private sector. The care-giving sector, which is virtually completely female, is where women face the largest wage discrimination.
Perron said the Coalition will continue to raise awareness with all parties, especially with the MLAs that rejected the motion.
“They did talk about the need for businesses to better understand pay equity and we’re hoping that they will educate the business owners. But at the same time, we know that voluntary measures will never work. The government has tried it before,” she said.
She said the Progressive Conservatives didn’t have pay equity in their platform, but that’s no reason to stay idle on the issue.
“The premier said during the election campaign that he was going to listen to women because he didn’t know that much about women’s issues. Now we really hope that he will listen to the thousands of women who are working in female-dominated jobs that are undervalued and underpaid,” she said.
We just hope that they will collaborate with us because we are half the population and we are voters. We are citizens, too, and we deserve that, I think.”
Beth Lyons, the executive director of the New Brunswick Women’s Council (NBWC) said it has begun advising the new government. She said it should work more with groups like the Coalition and learn from other jurisdictions.
“There needs to be a lot of inter-sectoral collaboration on this between the community-based not-for-profit, the private sector and the government sector,” she said. “It would be wonderful if we heard the private sector speaking up and saying it understands pay equity as a human right and that in the long term, everyone benefits when work is paid equitably.”
Perron encourages businesses to introduce pay equity or at least find out more about it. She said it’s a good HR management tool.
“It’s also beneficial for businesses. They’ll have staff that will feel valued and they’re going to be more dedicated to their work,” she said.
There needs to be more education on what pay equity is and why it’s important, Lyons said.
“There’s still in New Brunswick, and in a lot of places actually, some confusion between pay parity and pay equity. Pay parity is equal pay for equal work. So a man and a woman doing the same job and not being paid differently. Pay equity is where we look at jobs that aren’t the same but are of comparable value based on various factors,” she said.
“Women are essentially subsidizing that for businesses. They’re being underpaid for their work, which affects their long-term economic security, which impacts their long-term health outcome, and which impacts whether or not they age into poverty.”
Other Concerns On Equality
The council, an independent advisory body to the provincial government with members that include frontline organizations, is also voicing concerns about the government’s lack of direct focus on women’s issues.
Some of its members, including the Coalition, the YWCA and Regroupement féministe du Nouveau Brunswick, have also joined other groups to bring their concerns to MLAs.
The council is encouraged the government plans to respond to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action, address homecare, healthcare and poverty reduction.
These are all larger issues that are relevant to women’s equality, Lyons said. But it wants to see a gender lens placed on decisions regarding policies addressing those issues, including women’s homelessness for example.
“Women’s homelessness is often more like couch surfing or being precariously housed in a situation where there’s sexual exploitation…so if we want to make our shelters safe for women, we have to talk about having designated areas for women, we have to have designated bathrooms for women, having women who are on staff,” Lyons said.
The NBWC also wants the government to look into wage increases for early childhood educators and expanding reproductive health services, including midwifery and abortion, with attention paid to increasing regional access.
And it cautioned government on its use of the concept of common sense.
“Common sense often upheld status quos that disenfranchise groups of people,” Lyons said. “Common sense can also indicate thinking that really implies that there’s a universal perspective.”
In reality, Lyons said the experiences of women, sexual minorities, racialized minorities, linguistic minorities, those in poverty, persons with disabilities and so on provide different perspectives. And because many of them aren’t represented in government, “common sense” might lead to the concerns of minorities being “dismissed as frivolous or not taken into account,” she said.