Analyzing pay equity

Feminist coalition calls on New Brunswick to do better.

by Jody Dallaire

The New Brunswick government recently went through a pay equity exercise, comparing the requirements and the wages of child care, home care and transition house workers on one hand, with two male-dominated jobs, maintenance workers and foremen on the other, to see if the “care” workers were being paid fairly or whether the pay for traditional women’s jobs is still discounted. As usual, the way they asked the question affected the answer they found.

In a lot of workplaces where the positions are traditionally female dominated, there are no male job classes. Other jurisdictions have developed methods to deal with this common situation. In Québec, when there is no male comparator, regulations provide for a maintenance worker and a foreman positions to be used as the typical male job classes or comparators, where none exist.

New Brunswick’s team claimed they would follow Quebec’s model. Unfortunately, instead the New Brunswick government did odd things like compare 2010 maintenance worker wages with 2011 care workers wages, which disadvantaged the female dominated positions.

Also, instead of doing a market study for the foreman classification, as is recommended by Quebec and other human-resources-sanctioned pay equity protocols,  “They took a maintenance worker’s wage, increased it by 20 percent and called that the fair market wage for that job,  which was not based on any study,” said Vallie Stearns, president of the New Brunswick Coalition for Pay Equity. This resulted in a lower wage for a foreman, therefore, again disadvantaging female-dominated jobs.
 
They  also added more responsibilities to the foreman’s job description than are proposed in the Government of Québec established and sound methodology. The additions inflated the value of the foreman’s job and so, again, disadvantaged the female dominated positions.

Bizarrely, the  government excluded the wages of unionized maintenance workers, which further depressed the wage level of the male comparator position, and so, disadvantaged the female-dominated jobs.

The Coalition recently released a report analyzing the New Brunswick government’s report on pay equity in certain female-dominated job groups.  The provincial government’s sloppy work  could result in almost negligible adjustments to underpaid jobs in the child care and homecare sectors.

At the same time, the Coalition applauded New Brunswick for being one of the few provincial governments who are working on closing the wage gap.  New Brunswick just needs to be more rigorous in its efforts.

Back to the provincial pay equity study, which didn’t  use the market wage for the foreman, nor follow the Québec methodology, as it said it would. At the end of such a flawed exercise, only a few child care workers  — “support workers” — were found to deserve a wage adjustment. Home care workers will receive a $2.15 hourly increase and transition home workers would receive a measly 3 pennies more per hour!

“According to the Government of New Brunswick’s pay equity exercise, outreach workers, support workers and child care support workers already earn above ‘fair wage,’” said the Coalition.

New Brunswick’s 2,600 employees in the child care sector, the 3,300 home support workers, and the 60 transition home workers deserve a more rigorous pay equity exercise than that, especially before that methodology can become the model for future pay equity exercise in the private sector — which is the Coalition’s hope for the future.

Status of Women Minister Marie-Claude Blais, who only inherited this file last year, is reportedly open about the discussing the issue and the Coalition says it believes it would not be difficult to correct the methodology before the payouts begin this spring. There is still time then to do the right thing.

© Copyright 2013 Jody Dallaire, All rights Reserved. Written For: StraightGoods.ca