It is hard to understand why the B.C. government is so reluctant to enact pay equity legislation. Other provinces did this a long time ago, and they are much better than B.C. in having lower gender pay gaps.
The B.C. government tabled new legislation, the 2023 Pay Transparency Act, and says it will move the province toward pay equity. Why not just do it? Rather, B.C.’s government is inching forward in closing the horrendous gender pay gap in tiny, little steps.
Parliamentary Secretary for Gender Equity Kelli Paddon says, “People deserve equal pay for equal work.” Indeed they do, but as she should know, B.C. has had equal pay legislation since 1969 (the last province to get it), and it hasn’t worked. That’s because equal pay basically means being paid the same for the same job and, since the labour force is largely divided by gender, and men and women perform different jobs, the legislation is ineffective.
That is why other jurisdictions have turned to pay equity, which evaluates labour according to “equal pay for work of equal value” within an establishment. This equal value is recognized on the basis of the skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions of the job. Manitoba, Ontario, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick enacted this legislation in the 1980s, and Quebec in the 1990s. The federal government has had some version of it since 1977.
All jurisdictions in the world that have pay transparency enacted pay equity legislation first. That is important, as has been noted by the OECD and the ILO, because only with pay equity do workers have recourse to address discriminatory pay.
B.C.’s gender pay gap is big and ties with Alberta as being the largest in the country. The government says it’s 16.7 per cent, which means women earn 83 cents for every dollar a man earns. The gap is undoubtedly bigger if all working women are considered.
The point of pay transparency is to have businesses of a certain size report about their differences in pay by gender in specific groupings. The hope is that companies that perform poorly will be either enlightened and then be motivated to perform better, or embarrassed, something that also might force a reconsideration of pay differences. That’s it — no new legislation to make companies pay women and men the same for comparable work.
The big problem is that once people know their company discriminates, there isn’t much they can do about it. They might individually be able to make a legal case (if they have the skill and money to do it), but they can do that already with equal pay laws. The difference between pay transparency and pay equity is that with pay equity employers are required to fix big pay discrepancies through pro-active measures.
When the B.C. government was having consultations on pay transparency in the autumn of 2022, it floated the idea that other groups might be included because, as is well-known, wage inequality is greater for Indigenous people, those with disabilities, and those identified by racialization, ethnicity, or religious affiliations. That inclusive language is not in the new legislation.
There are some welcome features in the new legislation, such as prohibiting employers from firing people if they talk about their wages with other employees, and in prohibiting employers from demanding pay history from someone applying for a job. But these are things that could easily have been put in Employment Standards Legislation by the minister of labour years ago.
The B.C. government certainly has done things for women that are important, including reducing child-care costs, increasing the minimum wage, and most recently making prescription contraception free of costs. All of these actions recognize the need to support women’s work. That is why it’s so hard to understand the reluctance to enact pay equity. Since Ontario enacted pay equity legislation 35 years ago, B.C. has had four NDP governments, and still no pay equity.
The 2023 Pay Transparency Act is a serious opportunity missed. Considering the slow pace expected for getting this legislation up and running, it’s unlikely that pay equity will occur before the next election.
This article was originally published in the Vancouver Sun.
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