Courts of Appeal Ontario denied the Ford government’s appeal to reverse the decision made on Bill 124 on February 12, reaffirming that the bill is unconstitutional and reinforcing labour unions’ collective bargaining rights.
Although this is a win for labour unions, there are still many public sector workers that are still feeling the aftershock of Bill 124—most of which were women. In public sectors, women are overrepresented—health care, educators and other care workers make up about 79 per cent of the workforce.
Otherwise known as the Protecting a Sustainable Public Sector for Future Generations Act, the bill received royal assent in 2019—it stated that its purpose was to “ensure that increases in public sector compensation reflect the fiscal situation of the province” and to “protect the sustainability of public services.”
“The way that they decided to save money through this bill was by capping compensation increases for a large number of employees in this broader public sector—so education workers, healthcare workers, social services workers,” said Kat Owens, Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF) project director and co-counsel, in an interview with rabble.ca.
As per Bill 124, compensation increases were capped at one per cent per year—it effectively limited the bargaining process affecting wages, vacation pay, and benefits.
“It really hamstrung the whole process and left us, well, paralyzed during those years. From a union perspective, what we saw is something unprecedented because of this bill that has been deemed twice to be unconstitutional,” said Erin Arris, provincial president of the Ontario Nurses Association (ONA).
Although it was struck down in November 2020, there have been lasting effects on women and the public sectors they work in.
Aftermath of Bill 124 and its disproportionate effects on women
Women’s contributions to the public sector are already undervalued—according to Owens, women working in the public sector are subjected to the care penalty
“What it means is that wages in these sectors were already suppressed relative to other sectors. So, if you put a limit on increasing compensation and you don’t put a limit in other sectors, you’re going to see the gap grow,” said Owens.
At the time when the bill was active and wages were capped, Kelly-Anne Orr, assistant to the National Officers at Unifor, found that staff retention and attraction of jobs in the public sector were impacted.
“Your wages aren’t good enough and your workloads are going to double because people are leaving and we can’t replace [them],” said Orr.
For the healthcare sector, this further contributed to the nursing shortages across Ontario—and it continues to hurt healthcare. Then nursing shortages eventually led to the closure of numerous healthcare facilities according to Ariss.
“I can’t emphasize enough the damage that this has done. We have seen in the news over and over again that there are obstetrical units closing because of nursing shortages. We saw over 200 emergency departments close either permanently or temporarily last year throughout Ontario. The predominant reason is because of nursing shortages,” said Ariss.
As women’s work continues to be underpaid and undervalued, Orr said that pay equity is set back and both systemic sexism and racism were worsened by Bill 124.
“I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that Bill 124 deepened the sexism or racism that [workers] in Ontario already experience. All it did was suppress women’s wages and racialized women’s wages. How would you catch up if we didn’t win this? How do we catch up to men if only women are being suppressed in their wages?” said Orr.
Court of Appeal decision is a win for labour unions, but it “lacked a gendered lens”
While the decision is a win for the Ontario public sector workers, Owens said in a LEAF press release on February 12 that the court of appeal’s decision missed the mark on addressing the gendered realities of public workers.
Dijana Simonovic, in-house lawyer and legal counsel at Unifor National, worked on the case against Bill 124. Simonovic noted that the legal arguments on equality were presented to the courts by LEAF, Unifor, ONA and OPSEU.
“At the end of the day, they found that the act did not distinguish based on gender. The way that the justice viewed it was that the act was based on who your employer was. The legal argument about equality wasn’t accepted at the court,” said Simonovic.
“In terms of the reality of who were the members that were affected in our union—the majority was women, the majority was racialized women, the majority was women who were extremely low paid,” she added.
For Owens, she said that collective bargaining rights cannot be fully understood without addressing factors such as gender and race. An intersectional lens is necessary when looking at these issues.
“Essentially, we said, ‘you might think that this bill is neutral because it applies to all of these different workforces. It doesn’t specifically say it applies only to women, or it only applies to racialized women, but the effects of it aren’t neutral. It has this disproportionate impact,’” said Owens.
Support rabble today!
We’re so glad you stopped by! Thanks for consuming rabble content this year.
rabble.ca is 100% reader and donor funded, so as an avid reader of our content, we hope you will consider gifting rabble with a donation during our summer fundraiser today.
Whether it be a one-time donation or a small monthly contribution, your support is critical to keep rabble writers producing the work you’ve come to rely on as a part of a healthy media diet.
Become a rabble rouser — donate to rabble.ca today.
Nick Seebruch, editor
