Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER May 2, 2016 18 INSIGHT NOT SUCH A SMASHING SUCCESS COON RAPIDS, MINNESOTA — Convinced they were doing the right thing, workers at a Burger King outlet smashed all the win- dows at their restaurant recently. e strange move was prompted by a call from a man identifying himself as a fi re department of- fi cial, according to Reuters. e man seemed to know commer- cial fi re safety systems and asked the manager to check them. e caller then said gas pressure was rising and warned the restaurant was in danger of exploding unless the windows were broken to re- lieve pressure. So customers were ushered out and the manager and three other employees grabbed tire irons from their cars and be- gan smashing the glass. By the time authorities arrived, almost all the ground-floor windows were shattered, causing several thousand dollars in damage, ac- cording to police captain Tom Hawley. One worker suff ered mi- nor cuts and was treated by med- ics. It was determined the whole thing was a hoax, with similarities to other phony calls in California and Oklahoma. CANINES CATCHING CULINARY CROOKS MANCHESTER, U.K. — Set up at a cost of $1.25 million pounds (C$2.3 million), a team of sniff er dogs at a British airport have proven somewhat of a disappointment. During a seven-month period, the six dogs failed to fi nd any illegal class-A drugs, such as heroin or cocaine, but were quite adept at fi nding small amounts of cheese and sausages, "wrongly brought back by returning British holidaymakers and posing minimal risk to U.K. public health," said a report from Borders and Immigration. "The deterrent eff ect of the detection dogs was diffi cult to measure, but seizures alone represented a low return on investment, given the 1.25 million spent on new kennels and the costs of operating the unit." While fi nding drugs was a "very high priority," the canines did manage to help customs seize 46 kg of cigarettes and 181 kg of meat. Managers are now examining how to better use the dogs. BUT THEY'RE SO SIMILAR… PROVIDENCE — A top market- ing offi cial resigned recently after it was revealed a promotional cam- paign for Rhode Island featured footage from Reykjavik, Iceland. Betsy Wall resigned from the Rhode Island Commerce Corp., which developed the campaign featuring a brief clip of a skate- boarder outside Reykjavik's con- cert hall, according to Reuters. State residents had lambasted the ad, along with its slogan "cooler and warmer" on Twitter and in lo- cal media. "It's unacceptable how many mistakes were made in this roll-out and we need to hold peo- ple accountable because Rhode Islanders deserve better, taxpayers deserve better," said governor Gina Raimondo. "'Cooler and warmer' is not a tag line that Rhode Island- ers like… that much is clear." e state will also recoup the $120,000 spent on the video. NOT THE BEST CHOICE OF WORDS PITTSBURGH — Social media got yet another person in trouble recently after a long-time TV anchor was dismissed from her position. Wendy Bell posted com- ments to Facebook after a shoot- ing that left fi ve people dead, in- cluding a pregnant woman and her unborn child, according to USA Today. Bell, who is white, said it didn't take a criminal pro- fi le to "draw a mental sketch of the killers. ey are young, black men, likely teens or in their early 20s. ey have multiple siblings from multiple fathers and their mothers work multiple jobs. ese boys have been in the sys- tem before. They've grown up there. ey know the police." e post caused a backlash on social media and Bell apologized for her comments, admitting they "were insensitive and could be viewed as racist," but WTAE in Pittsburgh said the racially charged com- ments "were inconsistent with the company's ethics and journalistic standards" and let Bell go. W EIRD ORKPLACE THE Vol. 29 No. 8 – May 2, 2016 PUBLISHED BY Thomson Reuters Canada Ltd. One Corporate Plaza 2075 Kennedy Rd. Toronto, ON M1T 3V4 ©Copyright 2015 by Thomson Reuters Canada Ltd. All rights reserved. CANADIAN HR REPORTER is published 21 times a year. Publications Mail – Agreement # 40065782 Registration # 9496 – ISSN 0838-228X Director, Carswell Media: Karen Lorimer - (416) 649-9411 karen.lorimer@thomsonreuters.com EDITORIAL Acting Publisher/Editor in Chief: Todd Humber - (416) 298-5196 todd.humber@thomsonreuters.com Editor/Supervisor: Sarah Dobson - (416) 649-7896 sarah.dobson@thomsonreuters.com Senior Editor: Liz Bernier - (416) 649-7837 liz.bernier@thomsonreuters.com Employment Law Editor: Jeffrey R. 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Address changes and returns: Send changes and undeliverable Canadian addresses to: SUBSCRIBER SERVICES Canadian HR Reporter One Corporate Plaza 2075 Kennedy Rd. Toronto, ON M1T 3V4 CUSTOMER SERVICE Call: (416) 609-3800 (Toronto) (800) 387-5164 (outside Toronto) Fax: (416) 298-5082 (Toronto) (877) 750-9041 (outside Toronto) Email: carswell.customerrelations@ thomsonreuters.com LETTERS TO THE EDITOR todd.humber@thomsonreuters.com CHRR reserves the right to edit for length and clarity. Todd Humber EDITOR'S NOTES MAYBE SHE LEFT THE BATH RUNNING? HOUSTON — Apparently in a rush to be fi rst off the plane after landing in Houstin, a fl ight attendant recently took the easy way out by deploying the emergency evacuation slide. e United Airlines employee fi rst tossed her bag out of a door behind the cockpit and then proceeded to slide down to the tarmac where she grabbed her bag and walked away from the plane, according to Reuters. "It is our understanding that she deployed it intentionally," said United Airlines spokesperson Charlie Hobart. e fl ight, with 159 passengers and six crew members onboard, was briefl y taken out of service for mainte- nance and then returned to its scheduled use. But that was not the case for the fl ight attendant — she has been removed from fl ying duties. Credit: Zern Liew (Shutterstock) It's 2016 – let's deal with pay equity New whitepaper offers solutions to tackle decades-long issue C anada has a federal cabi- net that is a perfect gen- der balance. The rea- son, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau famously answered last fall, was "because it's 2015." Well now it's 2016. And despite the laudable makeup in the halls of power in Ottawa, the wage dis- parity between men and women is alive and kicking. at was a point driven home this week with the release of a whitepaper by the Human Re- sources Professionals Association (HRPA) in Toronto. Closing the Gender Wage Gap looks at a six key reasons behind the gap, including education and career path decisions, negotia- tions, performance evaluations and workplace fl exibility. My mom was an elementary school teacher. I was given an ear- ly lesson in pay equity in the early 1990s when her school board in Windsor, Ont., almost doubled her salary — from something in the low $30,000 range to more than $50,000. She was a combi- nation of happy and aghast — pleased to fi nally be paid the same as a man doing the exact same job, but upset that women educators had toiled for so long at a lesser wage rate. Pay equity has always been a head-scratcher — it's hard to fathom anyone purposely paying a female worker less just because she's a woman — at least, not in this day and age. Enough time has passed that we can't blame the Don Drapers of the world or the 1950s anymore — so we don't have that old punching bag of an excuse. So what's at play? If we assume men are making these decisions, well, men have mothers, daugh- ters, wives, sisters, nieces. e list goes on and on. It's hard to imag- ine more than a handful having a Neanderthal attitude towards gender equity. And yet, according to Statis- tics Canada, the pay equity gap persists at anywhere from 12 per cent to 31.5 per cent. In real dol- lars, that's $168 billion in wages missing from the Canadian economy. e bulk of the blame, then, surely rests on unconscious bi- ases — a notion clearly addressed in HRPA's research. e paper off ers ideas to solve some issues, such as getting more women into the STEM fi elds (science, tech- nology, engineering and math), off ering training on negotiations (apparently men are better at asking for money) and conduct- ing blind evaluations in the hiring process. But the ideas I really like are the ones with more teeth. Clear- ly, we need a little more bite to match the bark to solve a prob- lem that has been dragging on for decades. The paper calls on the On- tario government to introduce wage transparency reporting. It's something that is done in the Nordic countries, and the United Kingdom has launched a plan to "end the gender pay gap in a gen- eration" by requiring employers with more than 250 staff to pub- lish average pay gaps. Sunshine is the best disinfec- tant, after all. Another solid recommenda- tion is one that calls for the prov- ince to develop online training for managers that focuses on cultural sensitivity, the wage gap and pay equity. Ontario already has a similar web-based module to introduce managers to health and safety laws — and it's mandatory for supervisors. Done properly, this could help managers uncover hidden biases and ensure they don't continue making decisions that kick the pay equity can down the road. Is fi xing this going to be expen- sive? Perhaps. Your payroll will undoubtedly go up. But what's the alternative? As a man, do you want to go home to your wife, look her in the eye and tell her "Sorry, you're worth a bit less than me?" Or deliver that message to your daughter? Or mouth those words to your mother? There was one bit of bright light that also appeared as a head- line this week. According to an article posted on CNN, "women in technology, sales or marketing with two years' or less experi- ence actually got salary off ers that were seven per cent higher than those received by equally inexpe- rienced men, according to the job site Hired." But don't celebrate too much. e same study found — surprise, surprise — men received higher salary off ers for the same job title at the same company 69 per cent of the time. It's unfathomable this gap isn't closing quicker. It's 2016. Let's fi x this.

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