Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER May 15, 2017 NEWS 3 Ontario group joins global push for greater salary transparency Enforcement of employers' legal obligations necessary to close gender wage gap: Lawyer BY MARCEL VANDER WIER THIRTY years after pay equity legislation was introduced in Ontario, the gender wage gap remains a major crisis here and across the country, according to an advocacy group. With this in mind, Toronto's Equal Pay Coalition issued draft legislation to the Ontario Minis- try of Labour last month in a bid for expanded salary transparency that would require employers in the province to report hourly wage and pay arrangements. "Currently, Ontario doesn't have a pay transparency act," said Toronto lawyer Fay Faraday, co- chair of the coalition. "is is a piece of legislation that is really about filling that gap, and using this as another tool to shine a light on what employer practices are, and supporting robust enforce- ment of existing legal obligations." "Pay transparency legislation is the next wave of tools that are being adopted globally to address the pay gap, because it is so en- trenched and there's been so little movement." Proactive legal obligations re- garding pay equity are already in place across Canada, she said. Various pieces of pay equity legis- lation alongside federal and pro- vincial human rights codes are intended to prevent systematic pay discrimination. When Ontario introduced the Pay Equity Act in 1987, looking for progress on gender wage gap, it was a world-leading piece of leg- islation, said Faraday. "It really was a global trailblazer in that it put positive obligations on employers to actively analyze what was happening in their workplaces." But, three decades later, that gap remains wide open at 30 per cent, while more than half of Ontario employers remain non- compliant with the legislation, she said. The coalition's draft legisla- tion addresses: employees' right to know what the pay structure formulae and gender wage gap is at their workplace; employers' ob- ligation to disclose; and employ- ee protection from reprisal for talking about wages. Employers would also be required to disclose annual pay transparency reports to employees, shareholders and the Ministry of Labour. "is isn't about creating new obligations to close the wage gap," said Faraday. "ose legal obligations already exist. is is about enforcing accountability for what's actually happening in practice. e whole point is about ensuring public accountability for pay practices. It would apply to all employers in the public sector as well as the private sector with 10 or more employees." While the federal government announced in October it will implement proactive pay equity legislation for federally regulated employers by 2018, more needs to be done, she said, noting that in Ontario alone, women lose $18 billion in wages each year via the gender wage gap. "e gender pay gap is an enor- mous human rights crisis that needs to be addressed now," said Faraday. Growing focus Legislation regarding pay equity and delivering equal pay for work of equal or comparable value is not a new concept, but it is gaining steam across the globe, said Clau- dine Kapel, principal at Kapel and Associates in Toronto. "We're definitely seeing a grow- ing focus on the issue of the gen- der wage gap and how to close it, which is really a big impetus be- hind all of these different pieces of legislation." The United Kingdom intro- duced similar legislation in April, requiring large firms to report pay discrepancies between male and female employees. And in March, Iceland became the first country in the world to require both pub- lic and private sector employers to prove they offer equal pay to both genders. Germany also adopted an Equal Pay Act that will give workers the right to know the av- erage compensation of colleagues in similar positions at companies of 200 employees or more. Some companies already con- duct business with a high level of pay transparency, while others share no information at all, said Kapel. "They're the ones under the most pressure because, in this day and age, employees are press- ing for more information on how they're paid," she said. PAY > pg. 10

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