Canada Post clerical workers have won a 20-year battle over pay equity in a ruling their union says could cost the post office as much as $150-million in back pay and interest.
The decision, delivered Friday by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, caps a dispute that has raged for more than two decades between unionized members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada and Canada Post over pay for clerical workers.
The union argued that PSAC clerical workers were not being fairly compensated for their work, compared with other Canada Post employees. The union compared clerical salaries paid to their members with those paid to workers in the post office's male-dominated operations group.
In Friday's ruling, the tribunal agreed that a gap existed and ordered the post office to go back and compensate the clerical workers for the disparity.
The decision covers back pay between 1982 and 2002, when the post office and the union agreed to a new job evaluation plan. The tribunal also said, however, that the award would be discounted by half the amount originally calculated by the union because "job information and the non-wage compensation issues have created uncertainty in the determination of the wage gap."
The Public Service Alliance of Canada said Friday that the pay equity adjustments and interest covered in the tribunal's award will total at least $150-million. As many as 6,000 current and past employees could be affected.
The union couldn't say how much each affected person would get. It says Canada Post will have to apply the tribunal decision to each individual's specific employment record to calculate how much they are owed.
"It has taken the union and its members at Canada Post over 22 years to reach this day," PSAC National President Nycole Turmel said in a statement.
"While it has been a long haul, the union's complaint that Canada Post was not paying equal pay for work of equal value has been upheld."
Canada Post said Friday that it will appeal the ruling to the Federal Court.
The case dates back to 1983, when PSAC filed a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission over how wages were set for a group of clerical workers.
After comparing the wages, PSAC argued that the Crown corporation was essentially failing to offer equal pay for work of equal value.
The commission's investigation stretched over 10 years and resulted in referral of the matter to a human-rights tribunal, which began hearings in 1993.
Final arguments were made in the spring of 2003.
In Friday's decision, the tribunal awarded pay equity adjustments to clerical workers retroactive to Aug. 24, 1982. Interest was also awarded back to that date and is to be calculated using Canada Savings Bond interest rates. The adjustments will also apply to benefits such as pensions, overtime and acting pay.
"Women should not have to fight for decades for economic equality," Ms. Turmel said in a statement.
In a statement announcing its decision to appeal the ruling, Canada Post denied that discrimination was at the heart of the matter.
The post office instead argued that the PSAC complaint compared wages of PSAC clerical workers to a subset of another union — the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, which the company says contains the bulk of its female employees.
In an interview, Canada Post vice-president Lynn Palmer said the wage gap between the two groups in question wasn't a result of gender discrimination but grew out of differences in jobs performed and bargaining practices employed by two separate labour groups.
"They are substantially different jobs between a clerk or administrative person in a head office-type environment and what you would find inside one of our plants," she said.
