Labour Congress highlights pay inequity on International Women's Day
Alberni Valley Times
March 11, 2008
By: Heather Reid

Saturday was International Women's Day and labour groups in Canada didn't find it a celebratory occasion.

The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) released a report to mark the event that shows women still get paid less than their male counterparts doing similar work. It states that after many years of progress through the 1970s and 1980s, the gender wage gap in Canada has remained stuck since the mid 1990s at one of the highest levels in the advanced industrial world. In 2005, women working full-time for the full year earned 70.5 per cent as much as men working in comparable jobs. In the mid 1990s women earned 72 per cent as much as men.

The pay gap is even greater for university educated women, who earned just 68 per cent as much as men in 2005, down from 75 per cent a decade ago. The gender pay gap in Canada is the fifth greatest in the advanced industrial (OECD) countries and even bigger than in the US. The CLC gathered these figures to demonstrate that the fight for pay equity is not over.

Members of the Port Alberni and District Labour Council (PADLC) attended a gathering in Nanaimo to hear about the report and show their solidarity. …

"We really focussed on child care, unionization and working women," said Iris Taylor of the CLC. She pointed out that women in unions had smaller pay gaps with men than women in non-unionized workplaces. Taylor said she thought that people left the meeting feeling inspired and motivated, especially in the political arena…

A CALL FOR SUPPORT

Participants were encouraged to send a letter to their MP in support of the Canadian Labour Congress equity campaign. The letter included seven suggestions for improving the lot of women:

- Introduce effective federal pay equity legislation

- Make changes to employment insurance so that it is accessible and fundamentally more fair for women

- Improve maternity and parental benefits

- Set the federal minimum wage at $10 an hour and index it to inflation

- Increase Canada Pension Plan (CPP), Old Age Security (OAS), and Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) benefits

- Create a national affordable, public, not-for-profit child care program…