PSAC-Quebec wishes to mark the 25th anniversary of our historic pay equity victory. On October 29, 1999, PSAC won a long-running battle with Treasury Board over pay equity for federal public service workers. The union’s victory resulted in retroactive pay and interest payouts to some 230,000 PSAC members and former members totaling $3 billion.
“While this battle is still far from over across the country, it was a notable milestone for our members and many female-dominated employments,” says PSAC-Quebec’s Executive Vice-President Yvon Barrière. “The hard work of great leaders like our National Vice-President at the time, Nycole Turmel, and our Regional Executive Vice-President, Joanne Hurens, made equal pay for work of equal value possible in the federal public service.”
This landmark settlement put an end to more than 15 years of litigation. The settlement provided retroactive wage adjustments for women whose work had been undervalued for years in relation to that of their male counterparts. Since that settlement, the Government of Canada has passed the Pay Equity Act, which requires federally regulated employers to proactively address pay inequities between men and women.
The struggle began 16 years earlier, in 1983, when PSAC filed a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) alleging the federal government was violating its own human rights laws by denying equal pay for work of equal value to its workers — mainly women — employed in a wide range of clerical positions. Pay equity had been law since 1976 and PSAC had already achieved successful settlements for a number of federal government bargaining units.
For more details on PSAC’s past and present pay equity battles, please visit our dedicated page.