A return to wage discrimination : Pay equity losses through the privatization of health care

It was a feature of the Treaty of Versailles early in the 20th century, which became the Pay Equity basis for its inclusion in the Treaty of Rome, which in turn established the European Union’s approach to pay The under-valuation of women’s work, particularly in equity. [...] The result was an approach that focused the work performed by a woman is the same as the value on the introduction of pay equity guidelines in the pub- of the work performed by a man the two should be paid lic sector.3 In 1995 the government introduced the Pub- A RETURN TO WAGE DISCRIMINATION |. Pay Equity Losses Through the Privatization of Health Care 7 Until recently, health support Ironically, [...] This was sult, the pay equity policy remains on the books and fund- ing continues to be made available to some sectors de- largely a result of the efforts spite the very concerted efforts to reverse the gains of pay of unions to redress the equity in the health support sector outlined below. [...] Its members have been the pri- The measures to institute pay equity within the public mary focus of the provincial government’s privatization sector had a significant impact on the wage gap between initiatives, although other unions, such as the BC Gov- males and females in the public sector. [...] One of the first acts of the new Liberal including bargaining for pay equity provisions in collec- government was to repeal the legislation and to instead tive agreements, initiating human rights complaints, create a task force to study the possibility of instituting making submissions to government, and seeking arbi- pay equity for the private sector.