Read all of CAPE’s pay equity updates here.
The Pay Equity Act, which came into force in 2021, requires employers to proactively establish a pay equity plan and to adjust salaries as required. The role of pay equity committees is to create a pay equity plan which identifies differences in compensation between jobs that are commonly held by women and those commonly held by men and then identify where changes in compensation are necessary to ensure equal pay for work of equal value.
CAPE representatives serve on the separate pay equity committees for the core public administration, the Library of Parliament, the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, and the RCMP.
Below are updates on what the two Parliament Hill pay equity committees have been working on in 2024.
Library of Parliament
Since January 2024, the Library of Parliament pay equity committee has been meeting regularly to review data on gender predominance. Considerable effort has gone into assessing the gender predominance of job categories using current employment data, historical data, as well as stereotypes. The committee has already established job categories and is currently finalizing its analysis on gender predominance.
The committee also recently underwent job evaluation training to better prepare for the next steps of the mandate, which include assessing the value of each job category.
Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
The Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer pay equity committee has made meaningful progress in recent months. The committee has been meeting regularly to review the job evaluations conducted in December 2023.
The preliminary evaluations have been completed, paving the way for further refinement. A sore-thumbing exercise, a process to objectively compare rating decisions made by the committee, was undertaken to identify outliers or errors that “stick out like a sore thumb.”
The committee is currently focused on determining the weighting of each factor in the job evaluation tool to ensure an accurate reflection of organizational priorities.
Please stay tuned for further updates as we continue to make progress. For more information on pay equity and the job evaluation process, check out the resources below.
Resources:
- Video: What is pay equity? – Canadian Human Rights Commission
- Pay equity toolkit – Canadian Human Rights Commission
- Pay Equity Act
