Some 200 professionals from the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Center Research Center (CHU) have been waiting for years for the sums due to them in pay equity, assessed by their union in several tens of thousands of dollars per person. The union organization denounces this “systemic discrimination” with regard to women.
The Alliance of the Public Service of Canada (AFPC)-Quebec says that the Sainte-Justine CHU shows “laxity” and “manifest lack of will” in this case. The staff of the research center are mostly female.
“The message to the employer is:” Wage equity, you must do it. Do it adequately and pay what you need. And stop lying in length “,” summarizes the union advisor Pascal Lauzon.
The Sainte-Justine CHU has long completed the salary equity process of its other employees.
For the Research Center, the work started in 2017. However, the first of the four stages of the process (identification of job categories) has not yet succeeded, impatient the union.
It is very difficult with this employer. There is always this great resistance to move forward.
Tawfik Said, head of the salary equity file at the Canada Public Service Alliance
The research equity program of the Research Center is retroactive on December 18, 2008. At the time, employees earned between $ 9 (the minimum wage) and $ 46 per hour, according to the union. About 60 % had a master’s degree or a doctorate.
“In terms of sums at stake, we are talking about millions and millions of dollars,” says Pascal Lauzon. There is a percentage of legal interest that applies to it. »»
AFPC-Quebec presss the CHU to set up the file. The union is in negotiation for the renewal of the collective agreement.
“The employer may well say that these are two different exercises, in the end, the envelope of an organization is not expandable, and we know it well on both sides,” says Pascal Lauzon.
A “complex” file
The Sainte-Justine CHU claims that the file is “complex”.
“The discussions are buying on certain neuralgic points for the continuation of the salary equity process,” it is written in an email.
However, the establishment ensures that its teams “are committed to participating in the process of good faith and promptly responding to requests from the union party and the CNESST” (Commission for standards, equity, health and safety of labor).
In recent years, the file has been found several times before the CNESST and the Labor Administrative Court. A mediation approach was carried out from June to December 2024, reports the health establishment.
“This was unfortunately not conclusive and the file has now returned to the CNESST evaluation,” writes the Sainte-Justine CHU.
“Unacceptable” according to QS
Québec Solidaire judges “unacceptable” “injustice” suffered by research professionals from the Sainte-Justine CHU.
The Sainte-Justine CHU is public, it is the government. It was as if the government did not respect its own law itself.
Ruba Ghazal, parliamentary head of Quebec Solidaire
The Wage equity law was adopted in 1996. It applies to companies with 10 or more employees, whether for non -profit or that they belong to private, public or parapublic sectors.
“If it was a private company that was to apply this government law, normally, the government would have hit the door and said to the employer:” You have to rules that for there to be wage equity. ” »»
Ruba Ghazal asks the Sainte-Justine CHU to “discuss and negotiate in good faith” to reach an agreement.
What is wage equity?
It is a question of “a person’s right to receive a salary equal to that of another person with an equivalent value employment in the same company,” explains the CNESST. Salary equity makes it possible to “reduce wage differences between typically female jobs and typically male jobs”.
