Friday, March 07, 2008
Valuing Women's Work, "Once and For All"
Our fact sheet on Canadian Women's Labour Patterns reveals that while women accounted for 70% of the employment increases in Canada in 2007, a woman still earns only 70% of what a man will in work of equal value. Two recently launched campaigns and a new report challenge this stubborn and glaring economic imbalance in Canadian society.
The Canadian Labour Congress has launched "Equality: Once and For All", a year long campaign for women's economic equality. On International Women's Day, 30 meetings on work-related issues for women will take place in locations across the country. CLC has also produced a report and fact sheets on wage inequity, the gender pay, employment insurance, pensions, the role of unions and child care.
"It's Time for Public Child Care" is another campaign for working women and their families. In Ontario there are regularted child care spaces for only 10% of the children under 12. Driven by the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care and the Ontario Federation of Labour, this campaign includes meetings throughout the province on the desperate need for quality child care and against the privatization of such care by the international corporation that is presently moving into the province. Not only does this big box child care offer poor care for children, "In Australia the biggest child care chain, ABC Learning Centres, caps wages at 50% of costs fueling record profits for its shareholders from the low wages of their staff."
Child care is one of the most prevalent employment categories for women in Canada, according to a release from Statistics Canada this week, yet it is also one of the most poorly paid. The annual income for these workers half that of the national income average. Salaries for child care centre staff range from $12,500 to $29,000 per year, providers outside centres have even lower remuneration, and child care providers in Canada's Live-In Caregiver Program, due to immigration regulations, are very vulnerable to unfair pay and abuse from their employers.(See our fact sheet on child care for more information.)
A report released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives urges the Province of Ontario to fulfill its obligation to child care providers and other public sector workers who are still owed pay equity payments. Twenty years ago, Ontario's Pay Equity Act made pay discrimination illegal, and yet, as Mary Cornish states in "Putting fairness back into women’s pay: The case for Pay Equity in Ontario":
The Canadian Labour Congress has launched "Equality: Once and For All", a year long campaign for women's economic equality. On International Women's Day, 30 meetings on work-related issues for women will take place in locations across the country. CLC has also produced a report and fact sheets on wage inequity, the gender pay, employment insurance, pensions, the role of unions and child care.
"It's Time for Public Child Care" is another campaign for working women and their families. In Ontario there are regularted child care spaces for only 10% of the children under 12. Driven by the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care and the Ontario Federation of Labour, this campaign includes meetings throughout the province on the desperate need for quality child care and against the privatization of such care by the international corporation that is presently moving into the province. Not only does this big box child care offer poor care for children, "In Australia the biggest child care chain, ABC Learning Centres, caps wages at 50% of costs fueling record profits for its shareholders from the low wages of their staff."
Child care is one of the most prevalent employment categories for women in Canada, according to a release from Statistics Canada this week, yet it is also one of the most poorly paid. The annual income for these workers half that of the national income average. Salaries for child care centre staff range from $12,500 to $29,000 per year, providers outside centres have even lower remuneration, and child care providers in Canada's Live-In Caregiver Program, due to immigration regulations, are very vulnerable to unfair pay and abuse from their employers.(See our fact sheet on child care for more information.)
A report released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives urges the Province of Ontario to fulfill its obligation to child care providers and other public sector workers who are still owed pay equity payments. Twenty years ago, Ontario's Pay Equity Act made pay discrimination illegal, and yet, as Mary Cornish states in "Putting fairness back into women’s pay: The case for Pay Equity in Ontario":
the government is failing to fully fund the pay equity adjustments owing to women in the public and broader public sector. In addition, the Pay Equity Commission and Pay Equity Hearings Tribunal, which enforce the Act, are seriously underfunded.$78.1 million is currently owing to women in the public sector. Furthermore, Cornish also points out that women in the private sector are much more vulnerable, an issue that snowballs as more government services become privatized, but little is done to prevent or penalize gender-based wage discrimination.
Labels: Meetings_and_Events, Resources_and_Research
