PSAC Pay Equity Bulletin no 5

April  24, 2002

Pay equity case for separate employers moving slowly but moving forward

Work is progressing on the PSAC’s Statement of Claim seeking to have pay equity applied to seven Part II employers under the Public Service Staff Relations Act. After three attempts to have the union’s case dismissed without a hearing, Treasury Board finally filed their statement of defence in November.

The case is currently in the discovery phase. This process is meant to allow each side to "discover" the case that the other side has in order that there be no surprises at trial and to allow the parties to narrow the issues. The amount of material involved in this case means that the discovery process will be a long one and may not be completed until sometime this fall. However, it is a critical phase. Evidence which is not disclosed during this pre-trial phase will likely not be allowed to be introduced at trial.

At this time the PSAC is also applying to the Federal Court to set a fixed schedule of dates for the hearings.

The case affects PSAC members employed by the Office of the Auditor General, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Communications Security Establishment, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, Statistical Survey Operations and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (the former Medical Research Council).