Critical Analysis Students develop their own critical analysis of three assigned readings (covered prior to the due date). Articles and chapters can be taken from multiple topics to compare and contr

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Copyright © 2019. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. 24  Working Women in Canada unions unashamedly put men’s needs ahead of women’s. The centrality of men’s issues—which unions conceptualized as “workers’ issues”—reflected the mostly male demographics of union membership, the all-male union leadership, and the patriarchal social mores of those times that championed the needs and expecta - tions of the male breadwinner and normalized discrimination against women.

Sugiman (1994, p. 172) argues that the International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW; now Unifor in Canada) “adopted a narrow definition of unionism that advanced the general principles of democracy, equality, and worker unity, yet failed to question the blatant sex-based inequalities in employment.” This was true for the movement as a whole, including the most progressive union of that era, the United Electri - cal, Radio and Machine Workers Union (UE) (Guard, 1996). Union women were not neglected as long as their needs fit within the male-centred vision of fairness and equality. They were substantially better paid than nonunion women, more secure in their jobs, and assured of strong represen - tation if their pay was short or they faced discipline for shoddy work, pilfering, or other breaches of workplace rules. But union women were not the equals of union men. When women’s needs diverged from or were in conflict with men’s—when women claimed the right to be promoted to better-paying “men’s jobs” or return to work after the birth of a child with their seniorit y intact—they commonly faced indifference or outright resistance. From the union point of view, working women were not real workers; they were secondary earners, not family breadwin - ners, so less entitled to full union support (Creese, 1999). The masculinist ethos of mid-20th-century unionism was soon challenged by women and men whose vision of solidarity and democracy made room for women’s voices and women leaders. The long process of reform began in the 1960s and remains unfinished business. Influenced by second-wave feminism and left-leaning political groups, union women developed a growing conscious - ness of their rights as women and as workers (Luxton, 2001; Sangster, 2011).

I mportant milestones toward gender equality were the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada (1967–1970), amendments to human rights codes to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex and marital status (early 1970s), the rapid growth of public-sector unions (1970s), the fight to ensure women’s full inclusion in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (late 1970s to early 1980s), and a new, substantive vision of gender equality (1985 to present).

Along the way, women activists’ interactions with the gay liberation, antiracism, and disability rights movements broadened and refined the meaning of gender equality in the workplace and society at large. Working_Women.indd 24 09/08/19 2:15 PM Working Women in Canada : An Intersectional Approach, edited by Leslie Nichols, Canadian Scholars, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=6282096.

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Copyright © 2019. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. Chapter 2 Unions ar e d e finitely g o od for Women—But t h at’s n o t the Whole  s t ory  25 This ferment has changed our ideas about women as workers and union members dramatically. In the 1950s and 1960s, many women agreed that men should be given priority for good jobs, only 16% of working women were union members, and union men outnumbered union women by five to one. Today, most women believe they are fully entitled to any job they can perform, 30% are union members, and women outnumber men in unions (Akyeampong, 1998; Statistics Canada, 2016). Clearly, women should expect unions to put gender equality at the centre of the union project. This chapter investigates the extent to which union collective bargaining policies and practices have kept pace with women’s changing expectations. In the Canadian context, unions are workers’ recognized voice and empowered to act on their behalf. By law, unions are authorized to negotiate with employers over pay, job security, and working conditions, and to use their bargaining power, including threats of work stoppage, to secure favourable outcomes. Unions are similarly legally empowered to use the grievance-arbitration process to challenge employers’ decisions to reorganize the work process, grant or allocate benefits or privileges, and discipline or dismiss workers. How unions exercise this power is a strong measure of their commitment to gender equality. What unions do in collective bargaining is “a tough and important guide to the seriousness of union engagement with an issue” (Hunt & Eaton, 2007, p. 137). Many unions actively campaign for pro-equality legislative action. How - ever, it is the terms and conditions of employment secured at the bargaining table and unions’ defence of those rights through the grievance-arbitration pro - cess that provide the most meaningful way of evaluating union commitment to solidarity, democracy, and gender equality. Like all organizations, unions must set priorities and make trade-offs, and there are many considerations: bargain - ing power, scarce resources (time, money, talent), and the competing demands and expectations of majority and minority group members. Consequently, union action or inaction on behalf of women says a great deal about the movement’s commitment to gender equality. The next three sections examine how unions have conceptualized women’s place as workers and union members by analyzing how “women’s issues” have been taken up at the bargaining table and in grievance-arbitration. The chapter traces the evolution of union thinking and practice on four key concerns: access to good jobs, fair pay, maternity rights, and dignity on the job. It does not con - sider how union politics have led to changes in collective bargaining practices, which has been the subject of a number of academic studies from different per - spectives (Briskin & McDermott, 1993; Foley & Baker, 2009). Working_Women.indd 25 09/08/19 2:15 PM Working Women in Canada : An Intersectional Approach, edited by Leslie Nichols, Canadian Scholars, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=6282096.

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Copyright © 2019. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. 26  Working Women in Canada The chapter concludes by reflecting on the usefulness of collective bargaining as a means for achieving gender equality. There is no doubt that union women are better off than other women, but this is a low bar. A more appropriate ques - tion is whether unions have closed the gender gap in job opportunities, pay, and working conditions. The analysis offered here reveals a mixed record. At times, unions have used their bargaining power to support women’s demands for more equitable terms and conditions of employment; at others, their action (or inac - tion) has narrowed women’s rights in relation to union men’s. With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that the past is very much with us. On the one hand, the sexist, racist, and homophobic attitudes of union members and union leaders of mid-20th-century Canada have been pushed to the side; on the other hand, the choices available to women and unions today continue to be constrained by the structures and practices created in that era. As you read this chapter, it is important to remember the mores of the times.

Eighty years ago, unions were not uniquely sexist organizations. Employers actively discriminated against women in their hiring and pay practices, public policy favoured the male breadwinner, and few laws protected women’s rights.

Unions reflected and solidified aspects of this discriminatory system. However, they have also enhanced women’s economic rights and opportunities and have been at the forefront of efforts to challenge and change this system. W OM EN ’S A C CESS TO B R EADWINNER J OBS Canadian women today believe they are entitled to any job they are qualified to perform, and this expectation is affirmed by legislation. Yet obstacles to women’s equality in the workforce clearly remain. Notwithstanding new attitudes and aspirations, job segregation by gender within and between industries is wide- spread in both the union and nonunion sectors and the source of the gender gap in pay. Most women—union and nonunion; white, racialized, and Indigenous— continue to work with other women and to perform versions of “women’s work ” that are as complex and demanding as men’s work, yet pay less, are less secure, and offer fewer promotional opportunities (Arcila, Ferrer, & Schirle, 2017). Job segregation by race is also widespread. Racialized workers are overrepresented in poorly paid, precarious service jobs and less likely to be represented by unions than white workers, which explains why workers of colour, on average, were paid only 81 cents for every dollar earned by all Canadians in 2006 (Block & G alabuzi, 2011; Jackson, 2005; Reitz & Verma, 2004). Working_Women.indd 26 09/08/19 2:15 PM Working Women in Canada : An Intersectional Approach, edited by Leslie Nichols, Canadian Scholars, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=6282096.

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Copyright © 2019. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. Chapter 2 Unions ar e d e finitely g o od for Women—But t h at’s n o t the Whole  s t ory  27 Union Support for Job Segregation by Gender Prior to 1970, when overt discrimination against women was lawful, employers, unions, and governments all championed a regime that reserved “ breadwinner jobs” for men—secure jobs that could support a family and offered better oppor- tunities for advancement. In light manufacturing, food processing plants, offices, grocery stores, and hotels—the industries where most union women worked— job titles were routinely gendered, for example, “assembler-male/assembler- f emale,” or “ janitor” for men’s work and “housekeeper” for women’s work.

Women (referred to as “girls” in that era) were also assigned to a separate job category for women, boys, and disabled workers. In male-dominated workplaces such as resource extraction, heav y manufacturing, construction, transportation, and utilities, labelling jobs by gender was unnecessary: women were simply not hired to perform these blue-collar jobs. Both employers and unions believed that women were not fit to be steelworkers, bus drivers, electricians, or miners. Hiring decisions were (and are) also influenced by race. In mid-20th-c e ntury Canada, the racialized workforce was predominantly composed of Jews and immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Racialized women were steered toward labour-intensive industries such as garment-making and food processing; men were placed in unskilled, physically demanding jobs in both the union and nonunion sectors. All were quickly integrated into a wide range of industries, and many made significant personal sacrifices to help establish unions in their work - places. But not all racialized workers were on an equal footing. Some were all but excluded from the union sector. Until the 1980s, it was exceptional for black, brown, and Indigenous workers in Canada—particularly women—to have access to better-paying jobs in unionized workplaces (Creese, 1999; Sugiman, 1994). Formal job segregation by gender came under challenge in the 1960s, and union women led the way. Sugiman (1994) recounts how the reorganization of the auto industry led union women to press their case for reform with their union and the Ontario government. General Motors’ (GM) decision to close its cutting and trim department in Oshawa led to layoffs of women even as men were being hired elsewhere in the plant. When laid-off women tried to use their seniority to bump into jobs in other departments, they learned they could not: their seniority was tied to jobs set aside for women, and those jobs were being eliminated. The UAW would not commit to rethinking this gender division of labour and refused to pursue grievances filed by its women members. Frustrated and angered by their union’s inaction, a group of activists joined with other women’s groups to demand a change to the Ontario Human Working_Women.indd 27 09/08/19 2:15 PM Working Women in Canada : An Intersectional Approach, edited by Leslie Nichols, Canadian Scholars, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=6282096.

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Copyright © 2019. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. 28  Working Women in Canada Rights Code, which at that time did not prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex (or marital status). The campaign was timely—denying women access to better-paying jobs simply because they were women was out of step with public sentiment—and garnered widespread support, including support from unions.

The law was changed in 1970, and the GM women got what they wanted: the women-only job class was eliminated and women workers acquired plant-wide seniority, which some used to secure jobs in previously men-only departments.

But other women did not fare so well. In most workplaces, the impact of the new law was not a thoroughgoing change in hiring and promotion practices.

After 1970 all jobs were technically open to both women and men, but in practice, this was not the case. Most employers continued to hire men for jobs tradition - ally performed by men and women for jobs traditionally performed by women.

Well into the 1970s, some collective agreements continued to identify jobs by gender with union support (Guard, 1996; Tillotson, 1991; Townson, 1975). In some workplaces, compliance with the law was achieved by the simple expedient of renaming jobs. For example, “assembler-male” became “assembler-heav y” and “assembler-female” became “assembler-light,” but the pay differential was left intact. In other workplaces, where jobs were implicitly but not explicitly gen - dered, there was no ostensible need for change. Job titles such as “ janitor” and “housekeeper” and the gender gap in pay did not violate the new law, as long as the duties were different, even in small ways, such as requiring janitors to use larger mops or do occasional heav y lifting (Tillotson, 1991). The revised human rights code prohibited overt gender discrimination, but left many forms of indirect discrimination untouched. While it was no longer lawful to refuse to hire a woman into a formerly male job class, most employ - ers continued to assign new women employees to entry-level jobs in lower- paid “women’s work.” Once hired, they commonly found their opportunities for a dvancement restricted by union-negotiated seniority systems that gave long-tenure employees priority for promotions and better protection from layoffs within well-defined “seniority districts” (job clusters). Failure to tackle the thorny issue of seniority rights disadvantaged women by constraining their opportunities for advancement. In unionized workplaces, job vacancies are filled by existing employees according to their seniority in the seniority district. As a result, although seniority systems were gender neutral on their face, they reinforced the existing gender-linked patterns of job segregation by ensuring that job vacancies in better-paying job classes were filled by men and vacancies in lower-paid “women’s work ” by women. Consequently, after 1970, as before, union women who were hired into entry-level jobs in a “women’s work ” Working_Women.indd 28 09/08/19 2:15 PM Working Women in Canada : An Intersectional Approach, edited by Leslie Nichols, Canadian Scholars, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=6282096.

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Copyright © 2019. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. Chapter 2 Unions ar e d e finitely g o od for Women—But t h at’s n o t the Whole  s t ory  29 job class continued to be caught by seniority systems that locked them into nar- rowly constructed, lower-paid job sequences with fewer possibilities for promo - tion. (The same restrictive dynamic affected racialized men as well insofar as their jobs were grouped into narrowed defined seniority districts that confined them to the hottest and dustiest departments.) Implementing the spirit (rather than the letter) of the new law would have required a radical rethinking of women’s economic rights and significant modi - fications of seniority systems. At a minimum, truly opening breadwinner jobs to women would have necessitated the creation of broader, gender-inclusive senior - ity districts, as was done at GM. For the most part, however, this did not happen.

Dominion Stores, a grocery store chain, was typical. The new law provoked no fundamental change in its gender division of labour. After 1970, with the union’s agreement of the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU), the company retitled “clerk-female” as “clerk A” and “clerk-male” as “clerk B.” Clerk A continued to be a female-dominated job class with a shorter seniority list and a maximum wage that was 10% lower than that of clerk B ( Dominion Stores Ltd. , 1976). Because the seniority system was left untouched, Dominion Store women who sought promotion to the higher-paying, male-dominated clerk B job class could not displace a clerk B worker with less seniority. Union represen - tation gave clerk A women a path forward, but they were required to take the lowest-paid entry-level job in the clerk B seniority district, even if they had many years of service with the firm. Seniority rights were (and are) among the most coveted of union benefits and jealously guarded. Then, as now, any proposal to reconfigure seniority districts to advance women’s economic opportunities would be opposed by some as unfair “reverse discrimination” against men and undermine support for gender equality (Sheppard, 1984). Even the UE (United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of A mer ica) , which publicly championed women’s economic equality, failed to deliver.

The union did not prioritize “equal seniority rights for women or the elimination of the sex-specific job classifications that prevented women from ‘ bumping’ into men’s jobs as bargaining issues” (Guard, 1996, p. 167) and often resisted women using their seniority rights to claim jobs over men. These complexities explain why even some women’s rights advocates are cautious about improving women’s economic opportunities by modifying seniority rights (Sheppard, 1984). By contrast, Das Gupta (1996, p. 100) questions whether seniority rights should be left intact if doing so amounts to discrimination against marginalized workers. She speaks approvingly of a United Steel Workers (USWA) collective agreement that gives preference to Indigenous workers in layoff and recall situations, regardless of their seniority. Working_Women.indd 29 09/08/19 2:15 PM Working Women in Canada : An Intersectional Approach, edited by Leslie Nichols, Canadian Scholars, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=6282096.

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Copyright © 2019. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. 30  Working Women in Canada Union Support for Women Doing Men’s Work The 1970s and 1980s saw a number of “firsts”—first woman in a steel mill, first woman on a construction site, first woman bus driver, first woman police officer (all white)—some with active union support. Unions at Stelco (a steel producer in Hamilton, Ontario, now US Steel), CN, Gaz Métropolitain, and elsewhere publicly championed women’s rising economic aspirations and supported their right to hold any job they were qualified to perform. But that willingness was (and often continues to be) contingent on the formal equality expectation that women will do a job in exactly the same way and under exactly the same con - ditions as men. Accordingly, when women raise concerns about their working conditions or appear to fall short in job performance, their gender difference is commonly taken as evidence that they are not fit for these jobs. This formal equality proposition is not realistic. If women are to succeed in jobs created by men for men, some accommodation must be made. Among other things, a separate locker room must be built, correctly sized safety equip - ment must be provided, and consideration must be given to the woman whose baby-sitter does not show up. As Luxton and Corman (1991) observed about the integration of women into Stelco in the late 1970s, “It was impossible for the women simply to be workers. They were always women first, women working in a male workplace” (p. 67). This dynamic applied every where. The fact that women are not “like men” has made it difficult for some to succeed in jobs struc - tured for men’s bodies or men’s social practices. Neither managers nor male workers have found the hiring of women into male-dominated workplaces easy to navigate. In her study of women guards in a US men’s prison, Zimmer (1987) discovered that newly hired women were given poor performance reviews because they used different techniques to gain prison - ers’ compliance with the rules. In contrast to male guards, who used shows of force to secure prisoners’ cooperation, female guards were more likely to establish friendly relationships that proved to be just as effective in an emergency. The fact that women chose a different approach because they could not count on the sup - port of their male coworkers was overlooked. Similarly, GM and Inco, a nickel and copper mining company in Sudbury, Ontario (now called VALE), soon found themselves in dispute with their unions over their decisions to exclude women (but not men) from production jobs that exposed workers to chemicals like lead that are particularly injurious to the fetus. In this instance, concerns for women’s reproductive health raised awkward questions about the impact of hazardous materials on men (Fudge, 1991). Working_Women.indd 30 09/08/19 2:15 PM Working Women in Canada : An Intersectional Approach, edited by Leslie Nichols, Canadian Scholars, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=6282096.

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Copyright © 2019. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. Chapter 2 Unions ar e d e finitely g o od for Women—But t h at’s n o t the Whole  s t ory  31 The integration of women into previously all-male work spaces and processes has challenged union leaders as well as managers to question their belief that workers whose skills and abilities do not mirror those of the existing workforce would necessarily underperform. This has proven to be a false assumption, yet it remains a lively point of contention in industries such as forestry where phys - ical strength and willingness to work in dangerous conditions are highly prized (Mills, 2011). The necessity of representing these “new” groups has pushed unions to think in new ways about women workers’ rights. How, why, and to what extent gender differences should be accepted and supported is an ongoing project. Gradually, through practice (not theory), many unions have come to see that a strict application of formal equality thinking—the principle that all work - ers must always be treated alike—addresses some but not all of the challenges faced by women members. Resolving practical problems such as mothers’ need to be available to children in case of emergency edged unions toward substantive equality thinking. This approach does not accept that gender equality is achieved when women are treated just like men, but asks rather whether women are dis - advantaged by workplace policies or practices. This would be the case in many factories where workers are not permitted to call out or receive phone calls dur - ing work time. Negotiating permission for women to check on their children’s welfare would be a sensible accommodation of their family-care responsibilities.

However, such a proposal could be seen as unfair, as special rules for women, by workers who adhere to a strict formal-equality definition of fairness. An astute union could avoid this outcome by advocating that all workers with family-care responsibilities be permitted to receive calls from children when needed—a sub - stantive equality solution that would benefit many fathers as well as mothers. The shift from formal to substantive equality thinking is critical for gen - der equality, as Tawnney Meiorin’s grievance demonstrates. In 1994, Meiorin was dismissed from her job as a firefighter for the British Columbia Ministry of Forests after three years on the job because she failed a newly instituted physical fitness test. Her employer believed that Meiorin’s lesser physical fitness would jeopardize her safety and the safety of her coworkers and the public. Her union disagreed and filed a grievance on her behalf, which it pursued aggressively and successfully, all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada ( British Columbia [ Public Service Employee Relations Commission] v. BCGSEU , 1999).

The support of the British Columbia Government and Service Employees Union (BCGSEU) for Meiorin was both ordinary and remarkable: ordinary because unions almost always fight dismissal cases, and remarkable because it defended Meiorin’s right to a job that required a standard of physical fitness Working_Women.indd 31 09/08/19 2:15 PM Working Women in Canada : An Intersectional Approach, edited by Leslie Nichols, Canadian Scholars, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=6282096.

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Copyright © 2019. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. 32  Working Women in Canada that she could not attain, even with practice. The union’s challenge was remark - able as well because it rejected the argument that women must be “like men” to be employed in “men’s work.” When, as in this case, women don’t measure up to employer expectations, a substantive equality analysis questions whether the qualifications demanded by the employer are actually necessary to perform the job successfully or just happen to be those of the men currently doing the job. In its defence of Meiorin, the union argued that the fitness requirement discriminated against women, who, on average, are physiologically less able to do aerobic work than men. They also critiqued the lack of evidence to support the employer’s claim that its new standard of physical fitness was necessary for firefighters to perform their jobs safely. This case made legal history—we now have the “Meiorin test” to determine whether job requirements are truly necessary to perform the job successfully. If not, they can be challenged, putting another crack in the wall of job segregation by gender. This approach is now used in grievance arbitration and by human rights tribunals across Canada. Thus, the beneficiaries are not just union women, but also nonunion women, racialized workers, disabled workers, and others who may not be hired because they are stereotyped by employers who assume they are less able to perform the job than white or male applicants. Willingness to reconsider established policies and practices is not universal.

Mills’s (2011) investigation of an employment equity initiative at a S askatchewan forestry firm reveals limited union support. The union went along with targeted hiring of white and First Nations women (and men) for production jobs, but was unwilling to consider part-time work for women with children and voted against a proposal to expand apprenticeship training if two positions were filled by “ diversity” hires. The apprenticeship proposal was rejected, Mills argues, because the majority of the members believed that seniority is a fair, nondiscrimina - tory mechanism for allocating scarce job opportunities. Reality is more complex:

s eniority is a fair way to reward the contributions of longer-service workers, but it cannot correct for years of discriminatory hiring practices. Modifying seniority systems to correct for past discrimination is a highly controversial and as yet unused remedy on behalf of a class of workers in Canada.

Dulude (1995) pointed out that the failure to give women retroactive seniority in the Action Travail des Femmes case against CN meant that women’s progress had been minimal. As new employees, women were placed at the bottom of the seniority list and therefore were vulnerable to layoff and not likely to be recalled.

This was not an isolated outcome. In all the male-dominated firms that opened their doors to women in the 1980s, women’s place at the bottom of seniority lists Working_Women.indd 32 09/08/19 2:15 PM Working Women in Canada : An Intersectional Approach, edited by Leslie Nichols, Canadian Scholars, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=6282096.

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Copyright © 2019. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. Chapter 2 Unions ar e d e finitely g o od for Women—But t h at’s n o t the Whole  s t ory  33 and application of the “last in, first out” principle meant that almost all were soon back on the street because of restructuring and downsizing (Sheppard, 1984).

W OM EN ’S A C CESS TO B R EADWINNER W A GES Union fair-pay practices, past and present, have both advanced and blocked women’s economic aspirations. There is no question that union women today are far better off than their nonunion counterparts. The Canadian Labour Congress (2018) reported an average pay advantage of $6.89 per hour for union compared to nonunion women in 2013. Union women, including racialized women, also earn more in relation to union men. In 2013, the gender gap in pay was 16% in the union sector versus 29% in the nonunion sector.

Protecting the Breadwinner Advantage Union fair-pay practices in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s were purposefully d esigned to ensure that all male members, including the unskilled, earned a wage sufficient to support a family. This focus, which made it possible for racial - ized as well as white men to earn breadwinner wages, was widely popular in post–World War II Canada. At that time, relatively few women were employed outside the home and typically only until they married. Most Canadians, women and men, union and nonunion, agreed that good jobs should go to men, and they did not expect women to earn a man’s wage. The gender gap in pay in unionized workplaces was significant—often the highest-paid woman earned less than the lowest-paid man (Guard, 1996; S ugiman, 1994)—yet union women were substantially better paid than their nonunion counterparts. In the late 1960s, the wage difference between women and men who performed the same jobs in the same manufacturing establish - ments was 11% in unionized workplaces compared with 22% in nonunion work - places (Gunderson, 1975). This considerably smaller gender gap in the union sector resulted from the bottom-up wage policy adopted to increase the wages of unskilled and semiskilled men; it also reflected industrial unionism’s commit - ment to building worker solidarity and fairness (Forrest, 2007). Union women were also more likely to have access to fringe benefits and family benefits. Securing and expanding these benefits was a union priority, and the needs of the male breadwinner topped the list. Medical and dental coverage, vacations with pay, and retirement pensions were central concerns; pregnancy leave with or without pay was not. As with many government programs, women Working_Women.indd 33 09/08/19 2:15 PM Working Women in Canada : An Intersectional Approach, edited by Leslie Nichols, Canadian Scholars, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=6282096.

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Copyright © 2019. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. 34  Working Women in Canada did not always have equal access to union-negotiated benefits packages (Bossen, 1975). But even when women were covered on the same basis as men, they were disadvantaged when benefits were related to seniority or pay. Pensions are a good example. Mothers who left the workforce or worked part-time to accommodate their families’ needs earned fewer years of pension credit, which, when coupled with women’s lower wages, resulted in substantially smaller retirement benefits.

The breadwinner focus of union fair-pay bargaining also disadvantaged gay men (and doubly disadvantaged lesbians), who could not claim family benefits such as bereavement leave, dental coverage for dependants, or survivor benefits for their same-sex partners. Union attitudes toward lesbian and gay members started to shift in the 1980s. LGBTQ + activists came out in their workplaces and pushed their unions to address their unequal status. Initially, their key demand was the inclusion of sexuality in no-discrimination clauses in collective agreements, which unions in the 1980s needed to file grievances on behalf of their LGBTQ + members. Some unions also supported complaints to human rights tribunals or defended the claims of their LBGTQ + members in the courts (Hunt & Eaton, 2007). Another strategy was to negotiate a wider defini - t ion of spouse , for example, “a spouse of either gender,” which would automatic - ally extend family benefits to same-sex partners and their children. Today, protection for LGBTQ + workers is provided by human rights codes and available to all employees, union and nonunion. Technically, this means that same-sex benefits coverage is universal: where family benefits are provided, coverage must extend to LBGTQ + families. But entitlement is not the same as access. Same-sex benefits can be claimed only if workers come out, and it is doubtful that all LBGTQ + workers feel safe revealing their sexuality. In this respect, union members are undoubtedly better off than their nonunion counter - parts. Many unions are formally committed to LBGTQ + inclusion and run educational campaigns encouraging visibility and acceptance. In these work - places, LBGTQ + workers should expect to be supported by their union if they encounter harassment or discrimination. By contrast, LBGTQ + workers in nonunion workplaces often have no one to speak or act on their behalf.

Pay the Job, Not the Worker “Pay the job, not the worker” was (and is) foundational to the union concept of fair pay. By contrast with nonunion workplaces, where pay is often individualistic and secret, pay systems in unionized workplaces tie wages to jobs and wage rates are published in collective agreements. This approach was designed to ensure Working_Women.indd 34 09/08/19 2:15 PM Working Women in Canada : An Intersectional Approach, edited by Leslie Nichols, Canadian Scholars, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=6282096.

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Copyright © 2019. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. Chapter 2 Unions ar e d e finitely g o od for Women—But t h at’s n o t the Whole  s t ory  35 that workers who perform the same job are paid the same wage. Women as well as men have benefited from the strict application of this principle. Any hint that one seamstress or payroll clerk might be earning less than her coworker for rea- sons not provided for in the collective agreement would be investigated. If the discrepancy was not resolved quickly, unions routinely filed grievances on the lower-paid worker’s behalf. Rigorous application of “pay the job” has minimized managerial bias and pay discrimination against immigrant, racialized, and Indigenous women, who are often disadvantaged in the hiring process. The extent of this bias is well established. Das Gupta (1996, pp. 35–40) describes the struggles of black health-care workers, who are commonly stereotyped as infantile or trouble - some, hired to perform jobs below their skill level, or subjected to overly vigi - lant super vision. Union application of the “pay the job” principle has been good for union women, for example, when unions pressed employers to pay women the estab - lished rate for the job when they were temporarily assigned to do men’s work (to avoid downward reclassification of men’s work once it had been successfully performed by a woman, Tillotson [1991] argues). In other situations, unions were not so quick to act. It was not until 1976 that the RWDSU took up the com - plaint of a Dominion Store worker who had been performing the job of male clerks for five years but was paid the female rate ( Dominion Stores Ltd., 1976). It took the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) until 1978 to correct the pay difference between female nurse’s aides and male orderlies employed by the Sunnyside Home in London, Ontario, whose job duties were the same but for the gender of the patient ( Waterloo [Regional Municipality] , 1978).

The union movement’s lack of focus on gender equality is also evident in the treatment of part-time workers, two-thirds of whom are women (Organisa - tion for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2018). While it is true that organized part-time workers are substantially better off than their non - union counterparts—on average, the hourly wage of unionized part-time work is one-third higher (Uppal, 2011)—part-time work is often a female job ghetto, even in unionized workplaces. Many part-timers perform the same work as their full-time counterparts and would have benefited from the “pay the job” rule; however, this is not what has happened. In most industries, part-time workers’ wages were (and are) lower and their benefits fewer than their full-time counter - parts. By union practice and public policy, part-time jobs are often in part- time-only bargaining units and seniority districts, which institutionalizes the “lesser-than” status of part-time workers and limits their access to full-time jobs. Working_Women.indd 35 09/08/19 2:15 PM Working Women in Canada : An Intersectional Approach, edited by Leslie Nichols, Canadian Scholars, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=6282096.

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Copyright © 2019. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. 36  Working Women in Canada These outcomes reflect the long-standing union belief that part-time workers are a threat to the standard of living and job security of full-time workers. This is a legitimate fear, as more and more employers seek to lower wage costs by sub - stituting part-time for full-time labour. One solution to this dilemma would be to significantly reduce the wage differential between full- and part-time work - ers, which would counterbalance the economic incentive to hire more part-time labour. But in most industries, this has not been the solution chosen.

Equal Pay for Equal Work In mid-20th-century Canada, equal pay for equal work was a men’s, not a w omen’s, issue. How jobs are paid in relation to each other was (and is) of criti - c al importance to workers, and unions sought to negotiate wage structures that reflected differences in job duties rather than employers’ sense of job worth. In the immediate post–World War II years, industrial unions focused on raising wages from the bottom up, which increased the wages of the lowest-paid workers most. The result was a smaller wage differential between skilled and unskilled workers and a narrower pay gap between racialized and white men. These efforts were successful. Many studies demonstrate that men’s wages are less variable in the union than in the nonunion sector of the economy, even though nonunion men are more alike in their income-earning characteristics (Fortin et al., 2012). The evolution of equal pay for equal work as a women’s issue began with the fair-pay laws of the 1950s, but did not come to the fore until the rise of the wom - en’s movement 20 years later. As late as 1969, only 5% of 500 collective agree - ments covering 500 or more employees included equal pay language ( Report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women , 1970, para. 207). In the interim, neither women nor men expected women to earn a man’s wage. In unionized workplaces, as every where, pay for women was set below that of men and in relation to what other women earned. This difference was justified in part by the breadwinner ideology and in part by the belief that women’s jobs were inherently less skilled and less demanding than men’s. Defenders of this system argued that to earn men’s wages, women must be “like men” and perform jobs that required the same skill sets and the same forms and degree of effort and responsibility, under the same working conditions. As interpreted and applied by most governments, employers, and unions, the “equal pay for equal work ” principle protected only women whose jobs were the same as or similar to jobs routinely performed by men in the same establishment.

The “same or similar”—not identical—test offered room to argue on behalf of Working_Women.indd 36 09/08/19 2:15 PM Working Women in Canada : An Intersectional Approach, edited by Leslie Nichols, Canadian Scholars, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=6282096.

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Copyright © 2019. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. Chapter 2 Unions ar e d e finitely g o od for Women—But t h at’s n o t the Whole  s t ory  37 women; in practice, however, even small differences were used to justify higher wages for men. One advocate for equal pay explained how this loophole undercut the value of fair-pay legislation: “A man and a woman worked beside each other on a machine, and turned out the same number of parts. … But in the last five minutes or so, the man’s job was to wheel away the truck load of finished parts, and the women’s job was to clean up the machine.” This was an insubstantial dif- ference, he argued, yet commonly used to discriminate against women (cited by Tillotson, 1991, p. 543). Differences in the physical demands of men’s and women’s work were com - monly asserted to suppress women’s wages. The pay gap between male nursing orderlies and female nonregistered nursing assistants is a well-known example.

In Riverdale Hospital v. Ontario (1973), the hospital sought to maintain a lower women’s wage on the grounds that only men were required to lift patients. How - ever, the inquiry in the case learned that women also did a great deal of lifting and that women and men worked cooperatively to accomplish heav y lifts. In the adjudicator’s opinion, the greater use of physical strength by male orderlies, if it existed, was a marginal difference in the context of the job as a whole. But in 1971 the Hotel and Restaurant Employees and Bartenders International Union lost its grievance on behalf of female waiters employed by MacDonald Tavern in Edmonton who were paid less than male waiters because the waiters were expected to act as bouncers from time to time. However, there were no writ - ten job descriptions and the union claimed that managers, not workers, were responsible for keeping order. Nonetheless, the possibility that waiters occa - sionally acted as bouncers led the arbitrator to decide in management’s favour without considering how the waitresses also helped maintain order (M acDonald Hotel , 1971). This justification of differences in duties continues to influence pay decisions. As a case in point, Soni-Sinha and Yates (2013) report that even today unionized women janitors are often paid less than men in industrial clean - ing because the women’s responsibilities—dusting, vacuuming, and arranging f urniture—are labelled “light duty” compared to the “heav y duty” sweeping, buffing, and waxing done by men. The “equal pay for equal work ” standard entitles women to be paid like men only when their jobs are the same or very nearly the same as those performed by men. But this was and is rarely the case. Most women perform jobs that require a different complement of skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions than men’s jobs. Women’s jobs are no less complex or demanding, but comparability is often difficult to see when the measuring rod uses men’s work as the marker of value. This dilemma is best illustrated by the case of Beatrice Harmatiuk, who in Working_Women.indd 37 09/08/19 2:15 PM Working Women in Canada : An Intersectional Approach, edited by Leslie Nichols, Canadian Scholars, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=6282096.

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Copyright © 2019. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. 38  Working Women in Canada 1983 was forced to take her pay complaint to the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission because her union twice refused to file a grievance on her behalf.

Harmatiuk ’s all-female housekeeper job was paid less than the all-male caretaker job, even though it was similar in skill, responsibility, and working conditions.

The caretaker job scored ahead of the housekeeper job in the hospital ’s job evalu - ation scheme because of its marginally greater physical demands, while the extra mental effort required of housekeepers who interacted with patients was invisible to both the union and the employer ( Harmatiuk v. Pasqual Hospital, 1983).

Pay Equity By the 1980s, it was clear to union women that no amount of “pay the job” or “equal pay for equal work ” would close the pay gap rooted in job segrega - tion by gender. Trained to see the world through men’s eyes, male union leaders were not sensitive to the value inherent in traditional women’s work, nor could they i magine comparing white-collar, production, or service jobs performed by women to blue-collar jobs performed by men. True fair pay for women required a different lens: equal pay for work of equal value. Pay equity makes it possible to compare jobs across the gender gap in occu - pations. This is accomplished by replacing traditional male-centred definitions of skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions with a gender-inclusive schema and by setting wages for female-dominated jobs in relation to male-dominated jobs of comparable worth. This approach takes into account the full comple - ment of skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions, making it possible to compare school secretaries, whose jobs require multi-tasking, patience, attention to detail, and responding to the needs of distraught students and parents, with school janitors, whose jobs require more physical activity and technical skill, notwithstanding the significant differences in women’s and men’s work. Pay equity quickly became the bargaining demand of choice for women unionists. Where it has been implemented, outcomes have been good. The final report of the Pay Equity Task Force (2004, pp. 111–140), appointed by the fed - eral government to review the pay equity provisions of the Canadian Human Rights Act, provides ample evidence of benefits. In the Canadian public ser - vice, pay equity bargaining has raised the wages of many predominantly female job classes: librarians, x-ray technicians, clerks, typists, and cashiers have all received substantial pay increases. Haiven (2007) describes many more suc - cesses. For example, in 2003, after 17 years, female emergency dispatchers in the V ancouver Police Department won pay increases of $22,000 to $33,000 based Working_Women.indd 38 09/08/19 2:15 PM Working Women in Canada : An Intersectional Approach, edited by Leslie Nichols, Canadian Scholars, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=6282096.

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Copyright © 2019. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. Chapter 2 Unions ar e d e finitely g o od for Women—But t h at’s n o t the Whole  s t ory  39 on their comparison with male fire dispatchers. In that same year a group of five unions won a $414 million settlement on behalf of women whose path to pay equity was blocked by the Ontario government when it changed the law and made it impossible for many public sector workers to identify male comparators in different bargaining units. Union leadership and professional expertise have been essential to these successes. Implementation of pay equity is technical and time-consuming—new job descriptions must be written, a gender-neutral wage evaluation system created, and male-dominated comparator jobs identified. Only then can the skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions in women’s jobs be compared with those of men. Unrepresented workers cannot take on these tasks independently of management, nor do they have the resources to pursue a case year after year or chase management through the legal system, as the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSCA), the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), and other unions have been forced to do (Haiven, 2007). But the news is not always good. Pay equity, which could close the gen - der pay gap in workplaces where men hold the majority of full-time positions and women the majority of part-time jobs, has not been consistently pursued with this end in mind, Kainer (1998) discovered. Her investigation of the pay equity process in grocery stores led her to conclude that the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union was more interested in wage gains for full-time men than part-time women, even though part-timers were the majority of employees and performed exactly the same jobs as full-timers. The union saw part-time workers as temporary and less committed to the workplace, so thought it entirely proper that part-time jobs be compared with other part-time jobs, which preserved the gender gap in pay. Overall, the principle of equal pay for work of equal value has taken root only where it has been mandated by law, Bentham (2007) argues. By 2005, only one-quarter of collective agreements in Canada contained pay equity clauses, and most were in the public sector (Bentham, 2007). Union leaders, particularly those at the local level, were slow to see closing the gender gap in pay as a social justice issue, rather than a narrow women’s issue, and some have been hesitant to pursue pay equity at the bargaining table. Prioritizing pay increases for women workers can be divisive in economically tough times. Unions also fear backlash from their male members who believe their work is inherently more demanding than “women’s work ” and, so, deserving of higher pay. Haiven (2007) recounts a successful application of pay equity by CUPE in a Saskatchewan school board that was resisted by school caretakers (a predominantly male job classification pertaining to janitorial and building maintenance services) who simply could not Working_Women.indd 39 09/08/19 2:15 PM Working Women in Canada : An Intersectional Approach, edited by Leslie Nichols, Canadian Scholars, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=6282096.

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Copyright © 2019. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. 40  Working Women in Canada believe their jobs were less skilled than those of teacher assistants and secretaries!

As a sign of their disgust, the men sought and were granted permission to create a separate CUPE local.

W OM EN ’S A C CESS TO B R EADWINNER S T ATUS Today, women expect unions to represent their interests as workers and as women.

This is a significant shift in expectations. Unions were built by men for men on the assumption that men were family breadwinners and women were secondary workers who would always put home and children ahead of their jobs. In that worldview, men’s economic and social interests defined workers’ issues and set the union collective bargaining agenda. By contrast, issues of particular concern to women, such as maternity leave and sexual harassment, were less i mportant “women’s issues.” When exercised, the union voice on behalf of women has been a force for change. But the framework of male privilege and the ethos of worker solidarity also mean that union commitment to women members has been less than wholehearted.

Maternity Rights There is no clearer marker of women’s gender difference than pregnancy. In a society like ours, which disproportionately loads responsibility for children’s well-being onto women’s shoulders, motherhood shapes women’s life choices and economic opportunities. Prior to 1971, pregnant women were on their own: only British Columbia and New Brunswick guaranteed six weeks of leave before and after birth, and no jurisdiction provided income supports while women were unable to work or guaranteed their right to return to work. Most employers viewed pregnancy as a woman’s private decision and saw no reason to accommodate her situation. A 1966 survey (Woodsworth, 1967) found that one in four employers granted no leave, and then only at the employer’s discretion. Most employers expected preg - nant women to resign and fired those who did not. Whether a woman would be reemployed after the birth of her child was also a matter of employer discretion.

If she was rehired, it was likely as a new employee in a lower-paying entry-level position. Union attitudes were somewhat more generous. Most of the dismissal griev - ances filed on behalf of women in this era involved marriage and pregnancy, which suggests that women wanted to contest management’s inflexibility and Working_Women.indd 40 09/08/19 2:15 PM Working Women in Canada : An Intersectional Approach, edited by Leslie Nichols, Canadian Scholars, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=6282096.

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Copyright © 2019. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. Chapter 2 Unions ar e d e finitely g o od for Women—But t h at’s n o t the Whole  s t ory  41 their union’s failure to negotiate protections (Sangster, 2011). When unions pressed the matter to arbitration their arguments varied: if the policy requir- ing pregnant women to resign was unwritten, the union claimed the dismissal was without cause; if the collective agreement permitted leaves for legitimate personal reasons, the union claimed that refusing to grant leave was an un - reasonable exercise of managerial discretion. There was no talk of women’s rights at a rbitration—there were none—so challenges to the status quo were largely unsuccessful. As long as the language in the collective agreement did not ex - pressly give rights to pregnant women, most arbitrators believed they did not exist (Loblaw Groceterias Co. Ltd. , 1962; Quaker Oats Co., 1960).

By the mid-1960s, the union movement was publicly pro-woman. Address - ing the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada in 1968, both the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC, 1968) and the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL, 1968) affirmed their support for women’s equality and called for legisla - tion protecting married or pregnant women from dismissal. They also advocated for paid maternity leave and women’s right to return to work after pregnancy. Even so, unions were slow to take up the matter at the bargaining table.

Neither the CLC nor the OFL spokesperson would commit to more aggressive bargaining on these issues. Negotiating protections for pregnant women was a low priority for most union negotiators in the 1950s and 1960s because they saw pregnancy as a women’s issue, not a workers’ issue (Guard, 1996; Sangster, 2011; Sugiman, 1994). Where unions did act, they improved women’s job security.

Though few in number, most of the workplaces that assured pregnancy leave in the 1966 survey did so under the terms of a collective agreement. Employers bound by collective agreements were also more likely to provide partial income support and maintain workers’ seniority (Woodsworth, 1967). The lives of working women in Canada were made immeasurably easier in 1971 when the Unemployment Insurance Act was amended to guarantee 17  weeks of maternity leave subsidized through the unemployment insurance system. Related changes to employment standards acts also assured women of their right to return to their previous job or a comparable job following leave. In some jurisdictions seniority was retained but not increased; in others, seniority accumulated during the period of leave (Pulkingham & Van Der Gaag, 2004). These rights have been expanded by union action. In 1979 the Québec Com - mon Front of public sector unions prioritized improved maternity benefits in its negotiations with the government of Quebec. The final settlement, which covered one-fifth of the province’s female workforce, extended unpaid maternity and parental leave to two years, required the employer to top up unemployment Working_Women.indd 41 09/08/19 2:15 PM Working Women in Canada : An Intersectional Approach, edited by Leslie Nichols, Canadian Scholars, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=6282096.

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Copyright © 2019. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. 42  Working Women in Canada insurance benefits to 93% of regular pay for up to 20 weeks, and ensured the con - tinuation of benefits during leave (Labour Canada Women’s Bureau, 1985). Two years later, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) won 17 weeks of fully paid maternity leave (that is, the employer agreed to top up unemployment insurance benefits) after a six-week strike. The CUPW win was particularly significant because women were not a majority of the membership. The union worked hard to gain members’ support for paid maternity leave as a bargaining priority, and then, more contentiously, as a strike issue, even as many members questioned why the union would prioritize a benefit for one group of workers ( W h ite, 199 0). These wins were seen as breakthroughs that would open the way for many more successes at the bargaining table. This did not happen, however. By 1986, just over 40% of the workers covered by a sample of collective agreements were entitled to some employer top-up of employment insurance benefits during preg - nancy leave; 30 years later, this proportion was 50%. This is a slow pace of pro - gress, Bentham (2007) argues. In her view, better supports for child-bearing women continue to be viewed as “separate and secondary” to the main business of unions. Come bargaining time, these and other women’s issues are less likely to be on the priority list and more likely to be among the first demands dropped. This assessment is more positive if we also consider how unions have used the grievance arbitration process to ensure that the law is fully and generously applied. In one instance, the union successfully challenged the 1998 firing of an Ontario woman employed by Parry Sound Social Services when it was discov - ered that she was pregnant, even though the collective agreement did not permit the union to grieve on behalf of employees dismissed during their probation - ary period (Mitchnik & Etherington, 2012). The case was sent all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada and was not decided until 2003, five years after the woman was dismissed (Mitchnik & Ethington, 2012). In another case the Ottawa Police Association secured the grievor’s right to return to her previous job as a court liaison case manager after her maternity leave over management’s objection ( Ottawa Police Services Board v. Ottawa Police Assn. , 2007). For the most part, the beneficiaries of these wins have been other union members. From time to time, arbitration decisions also improve the working conditions of non - union women as well, as happened when arbitrators ruled that employers could not reduce benefits such as paid vacation or sick leave because workers had taken pregnancy/parental leave. Following this decision, the Ontario government amended the Employment Standards Act to protect all workers ( Mitchnik  & Etherington, 2012). Working_Women.indd 42 09/08/19 2:15 PM Working Women in Canada : An Intersectional Approach, edited by Leslie Nichols, Canadian Scholars, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=6282096.

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Copyright © 2019. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. Chapter 2 Unions ar e d e finitely g o od for Women—But t h at’s n o t the Whole  s t ory  43 Dignity on the Job Women’s status as workers and union members has expanded significantly over the last 80 years. Changing social mores and innovative ideas about gender equal- ity offer today’s women more freedom of choice with respect to their personal and career decisions. Not that long ago, wearing pants, a hijab, Afro hairstyles, and tattoos that did not conform with an employer’s definition of professional - ism or provoked complaints from customers or clients would have been grounds for discipline or dismissal. Consider the situation of women at Wardair, a suc - cessful privately held charter airline whose owner imposed his heterosexist ideas about appearance on his employees. In the 1980s women flight attendants were required to wear high heels and company-approved brassieres; their makeup, hairstyles, and weight were monitored by management; and they were not per - mitted to wear glasses or pants on the job. Women who did not conform to these rules were disciplined ( C.U.P.E. v. Wardair Inc ., 1988).

In a nonunion workplace, these indignities would generate resentment, but workers would comply because they feared losing their jobs. At Wardair, how - ever, CUPE filed both a human rights complaint contesting these unreasonable and sexist rules and a grievance challenging management’s decision to suspend an outspoken union official for two weeks without pay because she talked to the press ( C.U.P.E. v. Wardair Inc ., 1988). No woman or group of women would have the resources to hire a law yer, find expert witnesses, and devote the time needed to pursue such violations of their rights. Organized women are also better protected when they experience sexual h arassment. In 1989, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that sexual harass - ment was a form of gender discrimination and therefore unlawful. The employ - er’s claim that the harassment was about women’s attractiveness, not gender, was dismissed and the connection to male power and abuse of power estab - lished ( J anzen v. Platy Enterprises Ltd. , 1989). This was an important gain for women that unions have helped solidify. Cases such as Osprey Care Inc. (2012), in which a male coworker at a long-term care home in Penticton, British Columbia, followed the victim home and then made sexual advances, and Alberta (Solici - tor General) (2011)—in which a woman guard in a correctional institution was picked up by her male coworkers and carried to the men’s locker room, where her pants were forcibly undone before the incident was interrupted—demonstrate the need for protection from sexual harassment. But the advantage of union representation comes with a caveat: unions leaders are willing to pursue harassment grievances against managers without Working_Women.indd 43 09/08/19 2:15 PM Working Women in Canada : An Intersectional Approach, edited by Leslie Nichols, Canadian Scholars, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=6282096.

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Copyright © 2019. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. 44  Working Women in Canada reservation, but when the allegation is laid against male coworkers, women can - not always count on the unequivocal support of their union. In these situations, union leaders face complicated cross-cutting loyalties. On the one hand, they are obligated by law to represent all workers, even those who are in the wrong. On the other hand, they are also obligated to defend women’s right to work free from behaviours that can range from annoying to frightening. How these tensions play out is difficult to discern. Hart’s (2012) analysis of grievance arbitration cases from 1992 to 2008 led her to conclude that many unions were biased in favour of the accused. She points to union arguments that underplayed the seriousness of the offender’s behaviour, for example, by call - ing it rude rather than harassing or by denying that the behaviour was harass - ment because the accused did not have organizational power over the victim.

In other cases documented by Hart, the union attacked the victim’s credibility in a manner that left her feeling humiliated, claimed that the victim had imag - ined the incident, or claimed that the complainants were conspiring against the accused because he faced allegations from a number of women. In a separate analysis, Haiven (2006) found that unions were more likely to adopt an aggres - sive defence on behalf of the accused in workplaces with zero-tolerance policies, which increase the likelihood of dismissal.

Hart’s analysis suggests that unions side too readily with the accused and sometimes do so in ways that reinforce antiwoman stereotypes and rape myths.

But this would be an incomplete conclusion. In real-life labour relations, rela - tively few grievances go to arbitration; most are settled informally between the union and the employer and the outcome is unknown. Another complicating factor is the role of law yers. Arbitration as a process is legalistic and conflictual.

Technically, law yers take their instructions from the union or client, but this rarely happens in practice. The law yer’s expertise coupled with the union leaders’ desire to distance themselves from complicated and controversial cases means that law yers’ tools of the trade such as aggressive cross-examination can be used against complainants. Unions are aware of their dual roles, and more than a few leaders have experi - e nced crises of conscience in harassment cases. Some unions are taking steps to ensure that both the victim and the accused are fully represented (White, 1993).

Examples include the CUPE, which now assigns two grievance officers—one to the complainant and one to the accused—who report independently to the local union president; USWA, which now encourages union-led mediation (rather than adjudication) of harassment disputes; and the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), which, by contrast, advises its members to file a grievance Working_Women.indd 44 09/08/19 2:15 PM Working Women in Canada : An Intersectional Approach, edited by Leslie Nichols, Canadian Scholars, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=6282096.

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Copyright © 2019. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. Chapter 2 Unions ar e d e finitely g o od for Women—But t h at’s n o t the Whole  s t ory  45 against the employer, even if the harasser is a coworker. Notably, both PSAC and Unifor have decided that the union has the right to refuse to represent a member who has been disciplined for sexual harassment when the employer’s decision is warranted.

Assessing the quality and effectiveness of union representation of racialized women members working in hostile environments or subjected to racial harass - ment is even more challenging. We know these problems exist. Examples of everyday racism abound (Das Gupta, 1996; Irish, 2016; Seputis, 2012; Wo rking While Black in Nova Scotia , 2018), yet grievance arbitration cases are difficult to identify. It may be that unions have been successful in getting these matters resolved informally, without resorting to arbitration. It is much more likely that union leaders, like many Canadians, are in denial about the extent of racism and white privilege in the workplace. Backhouse (1999), following Dionne Brand (1994), argues that Canadians hold determinedly to the “mythology of raceless - ness” and often demonstrate “stupefying innocence” (pp. 13–14) in the face of overtly racist behaviour. Thus, it is very possible that union officials simply can - not see racial harassment for what it is, and do not pursue grievances on behalf of racialized women workers. Das Gupta’s (1996) description of workplace racism supports this analy - sis. She summarizes the findings of two external investigations of racism in health-care settings conducted in 1985 and 1994 that documented unjust dis - missals and layoffs, accusations that racialized staff use allegations of racism to avoid accountability for shoddy work, discipline for disagreeing with a super - visor and suspension without pay for arguing with a white colleague (who was not disciplined), heavier duties in less specialized areas, and institutional fail - ure to fairly investigate and resolve complaints against black health-care work - ers, among others. Das Gupta’s own interviews with nursing staff echoed these experiences. The women described many undermining and humiliating encoun - ters with white supervisors, including the targeting of outspoken nurses of colour, a performance review that labelled a black nurse “incompetent” despite her unblemished work record, discipline for mistakes for which white nurses were offered help to improve, and the refusal to accommodate black nurses’ requests for time off during Caribana, an annual celebration of Caribbean cul - ture. Yet Das Gupta barely mentions these nurses’ unions. In some situations, workers filed complaints with the Ontario Human Rights Commission, but it is unclear whether they were assisted by their union. Only once does Das Gupta say that the union was asked for help and was successful in having a complaint withdrawn. Working_Women.indd 45 09/08/19 2:15 PM Working Women in Canada : An Intersectional Approach, edited by Leslie Nichols, Canadian Scholars, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=6282096.

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Copyright © 2019. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. 46  Working Women in Canada CONCLUSION Today’s union leaders proudly proclaim their support for gender equality, and all major unions approach collective bargaining with this mindset. The mid-20th-century fixation on the needs of the male breadwinner no longer guides union decision-making, and action to advance women’s rights is as likely to be framed by working women’s experiences and aspirations as by the formal equality belief that women must be like men to have the economic opportun - ities and entitlements available to men. This profound shift in worldview is the accomplishment of three generations of feminist activists and the women and men who have called their leaders to account for the trade-offs made in negotia - tions or pushed their union to file grievances to advance their equality claims.

The result is a more inclusive, gender-, race-, and sexuality-sensitive approach to collective bargaining that is securing women’s right to dignity and respect on the job as well as improving their job opportunities and standard of living and help - ing resolve tensions between work and home. This disruption of past practices was possible in large part because of changes in equality laws. In the span of a lifetime, Canadian law has moved from taking for granted employment practices that held women back simply because they were women to confirming the legitimacy of women’s needs as women and as workers. Organized women were best positioned to capture the benefits of these changes. Union economic power, legal authority, and deep pockets made it pos - sible for union women to solidify and expand their legal rights through collec - tive bargaining and in so doing help make them available to nonunion women as well. But this is not the whole story. Gender equality is unfinished business: pro - gress has been slow and uneven, and obstacles remain. Turning the abstract prin - ciple of gender equality into rights on the job requires leadership, persistence, and a willingness to redefine “good union practice.” At the local level, where bar - gaining priorities are set and decisions about grievances made, support for equity policies set by the union’s national office can be diffuse, and the leadership must work within the politics of majority decision-making. Progress toward equality has been slow as well because the gender division of labour has been frozen in place by past practice and proposals for change that modify long-established seniority rights are highly controversial. Unionism in Canada today struggles to represent all workers on their own terms. This strong commitment to social justice harkens back to the movement’s more activist mid-20th-century roots, but with a contemporary focus on inclu - sion and diversit y. Working_Women.indd 46 09/08/19 2:15 PM Working Women in Canada : An Intersectional Approach, edited by Leslie Nichols, Canadian Scholars, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=6282096.

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Copyright © 2019. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. Chapter 2 Unions ar e d e finitely g o od for Women—But t h at’s n o t the Whole  s t ory  47 ACkN OWLEDGEMENT Thank you to Sydney Chapados for her research assistance on this chapter.

kEY R EADINGS Bentham, K. (2007). Labour’s collective bargaining record on women’s and family issues.

In G. Hunt & D. Rayside (Eds.), Equity, diversity, and Canadian labour (pp. 101–129).

Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Forrest, A. (2009). Bargaining for equality: A path to union renewal. In J. Foley & P. Baker ( E d s .), Unions, equity, and the path to renewal (pp. 97–118). Vancouver: UBC Press.

Haiven, J. (2007). Union response to pay equity: A cautionary tale. In G. Hunt & D.  R ayside ( E d s .), Equity, diversity, and Canadian labour (pp. 75–100). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Hunt, G., & Eaton, J. (2007). We are family: Labour responds to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender workers. In G. Hunt & D. Rayside (Eds.), Equity, diversity, and Canadian labour (pp. 130 –155). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

DISCUSSION Q UE STIONS 1. W hat are some of the advantages of union membership for women?

2. E xplain the difference bet ween equal pay for equal work and equal pay for work of equal value/pay equity. Why is a pay equity approach better for women?

3.

H ow does the grievance arbitration process help women achieve better terms and con - ditions of employment?

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Bentham, K. (2007). Labour’s collective bargaining record on women’s and family issues. In G. Hunt & D. Rayside (Eds.), Equity, diversity, and Canadian labour (pp. 101–129).

Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Working_Women.indd 47 09/08/19 2:15 PM Working Women in Canada : An Intersectional Approach, edited by Leslie Nichols, Canadian Scholars, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=6282096.

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Copyright © 2019. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. 48  Working Women in Canada Block, S., & Galabuzi, G.-E. (2011). Canada’s colour coded labour market: The gap for racialized workers. Ottawa & Toronto: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives & the Wellesley Institute.

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Copyright © 2019. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. Chapter 2 Unions ar e d e finitely g o od for Women—But t h at’s n o t the Whole  s t ory  49 Haiven, J. (2006). Zero tolerance—Can it work in a unionized environment? Labour/Le Travail , 58, 169–202.

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Copyright © 2019. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. 50  Working Women in Canada Ottawa Police Services Board v. Ottawa Police Assn., 159 L.A.C. (4th) 129 (2007).

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Copyright © 2019. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved.