Toronto - Despite years of progressive gains in the workplace, women’s wages are still lagging behind their male counterparts. Unions, like the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), have been at the forefront in incorporating wage gains for women at the bargaining table. Over the past two years, CUPE’s campaign “Up With Women’s Wages” has resulted in significant improvements to the wages women earn, the benefits they receive and the pension plans they are now included in.
“Women, who are union members, are seeing significant wage increases compared to women workers in non-unionized workplaces. But there’s still a long way to go in a province where the government is discriminating against women workers by refusing to recognize its obligation to tens of thousands of women who are eligible for pay equity and who work in predominantly female workplaces,” says Sid Ryan, the Ontario president of CUPE.
At a special forum tonight Ryan will highlight where women have made gains and detail the particulars of a proxy pay equity charter challenge against the government, launched last year on behalf of more than 100,000 women entitled to wage adjustments under the Pay Equity Act, at a special forum tonight at:
7:00 p.m. (Thursday, March 28, 2002)
Brock University
(Pond Inlet – Mackenzie Chown complex within J-block)
For more information, please contact:
Sid Ryan, President, CUPE Ontario
416-209-0066
Stella Yeadon, CUPE Communications
416-578-8774