The Pay Equity Bargaining Process in Newfoundland: Understanding Cooperation and Conflict by Incorporating Gender and Class

Abstract

In the latter half of the 1980s, when it was becoming apparent in Canada that previous equal pay policies had failed to close the gender wage gap, a number of provincial governments introduced pro–active pay equity policies. All these initiatives required the negotiation of pay equity in unionized workplaces. Leading up to the implementation of pay equity in Ontario, industrial relations specialists predicted an insurmountably conflictual process, whereas governments expected a new level of partnership with unions. Given these opposite expectations, the article aims to identify any significant patterns of cooperation and conflict in the pay equity bargaining process and to explore reasons for their dynamic. Based on a case study of Newfoundland’s health sector, neither prediction was correct as both conflict and cooperation occurred. It is argued that both the specificity and differences in the negotiations studied can be better understood by exploring the complex intertwinings of gender and class, namely, the ongoing articulation of their main manifestations: a reinforcing hierarchy and a transformative labour–feminist politic in the unions involved. The article concludes with some theoretical and policy observations concerning the importance of building in gender and class to current models of cooperative collective bargaining, as well as recognizing their importance in the pay equity process.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 10 citations exist upstream.