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ARTICLE · 13 APRIL 2021

Getting Ready For The New Federal Pay Equity Act

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Pay equity ensures that men and women receive equal pay for work of equal value. Due to a host of systemic reasons that are not attributable to any single employer, work that is predominantly done...

CanadaEmployment and HR
Claire Vachon
Claire Vachon
Jackie VanDerMeulen
Jackie VanDerMeulen
Brenda Chang
Brenda Chang
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Pay equity ensures that men and women receive equal pay for work of equal value. Due to a host of systemic reasons that are not attributable to any single employer, work that is predominantly done by women continues to be under compensated in the Canadian marketplace. 

In an attempt to correct for these systemic forces, the Pay Equity Act ("Act") was enacted as part of the Budget Implementation Act No. 2, 2018 in December 2018. Once the Act and its Regulations come into force later in 2021, employers in the federal sector with ten or more employees will have three years to develop a pay equity plan that identifies and corrects gender-based wage gaps for incumbents of predominantly female job classes. This pay equity exercise must be carried out in committee for employers with 100+ employees who are unionized.

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