Pay Equity

Working With Us

A fundamental principle in human rights law is that men and women should receive equal pay for work of equal value.  This area of the law is highly complex and specialized and can be challenging for unions and individuals to navigate.   

In Canada, working women make only 89 cents per hour for every dollar that men earn.  That gap worsens for racialized women, Indigenous women and women with disabilities. 

Unions have been at the forefront of holding employers accountable in order to ensure that they are living up to their pay equity obligations and the lawyers at Jewitt McLuckie work closely with our union clients to advise them on pay equity issues.  

Partner Samantha Lamb is experienced and knowledgeable about all aspects of Ontario’s Pay Equity Act.  In 2015, she won a significant pay equity decision from the Pay Equity Hearings Tribunal on behalf of bargaining unit members employed by the Ottawa Public Library that resulted in $2.3 million of retroactive payments to hundreds of employees.   

Our services in this area include:

• Providing advice to unions in order to ensure that their collective agreements are compliant with pay equity and human rights legislation, 
• Advising and representing unions with respect to pay equity complaints before the Pay Equity Hearings Tribunal and Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, and
• Advising clients on political strategies to achieve pay equity.