Public Service Alliance of Canada BC

Source: The Ottawa CitizenThe federal government has been discriminating against a group of federal nurses on the basis of their gender for more than three decades, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has ruled.

The ruling could potentially expose the government to hundreds of millions of dollars of liability for back wages and compensation, according to the lawyer for most of the nurses.

And the principles it endorses could apply to other employee groups as well, said Philippe Dufresne, senior counsel for the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

The human rights tribunal found that the nurses, who determine the eligibility of applicants for CPP disability benefits, perform essentially the same core functions as government doctors who are paid about twice as much.

The group of nurses, called medical adjudicators, is 95-percent female, while the doctors’ group, known as medical advisers, is 80-per-cent male.

Under the Canadian Human Rights Act, it is illegal to treat a female-dominated group differently from a male-dominated group when both perform the same or substantially similar work.

In its ruling, the tribunal ordered the government to cease the discriminatory practice. It also said the nurses are entitled to compensation for lost wages and pain and suffering. But rather than make an award, the tribunal gave the parties three months to negotiate a settlement. If they fail to do so, the tribunal will impose a remedy.

Though the disparity between CPP nurses and doctors has existed since 1972, the ruling applies only to the period since 1978, the year the Canadian Human Rights Act came into force.

The ruling is binding on the government, though the government has 30 days to decide whether to apply for a judicial review that could, if successful, overturn it.

The decision is a personal triumph for Ruth Walden, a 50-year-old Ottawa nurse who has worked as a CPP medical adjudicator since 1993.

It was Ms. Walden who filed the first human rights complaint in 2004. Before long, 430 of her colleagues from across Canada followed suit, representing virtually all the federal nurses who determine disability pension eligibility.

Lawrence Armstrong, the lawyer who represented most of the nurses at the tribunal, gave Ms. Walden full credit, calling her “the most amazing woman.

“She’s up against very senior people, all of them with a vested interest in having her fail in this complaint. I was just overwhelmed by Ruth’s strength and courage.”

In an interview yesterday, the soft-spoken Ms. Walden said she often felt frightened by what she was doing. “But it’s something I felt needed to be done, and I was willing to do it. I feel good that I did it.”

When the tribunal ruling came out last week, she said, “there was a lot of happiness in my office and we ate a lot of chocolate.”

Unlike the doctors, the nurses are not classified as health professionals within the public service. Instead, they are designated as program administrators.

Ms. Walden said the ruling means the tribunal recognizes that she and her colleagues are in fact practising nursing in their roles as medical adjudicators.

“That’s something that’s really important to me. It needs to be acknowledged for what it is and treated with respect.”

The nurses typically earn between $50,000 and $60,000 — about half as much as CPP doctors. The doctors also get better benefits and more training, professional recognition and opportunities for advancement.

While the tribunal found there are “some important differences” in the work performed by the two groups, it said they are not significant enough to explain the wide disparity in treatment, or why the doctors are recognized as health professionals and the nurses are not.

The ruling could have wider application, Mr. Dufresne said, because it covers different ground than pay equity decisions, which deal only with the principle of equal pay for work of equal value.

“Here we’re talking about the classification itself,” he said. “It’s not only equal pay. It’s equal treatment, the whole spectrum of treatment, including in this case pay, opportunities for training and opportunities for advancement.”

The ruling is very important, Mr. Dufresne said. “To my knowledge it’s the first, or one of the first, to deal with a situation like this. The principles in this decision could be applied to any group.”

Mr. Armstrong said the decision could cost the government “hundreds” of millions of dollars in back pay and compensation. “If they’re looking at an increase that would effectively double their salary over the time period when most of them have been employed, it becomes a huge number in terms of liability.”

A spokesman for Treasury Board said the government is reviewing the decision but has no immediate comment on its implications.

But during the tribunal hearing, federal lawyers said a ruling favourable to the nurses might trigger a significant increase in payroll costs because it could affect the classification of nurses performing similar roles in other departments, such as Veterans Affairs.