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Two dead as Cambodian police open fire on garment worker protests
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Ontario women win pay equity

Toronto, Canada, June 13— About 100,000 women in predominately female, public sector workplaces across Ontario will receive up to $414 million in pay equity funding from the Ontario government as the result of a settlement of an Ontario Superior Court of Justice Charter application brought by five unions and four individual women.

“These landmark settlement funds mean that low-paid public sector women denied their pay equity adjustments because of discriminatory government funding practices will now finally start to receive the equitable wages required by the Pay Equity Act,” said Mary Cornish, lawyer for the applicants in the CUPE et al v. Attorney-General (Ont.) et al case.

The applicant unions are the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the Ontario Nurses’ Association, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, the Service Employees International Union, and the United Steelworkers of America. The individual applicants are a registered nurse, a health care aide, a child care worker, and a developmental services worker. The unions represent more than 44,000 workers in over 2,300 public sector workplaces, including nursing homes, child care, centers, developmental services agencies, shelters, home care, and other community agencies.

“This is a tremendously exciting victory for women and their unions who have been fighting the Ontario government to make sure all women are paid wages that recognize the true value of their work,” said Judy Darcy, national president of CUPE. The settlement covers both unionized and non-unionized workers in the proxy sector — predominantly female workplaces where there are no male job classes to compare for pay equity purposes. The government agreed to pay the applicants their reasonable legal costs in bringing the Charter proceeding.

The applicants claimed that the Ontario government was knowingly perpetuating sex discrimination contrary to the Charter’s section 15 by failing to provide the necessary pay equity funding in this sector. In September, 1997, in a previous Charter challenge, Ontario Superior Court Justice O’Leary found that the government’s 1995 repeal of these same women’s proxy pay equity entitlements was unconstitutional. Justice O’Leary, in upholding the challenge brought by the SEIU also found that these women’s public sector employers would go bankrupt without the necessary pay equity funding.

Contrary to this ruling, the government decided in 1998 to end proxy pay equity funding after paying out $250 million in adjustments owing up to that date. The government knew this payment only brought these low-paid women’s wages to one-third of the pay equity amount they were entitled to. It declared anyway that proxy pay equity funding was now the responsibility of employers, not the government, causing hardship to many women in the proxy sector who were deprived of the money they were owed over many years. Other public sector women had received public pay equity funding until their wages were fully adjusted to eliminate discriminatory pay gaps. Ontario women were forced to use the courts to challenge the government’s decision to end pay equity funding by bringing the second Charter application challenge in April 2001. Finally, after two years of court proceedings, this application was successfully settled through a mediation process facilitated by the skillful efforts of mediator Gerry Lee.

“This has been a long, slow, and grinding fight for justice,” said Leah Casselman, OPSEU president. “The pay-outs that will soon go to a huge number of underpaid workers, most of them women, make the fight worthwhile. The shame is that the government dragged its heels for so long and only settled in the face of a provincial election.”

“Women workers should never have been forced to litigate their lawful rights to pay equity,” said Barb Wahl, president of the Ontario Nurses’ Association. “It took our court action to get the necessary funding so that women will finally get paid what’s been owed while maintaining critical community services for some of Ontario’s most vulnerable citizens.”

Under the settlement agreement, enhanced accountability mechanisms apply to the Government and proxy employers to make sure that employers comply with their pay equity obligations and that the funding required for any such adjustments is properly reflected in budget requests. Estimates are that, on average, the women in this sector will achieve their full pay equity rate by 2011 through the phase-in of adjustments at one percent of payroll per year.

“Our fight for justice for women workers is not over. This settlement funding covers the next three-year period, but we will fight on to make sure that our members and other public sector women continue to receive their required annual pay equity adjustments until pay equity is achieved,” said Sharleen Stewart, international Canadian vice-president of SEIU. The government will provide a yearly report to the applicant unions on the funding disbursed under this agreement, under the terms of the settlement.

“This is a great victory for all women in the province of Ontario. This settlement forces the government to recognize that pay equity is a right and not ‘discretionary.’ Ensuring that women are paid equally for the work they do is a fundamental right and one which this government must fund accordingly,” said Wayne Fraser, Director of District 6, USWA.

Source: SCIU

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Two dead as Cambodian police open fire on garment worker protests

Compiled by Shane Perlowin

June 15 (AGR)— Cambodian police opened fire to disperse more than 1,000 protesting garment workers on June 13. Two people were killed and several injured, just days before the Association of South East Asian Nations Regional Forum took place in the capital, Phnom Penh.

Yoeum Ry, a garment worker, was shot to death, and one police officer was also killed when struck in the head with a rock. Other protesters were injured after being hit with electric batons and water canons.

The scheduled arrival of delegates from 23 countries, including US Secretary of State Colin Powell, has prompted a security clampdown across the capital.

The violence is an embarrassment for Prime Minister Hun Sen, who was preparing to roll out the red carpet at the summit and show that the Cambodian government is finally putting its violent past behind it.

One government spokesman blamed “opposition forces” for orchestrating events designed to embarrass President Sen ahead of the summit.

“This is a trick that [opposition forces] always play,” Om Yentieng, senior advisor to Hun Sen said. “It’s aimed at damaging the country’s reputation.”

Routine union protests have taken place outside the Terratex Knitting and Garment factory in recent weeks with between 200 and 500 workers striking daily and demanding the removal of a senior manager and better pay.

Worker Cho Kimchhen said demonstrators were acting in good faith in demanding the removal of their boss “because he is corrupt.”

“We wanted to demonstrate outside the factory and I wished to make an appeal to the government, but now as you can see two people are dead,” Kimchen said.

One bystander said workers had attacked the steel doors of the Terratex clothing factory, which had been dented and daubed with large red letters saying “No Gap” — a reference to the US clothing brand — before police moved in.

“We just wanted to complain against the manager because he refused to negotiate with us,” one worker said.

She did not give the name of her factory. There are about ten garment factories in the area in the south of the city, most of them foreign-owned and employing about 1,000 workers.

Cambodia’s 220 garment factories produced some $1.1 billion in exports in 2001, about 77 percent of the country’s total. Most of the clothes go to the United States, to be sold by big name brands such as Nike, Adidas, and Gap.

Political tensions are high in Cambodia as the July 27 general elections approach. Historically, Cambodian polls have been preceded by civil unrest.

Opposition leader Sam Rainsy has built up a strong political following among the deeply impoverished country’s 200,000 mostly female garment workers who regularly stage protests over pay.

In a statement issued on June 13 before the protests, Human Rights Watch criticized the government, saying it was using nationalist anti-Thai riots in January as an excuse to clamp down on any form of protest in the run-up to the elections.

Sources: Reuters, BBC, The Straits Time, Agence France Presse

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