This blog post provides examines some of AUFA’s proposed changes to our equity language. AUFA has made a large number of equity-related proposals, including:
Improvements to professional freedom.
Meaningful workload appeal processes.
A commitment to increasing the proportion of Staff Members from traditionally under-represented groups.
Recognition of the additional work commonly borne by equity-seeking groups.
A contractual obligation to implement the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) calls to action.
Allowing Indigenous academics to select from a broader range of externals during promotion.
Completion of a pay equity survey every three years.
This post focuses on AUFA’s pay equity proposal.
Current and Proposed Language
Article 10 of the collective agreement prohibits discrimination against AUFA members with respect to salaries and benefits on a list of enumerated personal characteristics. These characteristics include (but are not limited to) gender and race. Article 26 requires AUFA and AU to address equity issues, but does not specifically mention salaries or benefits.
AUFA’s opening proposal seeks to amend Article 26 by adding in this language:
26.2.2 The Employment Equity Committee shall:
d) Complete an analysis of pay equity with specific attention to age, race/ethnicity, gender, gender identity and expression, and sexual orientation among Staff Members within six (6) months of this agreement.
e) Conduct additional analyses of pay equity among Staff Members every third year after completion of the first pay equity analysis.
Inequities in pay revealed by this analysis would then trigger AU’s obligations under Article 10 to take action to remedy them.
This proposal reflects preliminary data analysis that suggests there is significant and pervasive gender inequity in starting salaries for AUFA members. Differences in starting salaries persist throughout one’s career and affect pension income.
Gender Analysis of Starting Salaries
As part of AUFA’s preparation for bargaining, a preliminary analysis of starting salaries was conducted by AUFA President Dave Powell using salary data AU provides to AUFA. There are two important caveats relating to this analysis.
First, the university’s collection of gender data is flawed. The university collects data according to a male/female sex binary. The male/female sex binary denies, delegitimizes and invisibilizes the existence and rights of people who do not conform to its terms. Some people’s gender does not match the sex and gender they were assigned at birth (transgender), some people express genders that are a combination of masculine and feminine (Two-Spirit, gender-non-binary, gender-non-conforming, or genderqueer), and some people do not identify with or express a gender (agender). Proper analysis of pay equity needs to include genders beyond the sex binary.
Second, analysis of pay equity must include gender, as well as age, race/ethnicity, gender identity and expression, and sexual orientation as people are systemically paid less according to all these categories. Any pay equity analysis that only considers one category, for example gender, will not account for how systemic colonialism, racism, homophobia and transphobia differently determines employees’ salaries. When gender is the only category that is assessed, white women tend to be the primary or sole beneficiaries of pay equity adjustments. As such, AUFA advocates for a university-wide pay equity analysis that includes all these categories. For this analysis, AUFA used the available data, which is limited to the male/female sex binary category.
AUFA members who were hired between 2017 and 2020 (inclusive) were identified. A small number of known salary outlier cases (e.g., former executives who moved into the AUFA) were removed for the purposes of the analysis. Anonymized data (i.e., starting base salary, start year, faculty, and gender) for the remaining new hires (n=102) was then extracted for analysis. Subsequent data analysis and presentation has been carefully screened to avoid inadvertently revealing anyone’s identity.
A high-level overview of salaries by rank and gender suggested women are often hired at lower salaries than men. In some ranks, there were a very small number of new hires. This makes maintaining anonymity difficult and also raises questions about how representative the data is in those ranks. Consequently, the analysis that follows focuses on the Assistant Professor and Professional C ranks.
The Assistant Professor and Professional C ranks had the most hires (27 and 24 respectively). There were also a significant number of Professional B hires (19). This category was excluded from the analysis because these “new hires” are often long-term AU employees who have been promoted out of AUPE and, thus, bring their salary level with them. In this way, they are not “new to AU” in the same way that are most Assistant Professors and C-level Professionals.
The salary range for Assistant Professors is presently $71,506 to $100,202. Market supplements were excluded from the analysis; there does not appear to be any gendered pattern to the value of market supplements. The salary range for Professional C levels is presently $79,569 to 105,328. Long-service increments extend the Professional C grid to $114,287, but these are not available to new hires.
The table below presents average wages by gender and rank. There are a couple of notable patterns. First, AU hired more women than men in these ranks from 2017-2020. Second, the average starting base salary of women was several thousand dollars lower than that awarded to men.
A couple of methodological notes and caveats are useful here.
The salaries are averages (means). The median salary is very close to the means in all cases.
Faculty- and department-level data is not being presented due to concerns about confidentiality. That said, for Assistant Professors, the broad patterns exist across all faculties except FHSS, where women’s and men’s starting salaries are essentially the same.
There are reasons other than gender for the assignment of starting salaries (e.g., experience, negotiating) that cannot be controlled for given the data AUFA has available to it.
Recognizing these caveats, the pattern in this data suggests AU may be discriminating against women in terms of starting salaries. If AU is committed to the principles of employment equity, this requires further investigation, which accounts for genders beyond the sex binary, and which simultaneously accounts for age, race/ethnicity, gender identity and expression, and sexual orientation. Consequently, AUFA has proposed in bargaining periodic joint analyses of pay equity on the basis of gender as well as other identity factors such as age, race/ethnicity, gender identity and expression, and sexual orientation.
The pattern revealed in this analysis also suggests that AU may be in breach of its obligations under Article 10 of the collective agreement. This issue will be referred to the equity and grievance committees for further discussion.
Your Views
AUFA’s bargaining team is interested in hearing the views of the AUFA membership about this proposal. To that end, we have created a short survey.
Bob Barnetson, Chair
Job Action Committee