Hospital Professionals Division

Collective Bargaining

Update on HPD Pay Equity
 

Work is progressing on the HPD Central Pay Equity project.

In August, 2009, the Steering Committee Chairs sent a joint letter to the CEOs and our local presidents at hospitals with outstanding questionnaires to encourage them to do what is necessary to get the questionnaires completed, with a deadline of October 30, 2009 for completion.  Twenty-five of 44 participating hospitals have completed all the job information questionnaires.  To date, 89.9 per cent of the questionnaires have been completed.  Most of the remaining 19 hospitals have only a handful of outstanding questionnaires.  In many cases these are for jobs that are somewhat unique in our bargaining units, with few incumbents or they are for jobs that have been identified as potential male comparators.  Five hospitals still have a considerable number of outstanding questionnaires. 

It is our goal to have all of the questionnaires completed.  We are working proactively both with our bargaining units and with the hospitals at the Steering Committee level to identify barriers to completion of the questionnaires. 

The Joint Evaluation Committee is making progress on evaluating the questionnaires.  At this point we have tentative evaluations on more than 40 job titles, involving more than 250 job information questionnaires.  In some cases these are very tentative evaluations as they were prepared before all the questionnaires for that job title were received. 

The work is detailed and painstaking.  Your committee is making careful evaluation of the information provided in the questionnaires.  We are also gathering additional information from sources such as regulatory colleges, educational facilities and professional associations to augment the information that is provided in the questionnaires. 

Our evaluation process is such that the parties meet separately to do the evaluations, then we meet to compare our results.  Where the results differ, we then separately review the rationale for the rating and decide whether to revise the rating and then meet to discuss the review. 

The parties have identified a number of situations where because of unclear or conflicting information we will have to interview employees and supervisors.

We want to thank you all for your work in completing the questionnaires.  We know that this has been a big job for everyone.  The material that you have provided is detailed and descriptive and gives a full picture of what is involved in your work.

We know that this is a slow process but we are working hard to ensure that it moves as quickly as possible and as accurately as possible.