Why didn’t the AJC complete the joint pay studies?

The tentative agreement provides at p. 9 that the joint pay studies are terminated and will not proceed further.  The transition to the new single pay grid (formerly the Toronto pay grid) and the pay increases totaling 12.5% have addressed market adjustment and pay concerns for this round of collective bargaining.

The AJC is of the view that the Employer’s recognition that Ontario government lawyers are the reasonable comparator for LP pay is actually a better outcome than what could be achieved in the joint pay studies which would have compared LP pay to the pay of lawyers in numerous Canadian jurisdictions (many of which pay their lawyers poorly) as well as internal public sector comparators.

In any event, the AJC was concerned about how long it would take to complete the joint pay studies, especially in light of the years of work that had been put in without even finalizing methodology and data collection.  The Employer suggested that it might take as many as five years or more to complete the joint pay studies and an arbitration which might follow.  Our own research analyst concurred that this was possible.  Some pay studies and pay equity exercises have taken decades to litigate.  If the result at the end of that litigation had been that there was no retroactivity to the adjustments, that would have represented a massive loss of pay for our members.

Finally, the legislative factors discussed above represented a potential headwind that might work against the membership, and the outcome of the pay studies was far from certain.