Manufacturing Backlash

By Eric Schryer

(Chair of PUSH’s Central Regional Council and serving on a multitude of employment-related committees, Eric Schryer is the coordinator of Disabled People for Employment Equity (DPEE), a coalition of 35 consumer groups and agencies dedicated to the fight for mandatory employment equity legislation. DPEE is based in Toronto.)

Ontario’s long-awaited employment equity legislation finally passed third reading in the Legislature on December 9, 1993. When proclaimed, Bill 79 -- Ontario’s Employment Equity Act -- will oblige employers to take a number of steps to increase representation in the work force of the designated groups. Employers will have to survey their work force to determine the representation of designated group members. Next, they will have to review their policies and practices to identify barriers to the recruitment, hiring, retention, treatment and promotion of designated group members. An employment equity plan will then have to be prepared that will provide for the elimination of barriers and outline implementation of positive, supportive accommodation measures.

Employment equity legislation is an exceedingly difficult kind of legislation to introduce and implement. As is the case with other human-rights-type initiatives, employment equity directly challenges the contentment and privilege of the business community, dominated by white, able-bodied men. If they don’t actually own and control the news media, they can make their influence felt through the purchase of advertising space and by sponsoring media programming in accordance with their interests. It so happens that the present Ontario NDP government, headed by Premier Bob Rae, is seen by the business sector as fundamentally against its interests. It doesn’t matter that this same government has gone to great lengths not to irritate the sector. In terms of its coverage of employment equity, the media has served as a natural lobbying tool for business and its supporters.

QUOTAS, QUOTAS, QUOTAS
The media at first became obsessed with the notion that employment equity imposed rigid "quotas" on employers, that they would be forced to hire "unqualified" people. This is just not true but, nonetheless, mandatory goals and timetables became less and less "mandatory" as time went on. In reality, employment equity does not call for the hiring of unqualified people at all. While quotas are fixed, rigid measures, goals and timetables are, by their very nature, dynamic and transforming processes leading toward an ultimate goal -- to make the workplace population reflect the community. Besides, under Bill 79, employers will only be judged on the grounds of "all reasonable efforts"; goals and timetables will apply to opportunities for change only (draft regulations). Nobody is going to be displaced in the process, though employers will nonetheless have an obligation to move forward in their attempts to achieve equality in their workplace.

MERIT PRINCIPLE?
Then came the idea of "hiring by merit only." "Merit" is a confusing term, carrying with it quite a bit of baggage that has little to do with being fully qualified for a job. The idea of having merit implies that a person "fits in" consistently with the present work culture, a culture designed for white, able-bodied men. This concept goes against the principle that the workplace will have to change in order to accommodate the needs of designated group members, an idea that is central to effective employment equity. After the decision-makers had reacted to this attack, the principles of employment equity became much less focused than they were in the document introduced at first reading.

REVERSE DISCRIMINATION
The third attack was the media’s depiction of employment equity as a form of "reverse discrimination." Here was a total denial of the understanding that from time to time, measures must be taken to make up for the effects of past discrimination by means of attempting to introduce equality. The media totally disregarded that "special programs" or positive measures are considered desirable in most quarters now. Furthermore, they are justified under Section 15 (2) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Ontario Human Rights Code.

LIMITED ELIGIBILITY
The last attack by the media focused on "limited eligibility job competitions." The media staged a particularly vicious attack on employment equity just as Bill 79 was passing through committee hearings and about to go forward for third reading. It pronounced that from now on, white men would never be hired again -- a total misinterpretation of what employment equity is all about. The subject of the attack was a job ad in the government flyer that had been placed without the proper communications strategy (an example of "bad employment equity" done in the context of a voluntary program without legislated guidance). From the standpoint of its effect, the ad was pure sabotage, timed exactly to arouse a strong public reaction. Placing a job competition that is limited to designated group members is only one of many tools used in implementing employment equity, one that is used as a last resort when all else fails.

More recently, after the passage of Bill 79, a Gallup poll was done on employment equity that placed support at a very low level (26 per cent). Considering that the media has been manufacturing a backlash on an unprecedented scale, and considering that the questions asked were very well keyed in with the arguments pushed by the business sector, it was not surprising that the poll came up with the results it did. Why was it necessary even to do the poll at exactly that time? It was clear whose side the media were on.

THE ELEVENTH HOUR
In fact, during the last year and a half, it has become almost impossible to induce the media to give an intelligent, sympathetic presentation of employment equity to the public. The Minister of Citizenship, responsible for employment equity, has repeatedly asked the community to persuade the media to treat employment equity in a positive way. At a DPEE membership meeting a few weeks before Bill 79 passed, it was decided not to talk to the media until the legislation was finalized. We decided to engage the politicians instead.

The day of third reading, a press conference was held when a number of coalitions, community and labour groups gave a joint statement to give guarded support for the final legislation (these groups included the Alliance for Employment Equity, Disabled People for Employment Equity, Women’s Coalition on Employment Equity, Ontario Federation of Labour, Urban Alliance for Race Relations and the Coalition of Visible Minority Women). The night before, the Minister’s staff went to great lengths begging us to call off the press conference for fear of what the media would say, even though they knew we would put a positive spin on the whole deal.

Although the press turned out in droves the next morning, very little appeared in the media that day. We had predicted that. At this point it was a done deal, the battles had been lost or won, the media attacks had ceased to be a primary lobbying tool for the business sector.

A couple of points in conclusion. First, like the term "affirmative action," "employment equity" has been thoroughly discredited by the media. A better strategy might be to deal with various components of employment equity such as "barrier identification and removal," "systemic accommodation measures," "discriminatory attitudes," etc. and build a broad-based foundation of understanding on which employment equity can be built. Finally, the challenge for us here in Ontario has been to get members of different disadvantaged groups to see that they also have much in common and to keep different groups from going it alone. This has greatly weakened the final legislative package. Decision makers have done much to play different groups against each other as a strategy to keep the community out of their hair. Unfortunately, many individuals in our community, as well as other designated group members who claim to be supporters of employment equity, have played into this strategy to the detriment of effective employment equity legislation.