Doug Ashbury
Northern News Services

NNSL (May 11/98) - Neither side will give an inch.

The Union of Northern Workers wants pay equity off the collective bargaining table.

The Government of the Northwest Territories says no way.

Some people, among them MLA Jake Ootes, are calling the pay equity debate a potential "deal breaker."

Dave Kaufman, on the UNW's negotiating team, said if this goes to a strike, his community of Inuvik will be severely hurt.

"Not one single tourist will come up the Dempster Highway. We have little other business," he said Thursday at a union update on bargaining held in Yellowknife.

Finance Minister John Todd, responsible for the government's financial management board, said Wednesday: "I see the two issues (collective bargaining and pay equity) as linked. They've simply got to be linked."

Todd added he is willing to have a joint government-union review of pay equity.

But only after it was negotiated as part of a collective agreement.

"Let's get the agreement."

UNW president Jackie Simpson says, "Let's take it off the table."

The two sides resumed bargaining last Monday.

Government has offered a two-year contract. Simpson said it would be inappropriate to disclose salary at this point in the negotiations.

The chief negotiator for the GNWT is the financial management board's Herb Hunt. Simpson is the union's chief negotiator.

The GNWT is proposing a $40 million pay equity settlement which includes $29 million in one-time retroactive pay, $9 million generated from new job evaluation and $6 million for other employee issues.

The UNW figure is about $70 million plus interest.

To settle the pay equity issue, the GNWT hired the Hay Group to put together a job evaluation system for GNWT workers.

"I've talked to people who say this plan is international. Why is it not good enough for the North," Dave Nightingale, a GNWT employee, said Thursday.

Simpson replied that it is not necessarily the plan which the union takes issue with, it's the modifications.

Josie Gould, a UNW regional vice-president (Yellowknife Sombak'e), said the Hay plan is based on outdated job descriptions.

"Government has gone through downsizing, layoffs, decentralization. Job descriptions are definitely not correct," she said.

In 1989, the Public Service Alliance of Canada filed a pay equity complaint with Canada's Human Rights Commission on behalf of the UNW.

The GNWT challenged the complaint and lost.

On last week's collective bargaining talks, Simpson said the two sides have made progress on some issues like job security and violence in the workplace.