Daniel MacIsaac
Northern News Services

NNSL (Jan 27/99) - The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruled Friday that NWT pay-equity hearings will proceed in September, though where the hearings will take place remains unsettled.

Appearing before the tribunal Thursday and Friday were representatives for the plaintiff, the Public Service Alliance of Canada, which filed suit on behalf of the Union of Northern Workers, and the defendant GNWT. The preliminary hearing was the latest step in the decade-long dispute over pay-equity settlement.

UNW public relations officer Barb Wyness said Monday that the GNWT raised seven additional preliminary objections at the hearing, objections that will be addressed before the tribunal in Yellowknife.

"The objections didn't come as a surprise," she said. "As far as we're concerned, they're a stalling tactic."

Wyness said one of the moot points is the venue for the September hearing. She said the UNW favours having opening and closing sessions in Yellowknife and the bulk of the proceedings in Ottawa, where many of the witnesses and counsel are located. She said the GNWT proposed the hearings take place in several NWT communities, where its employees reside.

Wyness said this proposal was not "workable," that proceedings could be televised and that it represented an attempt to make the process more expensive for the union.

Wyness said the GNWT has also been busy trying to undermine the effectiveness of the class-action suit by sending letters to individual workers, offering pay-equity settlement packages.

In a Jan. 20 letter posted on the union Web site, PSAC national president Daryl Bean addressed the matter to Herb Hunt, director of labour relations with the government. Bean writes that such settlement offers, even if accepted, will not bar the workers from claim to the class-action, settlement benefits.

"GNWT payments under such settlement can, at best, stand only as a down payment toward each employee's individual entitlement as found by the tribunal," Bean writes.

"My personal opinion is they're attempting to grasp at straws," Wyness said. "I think they're afraid of what the tribunal is going to say."

GNWT representatives could not be reached for comment Tuesday.