In this episode, the Pay Equity Unit meets with Craig Faucette from Trucking HR Canada to discuss some of the challenges of implementing the new Pay Equity Act in the trucking industry. We also discuss the positive impacts of achieving pay equity and how fair compensation practices can result in workplaces with improved employee satisfaction, reduced turnover, and enhanced productivity.
Eric Diotte: Welcome to Putting Pay Equity into Practice. I'm Eric Diotte, Director of the Pay Equity Unit at the Canadian Human Rights Commission. In this podcast, various industry guests join me to discuss how these industry leaders are experiencing the opportunities and challenges of pay equity. Join us to learn more about pay equity.
Craig Faucette is the Chief Program Officer for Trucking HR Canada. Craig has spent his career in the charitable and non-profit sector, and brings those skills with him to the trucking industry. He has developed expertise in nonprofit management, program development and management, and business development. Craig oversees a Trucking HR Canada's project and program that aim to ensure employer have the skilled workforce needed to meet their business needs today and in the future.
Trucking HR is a national nonprofit organization with the mission of advancing modern HR solution for trucking and logistics workforce. Trucking HR collaborates with the dynamic network including industries, associations, government departments, and industry professionals. Some of its services include a provision of labor market information and sharing of industry-specific best practices on HR and training as well as a development of HR tools and supports for employers. Our goal today with this podcast is to discuss pay equity in the road transportation industry. Craig, welcome, and thank you for accepting our invitation.
Craig Faucette: It's a pleasure to be here today. I'm really happy to have this opportunity
Eric: To start, can you please provide us a bit of information about the federally regulated trucking industry in Canada?
Craig: Absolutely. The trucking logistics industry comprises over 700,000 workers where the vast majority of these workers are within the federally regulated sector. The most predominant occupation in our industry is obviously the truck driver occupation which makes up about 320,000 workers. It fits in about the 40% to 45% range of all of our workers for our industry. Clearly, it's the backbone of how our industry operates and the backbone of how our industry is able to move forward.
With that said, we also do have a large number of other occupations as well that make up that other 55% or so of our workforce. The industry itself though has been traditionally male-dominated industry. From our last census data, what we know is that about 85% of our workers are men. Only 15% of our workers are female. When we break that down into different various roles within the industry, when we look at, say, occupations that are on the road, that are in the warehouse or in the shop, those are very much male-dominated workforces as well.
What we've seen there is that about 86.5% of our truck drivers are male, 98.4% of our mechanics are male, delivering courier drivers are 91% male, shippers and receivers about 77% male. We also know that a lot of our managers and supervisors are male where they make about 81% of that workforce. On the flip side though, we tend to find that women are more segmented into office roles or into the office area of our businesses.
We see that in general administration about 87% are women, county is about 85% women, and human resources about 61% women. When we look at that through the lens of pay equity is that we do know that a lot of our occupations are going to be either male-dominated or female-dominated because we have a bit of stratification within different roles.
When we look at this and we start talking to employers, what we remind them is that there may be a lot of evaluation that's going to have to take place depending on how your workforce is set up. Obviously, these are national numbers and every employer will have a different workforce themselves, but the general trend indicates that this is an area that they'll have to really focus on as they're doing their pay equity plans.
Eric: What would you say are the challenges that the trucking industry is experiencing in terms of hiring and retention?
Craig: Honestly, this has been an issue that the industry has faced for a long period of time. We have a very chronic labor shortage. That has gone back really for the last 10 to 15 years and has been exacerbated through the pandemic and now as we are recovering from the pandemic. Right now we have about 20,000 vacancies in the truck transportation sector itself, that's NAICS 484, and that gives us about a vacancy rate of 9.4%. It's one of the highest in the country.
Although we see labor shortages across many industries, ours are a little bit more acute in that regard. These vacancies include jobs for different occupations like truck drivers, mechanics, dispatchers, shippers, receivers, managers, administrators, IT workers, and many more.
When we look at the truck driver vacancies, it's actually quite a bit higher. It's about 28,000, which seems a bit odd because we only have 20,000 vacancies for the industry, but because we have truck drivers in so many other industries like construction, retail, trade mining, forestry, and so on, that number actually grows quite a bit and becomes a challenge for our industry because you're trying to recruit those same drivers that may stay in truck transportation or move to other industries as well.
What we find with those vacancies is that they're becoming harder and harder to fill. Over 50% of those vacancies are staying vacant for over 90 days or are continuing to be perpetually recruited for-- even though you fill the one role, you're still recruiting for the next one down the road. It's a perpetual issue that the industry continually needs to address.
Eric: Do you have any idea as to why it takes that much time to recruit new drivers?
Craig: It's multi-faceted. One of the issues we face is that we are having an aging workforce. The average age of our truck drivers is getting older and older and that's becoming a challenge. As those drivers continually age out and maybe go on to retirement, we're finding that it's been becoming more difficult to have younger people come in.
That's twofold. One is that driver pathway. When you go from licensing to becoming a full driver, there are some challenges there. Insurance plays a role in that where it's tough to ensure a driver under the age of 25. If we're having difficulty recruiting people until they hit 25, they've already decided on their career. We've done a lot of initiatives in other areas that are trying to address those concerns.
There's also concerns around the cost of training as well. They cost up to $10,000 to do training to get your entry-level license basically. That's a real barrier too because there isn't the same student assistant support in place for that kind of training as there would be for college university. There are a lot of challenges that we have within recruiting. We also do need to know that we have to diversify our workforce when 96.5% are men. We need to find ways of bringing more women into the industry, finding ways of making the occupation more attractive to women as well too.
Eric: Thinking about these challenges, what will pay equity and the Pay Equity Act mean for your industry?
Craig: I think it's going to be a big change for the industry. We know right now when we talk to employers that they are doing a lot of work on developing their plans and so on. What we do tend to find is that when we talk with employers, when we work very directly with them, they've placed a lot of energy on supporting their workforces, both men and women within their other companies.
That's been a real area of focus because they want to look at how are they recruiting people in, how are they retaining the people that they have. I think what pay equity will allow us to look at is maybe some of those unconscious blind spots that exist within our workforces. We are dealing with issues that are pretty much systemic issues at work across all workplaces within Canada, and challenges that women have faced of being able to be recognized for equal value of the work that they do. That I think will have positive impacts in our industry as well as it helps other industries too.
Eric: What are you hearing from your members about the Pay Equity Act?
Craig: It's been really varied and it's changed over the last little while. When we first started looking at this, the first set of questions was, what's pay equity? Then the next question was, "We pay everyone equally within their role." It's like, "Well, that's great, but pay equity is a little bit different than pay equality." That was the first start. We had to educate the industry on what this was and let them know that this is coming about, you need to look at it.
Then it changed to, "Okay, yes, this is in place. Now, you have three years, but it's a pretty in-depth process, so it's something you need to look at sooner rather than later. I wouldn't start this a month before it's due." That was at the beginning. Now what we're seeing is that employers are coming back to us with really granular questions. As they are working through developing their committees, working through their pay equity plans, doing the job evaluations, they're really asking very specific questions on what they need to do to be able to make sure that they are compliant with the act and that they're moving in the right direction. It's really doing that application side to the policy that's in place.
Eric: It's interesting because I don't think it's specific to the trucking industry. We're actually seeing that in other industry too.
Craig: I'm sure. Yes.
Eric: Yes. It started as what is pay equity, what does it mean, and so forth. Now we realize we also get some really, really specific questions, which is good because it demonstrate that the employers are actually thinking about their pay equity.
Craig: Exactly. I think the challenge we see with that too is that-- every industry's unique. You have your own particularities and how that industry's set up. In our case, we have a lot of employers who are very spread out. They may have a headquarter in one province, but they'll have terminals across the entire country. They also run different business lines. That could be within the same business or they could own multiple businesses that all work together so that they have diverse revenue and diverse operations.
It's been a challenge, I think, for employers to get their head around, "Okay, well how does this act apply to my situation? Do I need to do one plan for the entire company? Do I have to segment out plans?" Honestly, the answer is very different for each different companies. How are they set up and how you can apply that? I think they've been struggling a little bit to figure out, "Okay, how does this work for me?"
Eric: Based on your experience, where do you think are employer at in the pay equity process?
Craig: I think, again, that's something that's probably fairly diverse. We have a very large industry, as I mentioned in the beginning, the 720,000 workers. We're going to find that it's going to be all over the map within that. What we've been seeing lately is that everyone seems to be in the trenches of developing their plans. A good example is that we've been really fortunate to partner with the Pay Equity Commission and doing a series of webinars that honestly were incredibly well-attended.
We have some of the highest attendance for those webinars out of any of the webinars that we normally provide. We're really happy with that, that really demonstrated that employers are taking this seriously and are doing the work around that. What we tended to find with a lot of the questions that came back is that they're very granular again. "Okay, I understand the basic concepts here, but how does this apply in this particular situation?"
A lot of times those questions that are coming up, for example, is that, "Well, I pay this one job $20 an hour in Nova Scotia, but I pay it $24 an hour in Ontario because a different market rate, so how do I reconcile that within this plan?" There's things like that. They're really trying to figure out exactly how does this work on a job-by-job level and how do I deal with the variances that happen within a job depending on which location it's in, and how do I put that together.
Eric: My understanding is the compensation is quite complicated in the trucking industry.
Craig: It can be, yes. It depends on the occupation. Where we see the greatest amount of complexity is within our truck drivers especially, and really specific to long haul truck driving. Those are the truck drivers who are away from home for maybe 3 to 5 or 10 days in a row as they are hauling freight from one area of the country to another or into the United States or beyond even.
In that situation, what we tend to find is that those drivers can be paid in a variety of different ways. It's not just say a salary pay, it's not hourly pay, but it could be what we call mileage pay. They're getting paid for every kilometer a mile that they drive, but then they'll also have what's called hybrid in that. If they're kind of stuck in traffic, stuck at a shipper stuck at the border, they'll get paid hourly for that time because if they're not driving, they're not earning, so therefore they have compensation for that.
It becomes quite complex when you look at their pay structures and how you reconcile that. I think that's been a challenge for employers too, is being able to go through that structure, figure out, well, what's base pay within there? What's considered to be an incentive, what's a merit increase, and so on? Because is this not as straightforward as most other pay structures where it's just hourly or salary and so on.
Eric: Would you say that the employers are aware of the September 3rd, 2024 deadline to have their pay equity plan posted?
Craig: Yes. I think a lot of them are. Again, our industry's very diverse, so we're seeing a lot of employers are aware of that deadline, are working towards that. They want to get their plans in place well before that date. I think with that being said, there's still a need to reach out to the broader areas of the industry as well and ensure that some of the smaller employers who maybe don't have the same focus or energy to put towards this are aware of this as well and that they're able to do that and that supports are in place for them.
What we tend to find is that it's those large and medium-sized employers that have the HR resources in place that are really moving forward with this, they can dedicate staff to do this, but in a smaller employer, the HR person could be the owner, could be the safety manager, could be a compliance manager. They could be doing four or five different roles. It may not be the first thing that's on their mind because they're trying to run their operations, they're trying to ensure that they're compliant with other aspects of the Canadian Labor Code that have been changing over time, which has been great, but that's also adjustments they have to make.
It's trying to ensure that they're aware of that and again, letting them know, yes, it's September 2024, but you're going to need to start that sooner rather than later just to get all the steps in place to be ready by that time.
Eric: Our experience, we see the same thing, especially with small employers. You're right. They have multiple roles and they get overwhelmed with all the reporting that they need to do because the Pay Equity Act is not the only act that they need to be in compliance with. It can be quite challenging for them.
Craig: Exactly. There's a fair amount of Labor Canada reporting too that they do as well. It's just fitting this into all of the other pieces that they have to take care of.
Eric: What would you say are some of the challenges that employers are experiencing as they work to apply the Pay Equity Act to their business?
Craig: I think again, it's a little bit multifold. At the beginning, what we're finding is that there was a lot of questions around setting up your committees and the ins and outs of being able to do that. How do I form the committee? How do I make sure there's the right representation? How do I deal with the fact that I have offices in multiple locations? Do I need to ensure that I have representation from each different terminal or different office?
That's been a big kind of question as well. The parts of our industry that are unionized are ensuring that they make sure that there's proper union representation within that. That's been kind of the first kind of set. The next questions have really been around that job evaluation. How do I look at that? How do I deal with variations in pay? We talked about truck driver pay. How does that fit into this? How do I deal with differences in pay between jurisdictions and different market rates that may exist, say, in Ontario compared to Alberta, compared to Nova Scotia?
How does that play a role within that? What we're finding too is how do I differentiate between my base pay my incentives, my merit, increases, how do I weave in benefits, and so on. There's been a lot of those really granular questions about how they kind of work through each different piece of that and fit that within the job evaluation structure that needs to be in place.
Eric: Do you have any idea on how they're addressing these challenges?
Craig: I think they're doing it multifold. The webinar series that we held with the commission gave them a great opportunity to seek guidance from the commission itself about how they can move forward with that. I think they're utilizing some of the resources that the commission has put into place as well. I think a lot of it is just working through their committees too, is how do they present this to the committee in a way that they can get some consensus to move forward with it?
Eric: What kind of support do employers need to help them meet their pay equity timeline?
Craig: I think it's a lot more of the same. The Commission has put together a lot of great resources, which includes the Pay Equity Toolkit, that includes a comprehension job evaluation guide, and is continuing to be able to promote those resources to employers. We've also seen that the webinar series that we did in partnership with the Commission has been really a vital part that employers have been able to utilize. One, getting great information from the presentation, but having that opportunity to ask questions and have answers from Commission officers has been really helpful as well.
Eric: We do have-- I think you're aware, you made reference to it. We have the Pay Equity Toolkit-
Craig: Yes.
Eric: -that employers, mainly small employers, small and medium employers can use which is a really fabulous tool actually. We're also working right now on a online training with the University of Quebec.
Craig: Oh, great.
Eric: Basically, it's a full training pay equity from A to Z, what steps you need to follow with some concrete examples. We're looking forward to have this ready by next year. We hope that this will really support employers in their pay equity journey.
Craig: I think those will be wonderful resources. From Trucking HR Canada's standpoint, we would very much like to help promote those to our employers as well, so they can utilize those resources when they're there.
The one thing I'll say even about the toolkit is although it may be more designed to that small to medium employer, I think larger employers are at least utilizing it as a resource or a reference as well. It's providing some good guidance, I think, to everyone even if they have their own resources in place, there's still good guidance within that toolkit that any employer can use.
Eric: That's great. Thank you very much, Craig, for taking the time to speak with us.
Craig: My pleasure. I'm glad to have the opportunity.
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Eric: This has been Putting Pay Equity Into Practice. Be sure to visit payequitychrc.ca for all the news on pay equity. You can also follow us on LinkedIn. Simply search Pay Equity Unit. I'm Eric Diotte. Thanks for listening.