T here is a great deal of talk these days about the new work organization demanded by the new global economy. It is often called ‘non-standard employment’ and it is fre- quently accompanied by claims that the wel- fare state, designed for the times of ‘standard’ employment, is obsolete. Yet the majority of women have never had standard employ- ment, if we mean by this full-time, full-year paid jobs that were likely to last until the incumbents reached retirement age. In 1990, only 34% of Canadian women had full-time, full-year paid work and less that a quarter of the women with paid work had been in those jobs for more than ten years. 1 And this was the year when the rise in women’s labour force participation in Canada seems to have peaked at 58.7%. 2 It was precisely because the market in general and employers in particular were not providing decent jobs and decent wages that women successfully demanded state inter- vention to protect them and state social pro- grammes to support them. In other words, the welfare state was developed, in part at least, to address the demonstrated problems created by non-standard employment and helped establish the conditions for more secure and decently paid work. The increase in non-standard employment then, has a greater impact on women and should signal the need for greater intervention, rather than the reverse; the need for an expanded state rather than its dismantling (Armstrong 1996). Equal pay legislation was one of the early demands for state intervention. 3 Such legis- lation was aimed at addressing compensation inequalities faced by women workers in pre- dominantly non-standard employment. In Canada, the implementation by the state of proactive pay equity legislation aimed at systemic wage discrimination has resulted in a number of substantial benefits, not the least of which has been the requirement that many employers, including the state, pay sub- stantially more to some women for women’s work. Of course, the welfare state has not always served the needs of women. Indeed, it has often served to reinforce inequality (Brodie 1995). And pay equity legislation has too often failed to offer some women any rewards while increasing the differences among women (Armstrong and Armstrong 1991). However, even its partial success has con- tributed to major ideological attacks on it by employers and by the state itself. Further- more, the rapid changes in the state and private sector, along with the backlash against protective legislation, mean that many old strategies for state intervention are no longer effective. However, this does not © Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1997, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. Volume 4 Number 2 April 1997 RESTRUCTURING PAY EQUITY 67 Address for correspondence: *Pat Armstrong, Director of Canadian Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, K1S 5B6. Mary Cornish, Cavalluzzo Hayes Shilton, McIntyre & Cornish, Barristers & Solicitors, 43 Madison Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, M5R 2S2. Restructuring Pay Equity for A Restructured Work Force: Canadian Perspectives Pat Armstrong* and Mary Cornish The province of Ontario, Canada, has developed innovative pay and employment equity legislation. The legal challenges over the pay equity legislation have established some important precedents, especially in the area of gender bias and job evaluation schemes. The Employment Equity legislation established important new principles but was repealed only a year after it was passed by a new Conservative government. The government and economic restructuring, however, are rapidly altering both the legislation and the context in which it operates. This paper considers not only the impact of such legislation in the long and short run, but also the possibilities for future legislative intervention in the new political and economic climate. One of the authors has been centrally involved in developing the legislation, in mapping alternatives and in bringing legal challenges under the legislation. The other author has been researching and writing about women’s work for more than twenty years and has served as an expert witness in numerous cases related to the issues of concern here.