Mary-Marta Briones-Bird of Local 1998 Ensures Pay Equity for Workers at University of Toronto

This article is part of Women of Steel’s “Sister Stories” series.

Working at a university can often come with stiff job competition and uncertainty over shifts in government funding. Mary-Marta Briones-Bird, who currently works as a Job Evaluation Coordinator for Local 1998 at the University of Toronto, said having a union contract helps counteract that volatility.

As a woman, this stability goes a long way.

“Union membership has historically meant economic independence for women,” said Briones-Bird. “It certainly has meant that for me.”

Local 1998 represents roughly 10,000 members spread out across six units. The massive group first joined the USW in 1998, hence their iconic local number.

Briones-Bird is proud to be a union member. Before joining the local on a full-time secondment, she worked as an administrative coordinator for the Faculty of Information at the university. And, despite the recent attacks on education in both the United States and Canada, she is even prouder to work in this vital sector.

“Members of my local are the mortar that holds the bricks together,” she said. “We work in labs, in IT, administration, student counseling, donor relations. We do it all.”

She is also proud of her work with the local as a Job Evaluation Coordinator, which includes ensuring workers at the university are paid equitably regardless of their gender. This position developed from Ontario’s Pay Equity Act, which passed in 1990 and established requirements for employers to create and post pay equity plans.

Briones-Bird noted that building strong bonds of unity across different groups of workers is the only way to ensure pay equity and stem the rising tide of economic inequality.  Billionaires, she said, will always look out for themselves, which means union members in either country can’t afford to be distracted from the fight for the common good.

“We should focus on the issues important to all of us, including the economic squeeze, passing and enforcing strong labor laws, and having a strong industrial sector,” she said.

Despite the recent tension over trade policy, as well as the rise in right-wing ideology, Briones-Bird has reason to be optimistic when she walks around her neighborhood in Toronto.

“I see people having conversations, holding the door open for each other,” she said. “These basic interactions between us are important, and I see us being a little kinder.”