A group of federal nurses, most of them female, has suffered discrimination from the federal government for more than 30 years, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has ruled.

The tribunal found that the nurses responsible for determining the eligibility of applicants for the Canadian Pension Plan performed a similar job as medical advisers, yet were paid half as much. Ninety-five per cent of the nurses are female, and 80 per cent of the medical advisers are male.

A complaint was filed by 431 of these nurses, called medical adjudicators, in 2004. They said that in addition to the wage disparities, the advisers also received more benefits and were recognized as health professionals while adjudicators were designated program administrators.

In the Dec. 13 ruling, tribunal member Karen A. Jensen found that Social Development Canada, the Treasury Board of Canada and the Public Service Human Resources Management Agency "deprive[d] the adjudicators of professional recognition and remuneration commensurate with their qualifications, and ... payment of their licensing fees, as well as training and career advancement opportunities on the same basis as the advisers."

Jensen wrote that while there are "some important differences" in the work performed by the two groups, primarily in an oversight and advisory role, both positions use medical expertise to determine eligibility for the Canadian Pension Plan.

She wrote the differences are not "significant enough to explain the wide disparity in treatment, and, more particularly, they do not explain why the advisers are recognized as health professionals and the adjudicators are not."

Under the Canadian Human Rights Act, it is illegal to treat a female-dominated group differently from a male-dominated group when both perform similar work.

The government was ordered to immediately stop discriminating against the nurses in wages and recognition. Jensen wrote that the nurses were entitled to compensation for lost wages and pain and suffering dating back to 1978, the year the Canada Human Rights Act came into force. She ruled the act did not apply retroactively to the creation of the adjudicator position in 1972.

The government and the nurses' group will have three months to negotiate a settlement. If they fail to reach an agreement, the tribunal will determine the compensation.

The lawyer representing several of the nurses, Laurence Armstrong, told CanWest News Service the compensation could reach hundreds of millions of dollars.