Human Resources Committee on Dec. 5th, 2006

[Hassan Yussuff]

Just on the first point, about the relationship during and after a dispute, as committee members may know—or you may not know, unless you've been at the bargaining table or have been involved in the labour relations field—labour relations are a very delicate matter. Of course, there's a lot of trust in a relationship that has built up over time. Quite often, of course, a dispute could destroy all of the goodwill that exists, because long after a dispute has been concluded, what is required, of course, is a harmonious relationship in order to operate the facility in a way that makes it productive and is necessary for it to generate the right kind of outcome, which is to make sure that the business is actually making a profit for the employer.

When you have a bitter labour dispute in which you force workers to take sides and you've introduced a foreign element such as a replacement worker, in that context I can tell you that we don't have the statistical evidence or a study to show that. In almost every workplace, though, from my own experience and that of my colleagues who will testify before you, the relationship does not go back to normal. As a matter of fact, it will take years of effort. Sometimes the labour department has to be brought into the process to help the parties restore it, because much of the goodwill has been destroyed in that process and you're trying to rebuild it.

It's critical that the committee recognize that the function of an effective workplace, in regard to making it successful, requires goodwill on both sides to make it work. If we were to operate on a narrow aspect of the collective agreement, nothing would get done in the workplace. It's this inflexibility and flexibility of the workplace, the ability for parties to give and take and of course to respect each other in the context of operating the business, that's required.

Quite often, when that breach takes place—you'll hear testimony coming before the committee about very nasty disputes before other elements—you will find out specifically that it does have enormous consequences for the future. Other colleagues who will be testifying can tell you directly what the consequences have been of those nasty disputes in the workplace where we've had replacement workers brought in.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

We're going to move to our last questioner of this round. Mr. Lake, for five minutes, please.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank you all for being here today.

Ms. Davies touched on talking about unions, saying that a strike is the last resort for unions. She was reiterating what Ms. Ducharme said. It was the same thing. I would say that the same goes for employers. A strike or a lockout is the last resort for employers right now. I would say the situation that speaks to the balance we have right now is that, for both parties, a strike or a lockout is a last resort. When we start talking about removing the balance, which is what I think this legislation would do, it puts that in danger. It doesn't become a last resort from the union standpoint, but it makes it all the harder on employers.

I take a little bit of contention with the overall terminology that I hear regarding labour in general, like the term “workers”. We're all workers. We all work very hard. Whether you're talking about tradespeople who work very hard, whether you're talking about waiters or managers or small-business owners, CEOs, or even union leaders or stay-at-home parents for that matter, Canadians are hard-working people. We as parliamentarians need to approach this in the interest of all Canadians, not just one group. It's important for us to find a balance for all Canadians. Some of those Canadians are people who consume the telecommunications industry's offerings or transport services. They fly. They do all sorts of things. We don't live in isolation from each other.

A labour disagreement, by definition, is just that. It's a disagreement between two groups operating in their own self-interest, right? You have employees, a union, basically operating in the interests of the employees, and understandably, of course. And you have the employers operating in their business's interests.

It seems as though the other three parties and the labour leaders only take the side of one group of people on this issue, those they call “workers”, and all labour issues are the fault of employers.

Mr. Georgetti, you made a comment, something to the effect of there being no concern for workers who can't support their families if they get locked out or if they're on strike. I think it's fair to say that your organization sometimes doesn't show a lot of concern for business people who have worked very hard to build their businesses. Their businesses may be significantly damaged or even put under by a strike or by an unreasonable action. I'm not saying that all union actions are unreasonable, by any stretch, but some may be, just like some employer actions may be unreasonable. But it's not always the employers. Oftentimes, it's not an employer action, but a union action that may be unreasonable, and I think what we're dealing with here is a fundamental issue of fairness in terms of this imbalance.

I'd like to just go to FETCO for a second, and have you comment a little bit on what I've said in terms of the balance and how this legislation would topple that balance.

[Don Brazier]

Of course, there was a very consultative process set up. It was very effective and very transparent, and it came up with something that it called balance. I guess balance is a matter of judgment. If you happen to be sitting on one side, you'll probably see the balance as a little bit differently from when you're sitting on the other side.

The problem under federal jurisdiction has not been a problem with elongated strikes. The problem has been the narcotic effect caused by the continuing need to bring government in, to bring Parliament in, to do the parties' business. That was the problem that Sims was dealt. Every Prime Minister since St. Laurent has had to deal with it. Except for those couple who didn't last very long, every Prime Minister of any length in office has had to deal with this. Prime Minister Trudeau made it quite clear that he didn't feel his role as Prime Minister was to do the work of the parties.

Three times I've been involved with this, and I quite agree that government should not be involved in this and Parliament should not get involved in it, and it seems to have worked. The fact that it has worked would seem to indicate to me that we have balance. Parliament has not been asked once, since the amendments to the Canada Labour Code in 1999, to do what it did on an annual basis basically for the previous twenty years. It has not been asked because the legislation has created a structure that gets the parties to make the deal. That was the problem when Sims was set up, and that's the problem Sims addressed. I think it's a lot to Sims' credit that Sims' report, with very little change, went straight into legislation.

If you take the human rights report or if you take the pay equity report, these things just died the moment they came up because they were so unbalanced and unfair. That's why they're politically untouchable. That's why they never went anywhere. In the Sims case, Sims had a consensus process set up. I was the chair of that. The other chair was Nancy Riche, of the CLC, because Sims developed something to ensure that, at the end of the day, the recommendations would be fair and balanced.

Some of these recommendations are controversial. I made a reference to the 60-day conciliation provision. That was by no means generally accepted as workable, but because the parties, because the unions and management came to government and said they thought they could make it work, the government was prepared to make the amendments to the Canada Labour Code, and it has worked.

The big fear that we have is that if you reduce the ability of the employer to provide essential services—and by definition, they are essential services because they're under federal jurisdiction—when there's a work stoppage, we're back to where we were. Parliament is going to be doing the job of the parties. We're back to the bad old days.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you. That concludes the last round of our questioning.

I want to thank all the witnesses for taking the time to be out here today to discuss these issues with us.

With that, we're going to adjourn.