Mr. Speaker, in my efforts to understand what the government is doing here, I have read and considered Bill C-6, and I have also listened carefully to the government's reasons for introducing the bill.
What I see is a company that pays its CEO $660,000 a year locking out workers, arguing that the company cannot afford a decent pay increase. What I see is a government forcing workers back to work under terms less provident than the employer itself offered. What I see is a government unmasked only three weeks into the 41st Parliament, revealing a face that is as mean-spirited as 60% of Canadians on May 2 had anticipated.
I am left with a couple of possible interpretations of what is going on here. The most obvious conclusion is that this bill, BillC-6, reflects an objective much larger than the current labour dispute. In listening to the questions and supporting speeches of the members opposite, it sounds as if this bill represents a profound contradiction of the purpose and commitments set out in the Canada Labour Code in that the preamble promises “the promotion of the common wellbeing through the encouragement of free collective bargaining and the constructive settlement of disputes”. It sounds as if this bill reflects a shift away from, and I quote the preamble to the Canada Labour Code,“ a long tradition in Canada of labour legislation and policy”, a tradition informed by employers, unions, and workers recognizing and supporting free collective bargaining, and I quote again from the preamble of the legislation that is meant to govern this process, “as the bases of effective industrial relations for the determination of good working conditions and sound labour-management relations”.
It seems that this bill represents an assault on the very concept of free collective bargaining, that this bill represents a challenge to the very existence of trade unions, and that this bill represents a challenge to the very right of workers to join trade unions.
This bill conflicts with the enshrined right to associate freely. This bill conflicts with the international commitments we have made as a country to the freedom of association and the protection of the right to organize, as reflected in Convention number 87 of the International Labour Organization.
Finally, what this bill most certainly breaches is the Parliament of Canada's stated commitment, as expressed in the preamble to the Canada Labour Code, to continue and extend its support to labour and management in their cooperative efforts to develop good relations and constructive collective bargaining practices. It also breaches the Parliament of Canada's commitment to the development of good industrial relations, in the best interest of Canada, to ensure a just share of the fruits of progress for all.
That is what it looks like from this side of the House.
However, I wonder too, as I listen to the members opposite, as they justify this bill, whether they have any concept of how the collective bargaining process, as set out under the Canada Labour Code, is supposed to work. This perspective has some credibility when I hear the Minister of Labour refer to this lockout as a strike. It has some credibility as I hear members opposite rise, one after the other, and repeat that this labour dispute is a strike.
What is meant to emerge as an end result, and what we all hope will emerge from the relationship between labour and employer, is a fair deal. We decided decades ago in this country that the way we in Canada would try to approximate such an outcome would be by developing a labour relations regime that allows workers, where they so choose, to bargain collectively with their employer. It is a system based on the recognition that individuals are relatively powerless in their relationship with their employer.
While that may sound like a radical notion to the members opposite, it is something that has held consensus throughout all western democracies for decades. We provide a labour relations regime that allows workers to collectively decide, always through some form of democratic process, whether they want to bargain as individuals or bargain collectively with their employer.
At the core of this labour relations regime we have and have long had a system of dispute resolution that is essentially one of mutual deterrence. That is, it is a system designed, in fact, to focus the parties in collective bargaining on finding a resolution, understanding that if one side or the other in the bargaining process behaves in what is believed to be an unreasonable manner, a strike or a lockout is the resort.
It is or should be a system that provides the parties in the collective bargaining relationship with a predictable context in which to bargain and administer their collective agreement. For this system to work, both parties need to understand the rules of conduct and the norms of conduct. They must understand the consequences of unreasonable behaviour and understand the likely consequences of seeking something at the bargaining table that the other party finds too difficult to concede.
Within these rules, the parties get to know each other. They develop an understanding over time of how each other reacts and behaves at the bargaining table and away from the bargaining table. That is a critically important part of this system.
While the people at the table may change, what parties establish over time is a relationship, good or bad, that allows them to make informed decisions with respect to their bargaining relationship.
Within these rules and within the context of mutual understanding, the parties are meant to be free to negotiate. Sometimes somebody is going to make a mistake or a miscalculation, perhaps. Sometimes somebody is going to do something quite out of the ordinary, for a whole number of reasons. Either way, in order for the system to return to fair and good-faith bargaining, both parties need to understand and feel the sting of exercising their rights. They need to be able to assess whether the position they are taking at the table is worth the lost wages for workers or the lost revenue for the employer.
Let us be clear that it is a system whereby both parties are acknowledged to have a right to lock out or strike, and both parties have to understand that if they so choose to take that course of action, it is with full knowledge that it is fully and completely predictable that there are consequences for doing so.
Now, when one party is relieved of the consequences of its actions, as the Conservative government is doing with this legislation, then the entire labour relations regime comes crashing down. There is no longer predictability. The parties are relieved of the consequences of their calculations and their decisions. Now there is a whole new set of calculations that go into how one conducts oneself at the table and away from the table.
With the introduction of Bill C-6, the Conservative government has relieved the employer of the incentive, under this labour relations regime, of behaving reasonably, of behaving rationally, and of having to live with the consequences of exercising its economic muscle by locking out the workers in this dispute.
While the current government talks about its desire for a mutual settlement, it has, through this legislation, removed that very possibility in this round of bargaining. Moreover, because of its intervention, it has seriously undermined the likelihood of achieving a mutual settlement in the future. The only thing that has been added to the predictability of this bargaining relationship is that a Conservative government will interrupt and undermine the exercise of free collective bargaining in a labour relations regime that is intended to bring some approximation of balance between workers and their employers. The only thing predictable is that a Conservative government will exercise its ability to nullify the ability of workers to bargain collectively with their employers.
More than that, the government has, in fact, signalled with this legislation that all employers under this code, and indeed across this country, are relieved of the consequences of their actions. This is a signal that will ripple across bargaining tables under federal jurisdiction, at a minimum, and will serve to undermine the chance of mutual co-operation and agreement between employers and workers across this country.
With this legislation, the government says to employers that they can try it on and see what they can get from workers. They will be sheltered from any fallout and will not have to live with the consequences of what they do at the bargaining table.
This is not a recipe for a labour relations regime that is supposed to serve Canadians and our economy well. This legislation does a profound disservice to all Canadians because of the broader implications it has for a mature, co-operative labour relations regime in this country.
To understand the extent of the disservice to all Canadians, one needs to properly situate the place of free collective bargaining in our history and in our economy. One needs to appreciate that free collective bargaining sits at the foundation of our economy and is responsible for much of the wealth this country has enjoyed since collective bargaining was adopted.
One needs to acknowledge that this labour relations regime is far from perfect. It excludes too many from unionization and therefore from the wealth that is created, but it is sufficiently extensive that it has created in this country enough well-paid workers with good, decent jobs to make up a thriving Canadian middle class. The regime has provided this country with a labour force that can afford to buy the goods they produce, to buy and furnish nice homes, to put their kids through college or university, and to retire comfortably on deferred wages in the form of workplace pensions.
This labour relations regime was intended to be, and was, a way for workers to share in the wealth created by their own skills and labour. So integral to our economy is this labour relations regime that we designed our country's pension system around it. Most importantly, we built around this regime a generous and compassionate country based on a tax base that is supported by decent, well-paying jobs. The regime allowed us to have social programs to protect the most vulnerable to allow them to live in dignity. It allowed us to have in place a post-secondary education system that was accessible to so many Canadians. Most significantly, it allowed us to afford a universal health care system.
However, what we are seeing in our country are initiatives that undermine this labour relations regime and the practice of free collective bargaining that it is meant to protect. These initiatives take the form of free and open trade agreements that fail to protect the livelihoods of Canadians, agreements with low-wage countries around the world, agreements with countries that do not have a labour movement, agreements with countries that have child labour, agreements with countries, in fact, where collective bargaining is barred and where trade unionists are targeted by thugs and death squads. We are seeing direct attacks on the regime itself, such as the one before us tonight, that are giving licence to employers to escape, ignore, or abuse a labour relations regime that is good for all Canadians.
With the government imposing lower wages on Canada Post workers than their own employer was attempting to impose, we are seeing the sharp poison tip of a different economic plan, a plan to continue to take this country in a very wrong direction, a direction very different from the one in which we travelled when free collective bargaining enjoyed the support of Canadians and the Canadian government.
The Conservative government calls this stage of the economic plan the next phase of Canada’s Economic Action Plan, but the only action here is downward--downward for workers, downward for their wages and pensions, and downward for the public services they rely on. We see this plan working its way through Canada as well-paying manufacturing jobs disappear, unionization declines, the middle class disappears, and public services and public sector workers come increasingly under attack.
We now live in a country in which one in four of all workers and one in six adult workers earn less than poverty line wages. We are second only to the United States in the OECD as a low-wage country. The proportion of workers who earn less than two-thirds of the median wage is about double that of continental Europe and far higher than in Scandinavian countries. This is leaving us with a country with distressing and increasing income polarization, as federal government after federal government in Canada fashions an economy where wealth is not fairly shared.
This trend is very clearly reflected in the bill before us: a corporation with a CEO making $660,000 that is blocking out workers who are making a fraction of that, and a government that orders those workers back to work with wages that are even lower than the company was prepared to pay.
As a resident of Beaches—East York, in the city of Toronto, I have witnessed the impacts of such legislation in my own community. Toronto's neighbourhoods have fallen into three distinct groups in terms of income change. The middle-income area of the city has been shrinking dramatically, the high-income area of the city has increased, and the low-income area has increased substantially.
A number of years ago two-thirds of Toronto's neighbourhoods were middle-income neighbourhoods; today there are less than a third of them. Over the same period of time, low-income neighbourhoods have grown from less than 20% of all neighbourhoods to over half of all neighbourhoods. Over this period of time, Toronto has seen average household incomes drop by almost 10%.
This emerging income landscape is evident in my own riding of Beaches—East York. Once a community that was largely middle-income neighbourhoods, it is now a community with a large and growing number of people who are living below the poverty line.
My riding, my city of Toronto, and our country, could use a return to a time when our government supported and promoted our labour relations regime, and in doing so protected the livelihoods of Canadian workers. It was a regime that could bring good jobs, good pay, good pensions and healthy neighbourhoods and communities to our cities, indeed to cities and communities across this country.
That is why I can say with confidence that although this bill intervenes in a single labour dispute, it stands for something much larger, much more hostile and much more pernicious than it appears on its face. It represents a country that we are afraid of becoming, and it goes a long way to fashioning that country.
We need this government to uphold its commitment to the preamble of the Canada Labour Code: that is, the promotion of the common well-being through the encouragement of free collective bargaining, the constructive settlement of disputes, and the development of good industrial relations to be in the best interest of Canada to ensure a just share of the fruits of progress for all.
I am proud to stand up for the members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers tonight, and to do so I stand up for all Canadians.
