Thank you, Mr. Chair.
On October 22, the Conservative government introduced the second budget implementation act from the 2013 budget speech, Bill C-4.
Among several other provisions in the act that have nothing to do with the budget, we find comprehensive changes to the labour relations regime for the federal public service workers, under division 17 of part 3 of the bill.
When these changes were introduced, without notice or consultation, even the current President of Treasury Board admitted he could not explain the consequences of these changes. He said that details on how the government's omnibus budget bill will affect federal public sector workers won't be known until some time after the legislation becomes law.
I want to thank you on behalf of the 3.3 million members of the Canadian Labour Congress for giving us the opportunity to explain to members of this committee the consequences of the proposed changes. As you know, the CLC brings together workers from virtually every sector of the Canadian economy, in all occupations in all parts of Canada, including those under the federal jurisdiction.
To summarize our position, the proposed changes to the Public Service Labour Relations Act in division 17 of part 3 of Bill C-4 is a direct attack on the freedom of association and collective bargaining rights protected by our charter. If passed, this bill will cripple the collective bargaining process and significantly alter the balance of power in our labour relations regime in favour of the employer. There are three key changes that will undermine the collective bargaining process: how changes were introduced, how essential services will be determined, and how the arbitration process will work.
For the labour relations regime to be effective, development and changes have to be done in consultation with all parties involved. That is not what happened here. The government decided to slip fundamental changes to the labour relations regime into a budget implementation bill, with no meaningful consultation with the public, unions representing their employees, and certainly there was no study prepared by a committee of neutral experts to quantify the consequences of these changes.
I must remind members of the committee that changes to the PSLRA of the Canada Labour Code have been made in the past only after significant consultation and analysis from all stakeholders involved: John Fryer, in 1999; modernizing HRM, in 2001; and Peter Annis, in 2009.
If passed, the proposed changes to the essential services regime in Bill C-4 will allow employers to force whomever it chooses to work during a strike on the pretext that they are essential, without providing any clear definition of what constitutes an essential service. The government could unilaterally, if it felt like it, declare that every public service is essential and ban strikes completely. It is more likely that the government will designate just enough employees as essential to disarm the union's capacity to freely bargain in a collective agreement. In other words, they can change the rules to give the employer an advantage throughout the game.
The members of the committee should know that these changes are very similar to those imposed by the Saskatchewan government several years ago, which gave the employer certain unilateral powers under essential services. The constitutionality of that legislation has been challenged by several public sector unions in Saskatchewan, and after, the ILO found them to be unacceptable. The case is currently before the Supreme Court of Canada and is likely to be heard some time in October of 2014.
With regard to how the arbitration process will work, the collective bargaining process will also be undermined by the revised arbitration process. We don't understand why a government that is so keen on freedom of choice is trying to remove the right to choose arbitration from its federal government employees. It is difficult to understand why a government that called for a study five years ago—chaired by a respected jurist, Peter Annis—on reducing labour disputes, is trying to remove a provision that had a direct impact on the reduction of work stoppages in the federal public sector.
Furthermore, for those who will end up in forced arbitration, Bill C-4 gives complete control over the outcome of the arbitration process to the employer. The bill specifies that out of all factors that must be taken into account, the arbitrators must give preponderance to Canada's fiscal circumstances relative to its stated budgetary policies. This means that arbitrators are no longer independent. Instead, they have to follow directions issued by the Minister of Finance in speeches or economic updates instead of determining the result of a case on its merits.
Even worse, if passed, the bill will allow a party who is unhappy with the arbitration panel's decision seven days to ask the chairperson of the PSLRB to review the decision. If the chairperson thinks the decision is unreasonable, he or she can direct the arbitration panel to reconsider the decision.
The committee should delete the provision introduced in division 17 of part 3 of the bill, and the government should sit down with workers' representatives to discuss how the federal public service labour relations regime can be improved.
Thank you, on behalf of the CLC.