Evidence of meeting #13 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was pay.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Yvon Godin NDP Acadie—Bathurst, NB
They're not getting any strike pay, so as I said, where do you want them to go--on welfare?
Executive Director, Federally Regulated Employers - Transportation and Communications (FETCO)
If they're not entitled to employment insurance, then they would have to resort to—
Executive Director, Federally Regulated Employers - Transportation and Communications (FETCO)
--alternate employment.
NDP
Yvon Godin NDP Acadie—Bathurst, NB
--to be on EI and looking for a job? Or do you want to punish them and take the last drop of blood from them?
Executive Director, Federally Regulated Employers - Transportation and Communications (FETCO)
No, sir. I wouldn't want to punish anyone, and employers don't want to punish anyone either.
NDP
Yvon Godin NDP Acadie—Bathurst, NB
And yet that is what you are saying. You're saying that if we change the law, we are favouring the union. The union gets nothing out of it. It has bargained a collective agreement, that's the law. The workers have the right to go on strike.
In the case we are talking about, the employer chose not to reinstate everyone and there were layoffs. That's your right.
Executive Director, Federally Regulated Employers - Transportation and Communications (FETCO)
Yes, that is a layoff--
NDP
Yvon Godin NDP Acadie—Bathurst, NB
Employment insurance makes it possible for people to look for a job. A person receives an income that allows them to support their family while they are looking for a new job. Do you want to prevent these people from looking for work because the company you represent does not offer to have them come back to work?
Executive Director, Federally Regulated Employers - Transportation and Communications (FETCO)
No, I'm not preventing them from looking for work.
NDP
Executive Director, Federally Regulated Employers - Transportation and Communications (FETCO)
I don't think I do. I've said in my presentation that I didn't.
NDP
Yvon Godin NDP Acadie—Bathurst, NB
You're saying that you are not opposed to employees receiving employment insurance benefits while they are looking for a new job. We are talking about families. One of the fundamental rights of workers in this country is to go on strike. On the other side, you have the right to lock employees out. There are more strikes than lockouts solely because when a collective agreement is being bargained, the employer can decide to honour the contract and wait a year or two without making any changes. That is the only reason.
However, if they went to look for something at the outset or they didn't give you anything, you would have recourse to lockouts more often, maybe.
Executive Director, Federally Regulated Employers - Transportation and Communications (FETCO)
I think that's fundamentally a statement that my friend is making--not necessarily asking a question--
Executive Director, Federally Regulated Employers - Transportation and Communications (FETCO)
What's that?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Candice Bergen
Mr. Godin, you have 30 seconds. Are you finished? Is that everything?
NDP
Yvon Godin NDP Acadie—Bathurst, NB
I'm bothering the Conservatives right now. They want me to catch my breath so that I won't speak anymore, because they're probably going to vote against it.
Conservative
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
Thank you, Madam Chair.
When you started, you talked initially about bills needing to be neutral because there are two sides to a labour dispute, and normally when you're dealing with unemployment or employment insurance, there are causes that are essentially external to the parties. But in this case, you have an employer and employee who each have a vested interest.
Certainly, each--the employer and employee--pays into EI, and the employer more so, at 1.4% or whatever, so when you have a bill such as this one...and what's peculiar about is that it wants to make this effective as of January 1, 2008, to sort of go to it retroactively. The reasonable assumption would be that if you go retroactively it's going to expend benefits that didn't exist and therefore will be a charge on the EI account, for which employers and employees would be responsible.
The way I would see it is that, before this legislation, there were certain employees who would not be entitled to the benefit, and therefore there wouldn't be a charge on the EI account for which the employer and the employee would have to pay. After this bill, there would be an additional charge to the EI account, for which both would have to pay their relative proportions. To that extent, it would force both sides to the dispute to pay in, when only one side benefits, and therefore would impinge on the neutrality that should be taken in labour disputes. Would you agree with me on that? Is that what you find objectionable?
Executive Director, Federally Regulated Employers - Transportation and Communications (FETCO)
On the issue of the extent to which this creates additional costs for the government, that will happen, and I don't really have a fix on the extent to which that would happen. But I do know that we have certain qualifying arrangements today that apply to all employees who are employed, and employers are paying premiums to the EI fund at the rate of 58% of the total fund.
If the rules are changing to permit greater usage of these benefits by extending the qualifying period for certain groups of employees, then certain groups of employees will benefit to a larger extent than others who may not be unionized, for example.