Human Resources Committee on Sept. 24th, 2024

[Scott Archer]

Certainly.

We normally operate with a given ratio of apprentices to journeymen. We try to stick to that, because the whole root of the apprenticeship program is learning on the job. It's important to be on a job in order to learn.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Dan, I want to quickly switch to you and talk about the issue of contract flipping. It's very interesting, and it's great to see you again in order to talk about the issue of contracts.

One thing I want to say is this. You talked about Mr. Boulerice's private member's bill. Unfortunately, it's not before the House of Commons. It won't be tabled for second reading until sometime in the spring session. He has seven other private member's bills that have been put forward, so we don't even know whether this bill is going to be the one he moves forward with. There's very little chance of it being passed in this Parliament.

One of the things on contract flipping that I looked at is this: Section 47.3 of the Canada Labour Code eliminated contract flipping for those in the security aspect of being at the airport. It says in there that the Minister of Labour, on a recommendation to the Governor in Council, can add other areas to that. The government could have done this seven years ago. In fact, the NDP government.... They were part of that. They could have required it to be done, simply, by OIC.

Do you think that would be a great way to get it done?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Do you have a point of order, Madame Zarrillo?

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Yes. I would like the member to correct the inaccurate misinformation about who the government is, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

The member has heard Ms. Zarrillo's comment. I'll have to allow him to deal with that. It's not a point of order.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

It's a point of order. It's misinformation, Mr. Chair, and you should correct the record.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Zarrillo.

Mr. Seeback, please use correct terminology in your question.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

As part of their supply and confidence agreement, they could have told the government that they needed to fix this. They chose not to do that, so it didn't get fixed. Do you think that would be a great way to solve the issue, rather than...? For a private member's bill to go through, it takes a long time. The government could actually, tomorrow, fix it. Would you recommend that the government fix it tomorrow by having the minister make a regulation by Governor in Council?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

We'll have a short answer because the time is up.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

I have 30 seconds. The interruption didn't count.

[Dan Janssen]

Yes, I think the government should be working to fix the issue of contract flipping. It is unfortunate to hear about Bill C-330. That would go a long way to helping groups like TBH Services.

I will say, on section 47.3, that it was something our union advocated strongly for, for our CATSA security members. The language there has been used to help many other airport workers through contract retendering to provide them with equal remuneration and successorship rights, and also as part of section 189.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Janssen.

Thank you, Mr. Seeback.

Mr. Long is next for six minutes.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Thank you, Chair.

Good morning to my colleagues.

Thank you to the witnesses for coming in today.

I remember coming home in 1988. I had my first job, at Canada Packers. My salary at that point was $20,000. I remember coming in the door, talking to my dad and telling him that I made $20,000. He had this blank look on his face: “You're making $20,000?” I said, “Yes. Dad, you've worked at a non-unionized place for 40 years, so what do you make?” Dad, at that point, was making $15,000. I dug into it at that point, and I realized very quickly that although he had a steady job, he had no benefits. He had two weeks' vacation after 40 years, no health plan and no pension plan, nothing. I did some comparison of other plants where he could have worked and quickly realized that he could have made a lot more.

We're doing this study, and I'll read part of the motion: “unionized workers receive more powerful paycheques; the impact of unionization on benefits and pensions; and the reasons behind such disparities”. That's what this study is about. We're here to study unionization: why companies that have unions pay better and do better. We always say that union wages set wages for the middle class.

Mr. Archer, my question is for you. I also want to thank you for your comments on the union training and innovation program. We've had some wonderful announcements in my riding of Saint John—Rothesay on UTIP, with the Heat and Frost union, IBEW and others. It's a wonderful program.

I do want to get your thoughts and comments. A Stats Canada labour force survey in 2023 confirmed that unionized workers made an average of $35.73 per hour in 2023, compared to $32.60 for workers who weren't unionized. That's a big difference. It's a difference of $3.13. You're probably not surprised by that, but does that align with your experience and what you've seen?

[Scott Archer]

Yes. I'm not surprised in the least by that, depending on whose stats you believe. Some are slightly slanted in one direction or the other, but just a quick google of it last night brought me to wage gaps between 11% and close to 40%, according to some people's stats. I think that's pretty accurate, and our workforce is definitely worth every penny of it, due to, as others have mentioned, the higher level of training.

You can look at our area in southwestern Ontario. We have the best rating for TRIR anywhere in the universe, to my knowledge, in terms of workers not being injured. That's pretty accurate. Having a safety record that's absolutely impeccable is part of it as well.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Thank you.

Witness Wybou, I want to see if you have some comments on that. Is that your experience too? Have you seen that with respect to wage differences between unionized and non-unionized workers?

[Tristen Wybou]

Yes, definitely.

Throughout my career, I've worked mostly in community and social services. I've worked at both unionized and non-unionized work sites. A really big thing that makes it imperative for me to be at a unionized work site is some of these differences, not only in wages, but also in things like benefits compensation. That's especially important to me as someone who's at quite a high risk of psychological injury doing the type of work that I do, as well as just physical injury due to my own chronic pain-related disabilities. There are really big differences that I've noticed within the non-profit and community services sector between areas that are unionized and not unionized.

At the work site where I am now, I'm happy to say that we actually started off pretty well. As it was mentioned, we had a work site that wanted to keep up with unionized wages and compensation. Locking that in and getting to bargain higher really helped us quite a lot during that period of inflation throughout 2021 and 2022. It really made a big difference.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Thank you for that.

When I was going door to door in 2015, there wasn't a unionist.... Saint John—Rothesay is a very unionized city. It's a blue-collar town. There wasn't a unionist household that I went to that didn't talk about Bill C-525 and Bill C-377. Obviously, I had to quickly learn what Bill C-525 and Bill C-377 were. To call a spade a spade, they were obviously union-busting bills on redundant and unreasonable reporting, and difficulty forming or joining unions.

Obviously, there was a call for our government to reverse Bill C-377 and Bill C-525, which we did. I'm very proud of that.

My question is for you, Ms. Bruske. Can you just give us some comments and thoughts about Bill C-377 and Bill C-525, and how detrimental they were to unions in Canada?

Thank you.

[Bea Bruske]

Thank you for the question.

Both of those bills were egregious attacks on labour, quite frankly.

Bill C-525 made it much more difficult for workers in the federally regulated sector to organize and form a union. As we have all heard already, the pathway to the middle class is having a union card in your back pocket. Making it harder for employees to actually sign that union card and be certified to bargain collectively with their employer.... That bill stood in the way of that.

Bill C-377, of course, was the requirement for unions to do extensive reporting absolutely every time they bought new computers for their office, or every time they had to reimburse a worker based on a health and welfare trust fund claim that worker might have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you.

We've gone over the time. You can follow that thought in another answer.

Ms. Chabot for six minutes.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Chair.

Good day, everyone.

I want to thank the witnesses with us today, as well as those who preceded them last week, when we started this study.

Before entering politics, I was a union leader for over 30 years. When this study was proposed, I had my doubts. All the witnesses today are repeating what others have told us: there are advantages to being a union member. This has been amply demonstrated, and no one questions it, except those on the right, who wonder what the point of unions is. In this respect, testimony from today and previously are clear. I don't know if our committee needed a study to bring this to light, but it will be.

Mr. Janssen, when I was just starting out as a Bloc Québécois MP, we were called upon to mobilize on behalf of maintenance employees at the Montreal airport, in a situation where contracts were being overturned. It's a totally unacceptable situation because, in my opinion, it's dismissals in disguise. A new call for contracts is issued, the same people are rehired at an hourly wage cut by $10 to $20, and their minimum rights under the collective agreements are not renewed. This was the first battle on this file, and the current government's Minister of Labour was very sensitive to the issue.

Do you believe this kind of practice is an obstacle to freedom of association or unionization?

[Dan Janssen]

Thank you for your question, Ms. Chabot.

It can be an obstacle, yes. I believe there's always an opportunity for an airport authority to flip a contract and have it go to a non-union employer. At the end of the day, the rights that those unionized members had under the collective agreement would no longer be there, which would mean that the new employer would be able to change the terms and conditions of employment following the contract flip. Previously, before the equal remuneration rates came into effect, it was considered a race to the bottom. Where employees may have made gains over five to 10 years, once the contract was flipped, they had to start all over again.

Thankfully, we've come a long way, but there is still more work to do. Again, I believe that maintaining the collective agreement and the rights of the union would successfully protect members who are subject to contract flipping.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

I congratulate you on your efforts in this field. The IAMAW's contribution is important, whether in aerospace or aviation. As we know, this field is not always the government's priority. But working conditions often match the importance attached to a given sector of our economy. This is a very important one. So you're fighting on two fronts, and I congratulate you for it.

Ms. Bruske, the Canadian Labour Congress brings together unions from across Canada and Quebec. You bring together major unions. You mentioned all the advantages of unionization, and I agree with you on that. We could even name others.

That said, you also talked about the obstacles to unionization. In Canada, the public sector is highly unionized. On the other hand, we can observe a decline in unionization in the private sector.

Furthermore, one of the important role of unions is also to give a voice to those without one.

Could you tell us about obstacles to unionization that you are seeing?

[Bea Bruske]

Thank you for the important question.

It is very difficult for workers to make the decision that they are going to unionize. That is fraught with fear and anxiety about how the process will unravel—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Just a moment, please.

Madame Chabot.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Mr. Chair, there was no interpretation. Can Ms. Bruske please repeat her answer?