Status of Women Committee on April 12th, 2010

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Thank you.

So when you put ads in papers where you're looking for people who are interested in this kind of employment, let's say... You indicated that you've done that just recently. You indicated that an ad went into the papers for people to become part of a list. Is that accurate?

[Greg Vurdela]

We have not advertised recently because of the economic downturn, but that's what we would intend to do going forward. I think that is really one of the critical issues here. We should concentrate on the go-forward position as opposed to our sad history on these issues.

We propose to do something completely transparent. That's what we have put forward in our proposals. Essentially an ad would go out based on the criteria we need and we would pick from that pool of individuals on a fifty-fifty basis, until we get what is generally professionally and expertly recognized as a significant group in terms of numbers of women, to begin to change the culture that has been described for you today.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

So if you did put out that kind of ad, you don't have a historical reference in terms of how many women versus men you would anticipate applying?

[Greg Vurdela]

We would anticipate... When we did that on our website... You see, the recruitment process is interesting; what BCMEA has done is... It's mandated fifty-fifty in terms of recruitment by the collective agreement, so for anyone to suggest otherwise is completely inaccurate in terms of whether the BCMEA has done this unilaterally or not. We're bound by collective agreement to do this fifty-fifty. The last time we did a recruitment we posted jobs on our website, and in one day we had 9,000 hits in terms of applications and turned away many more due to the fact that our site was overwhelmed.

When you look at the wages and salaries on the waterfront, where the average longshore person makes $90,000 in wages and an additional 40% in benefits, I would suggest to you, Ma'am, that we will have ample representation amongst that group.

This is in direct opposition to what the ILWU locals do on the Lower Mainland, where they give what is the equivalent of an application form to the union individuals and those people can give these applications to whoever they wish. As you can probably guess, they give them most often--and as proven in these lists that Mr. Dufresne quotes--

[Tom Dufresne]

You know, Mr. Vurdela, you're making some pretty serious allegations about the handing out of those lists.

[Greg Vurdela]

They give them--

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Order.

I'm sorry. You are not allowed to intervene--

[Tom Dufresne]

Oh. Excuse me.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

--but perhaps you can wrap it up, Mr. Vurdela. We've gone to eight minutes on this round.

[Greg Vurdela]

Yes. What ends up happening, of course, is that these are mostly given to brothers, uncles, and sons, which is why we have the statistics we do vis-à-vis the list that Mr. Dufresne references.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Now we'll move to the New Democratic Party and Irene Mathyssen.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the presenters who are here today.

I must confess that I'm finding some of this a bit confusing and I hope that you'll unpack some of the concerns for me.

My first question is to BCMEA. You've stated that you have unionized employees and non-unionized employees. Am I correct in that?

[Greg Vurdela]

Yes. The ILWU is comprised approximately 50% of full-fledged union members, and 50% of the workforce are what are termed “casuals”. Casuals have no representation and no vote within the ILWU.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Do the non-unionized and unionized employees earn the same rate of pay?

[Greg Vurdela]

The collective agreement calls for the same rate of pay for both.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Okay.

Now, I'm hearing this dispute in regard to the list and setting aside the list, but it seems to me that as soon as you do that, you're bypassing seniority. There's an issue about seniority. Unions protect the seniority of their members.

Is that not a concern for you? It seems to me that as soon as you try to do that you create a negative atmosphere in the workplace.

[Greg Vurdela]

On these lists to which Mr. Dufresne refers, the people on the lists have no official status within the waterfront. Official status within the waterfront occurs when an individual is issued what's called a registration number. So after they've gone through the recruitment process and the bit of training we've articulated, those people who are selected after that process are issued a registration number.

From this number you are paid, and from this number you start to gain and retain seniority, such as pensions, benefits, and the like. So once you have this number, you have status. It would be the equivalent, Ms. Mathyssen, if you were hiring for a position in your office, of taking in a bunch of resumes and applications, and then having someone tell you several years later that the next person you hired had to be off that list. That's simply beyond the pale, per se, from the perspective of having status; they simply don't.

That's what we dispute: that they don't have status. Besides which, the lists are full, as we mentioned, of relatives and full of family-status individuals, which essentially says that we can't go off them. We would just like a fair and equitable playing field and to start again in this process.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

I want to come back to the ILWU. You stated in your brief that BCMEA earned the lowest grade possible from the Canadian Human Rights Commission for failing to meet expectations concerning women's participation.

I'm again needing clarification. Could you elaborate on that and explain? What has happened there?

[Susan O'Donnell]

The employment equity legislation requires federal employers or contractors to report on their progress every so many years--I'm not sure, but it may be five years--in building the status of women and in changing the workplace, not just for women, but for minorities, people with disabilities, and aboriginal people.

We're saying that the last report BCMEA gave to the Canadian Human Rights Commission in reporting on its employment equity earned a “D” from the Canadian Human Rights Commission, which is the lowest possible mark you can receive for trying to change the status of women. Not only that, it received the letter grade “L” beside its name, and in the employment equity reporting process, that means this person was late in reporting, without permission, and may well be fined.

That, to me, shows a real disrespect. I went through all the people who were looked at in 2008 and very few got a “D” grade and very few got an “L”. So I'm worried that this employer is not concerned about women. I'm worried that women will suffer in this process if we don't get together, stop this war, and start building some pragmatic solutions to change the status of women on the waterfront.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Is this grade from the Human Rights Commission linked to what you said before in regard to the lack of benefits, those maternity, paternity, child care, and eldercare benefits?

[Susan O'Donnell]

No. It's linked to recruitment, to environment, and to whether there's a human rights policy--those equitable measures inside the workforce. It's not linked to benefits.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Okay, and yet, the lack of benefits seems to be a flashpoint here in terms of women. Our committee has actually heard that because caregiving falls most often on the shoulders of women, they are most disadvantaged when they cannot access the benefits they need in order to manage their families.

I was also quite interested in the description of the process you followed with the Nisga'a. You talked about making sure that there was respect and that there was a fair process. Could you describe that?

[Tom Dufresne]

Yes. On what happened in the north, there was some log loading being done, and it was being done by the Nisga'a tribe. They set up their own corporation to load logs. We went in there and signed an accord with them. We've done this in the past with Bella Coola and Bella Bella.

We went in there and signed them up to the BCMEA-ILWU collective agreement. It was an agreement that they would work under the terms and condition of the ILWU-BCMEA collective agreement and earn the same money that people in the Lower Mainland were earning. We sent up trainers, who trained them on how to operate the cranes and how to load the logs safely and properly. We just do monitoring on their training. All the rest of that work is done by the Nisga'a.

In Bella Coola, we sent in trainers. Some were topside--the crane operators. The rest of the work was distributed by the band council. They picked people. There's no use in just taking a whole bunch of people and saying, “Here, go load logs”. It's a very dangerous job, right? You have to be trained in how to do it properly, safely, and efficiently. If you're not efficient, people aren't going to come back and load them. So that's what we did.

Under our conditions... Mr. Vurdela refers to benefits of about 40%, so what happened in that case, because the Nisga'a didn't require the benefits under the collective agreement, was that the money was set aside in a fund. Every few years, they come forward with a project and approach the BCMEA and the ILWU jointly to access those funds to buy an MRI or to put a roof on a sports complex or something like that. Dollar for dollar, they earn the same money that is earned by people who are longshoring on the B.C. coast, on the Lower Mainland or anywhere else.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Ms. Mathyssen.

We have finished the first round and are going to move into the second round. The second round is the five-minute round. Once again, that's for questions and answers.

For the Liberals, Mr. Simms.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Thank you very much.

This will be very quick because I only have the five minutes, but in the past... The study is looking into the participation of women in non-traditional occupations. To a great extent, I would include politics in that as well. Recently I was engaged in a debate about women in politics. You'll find that many countries in Europe are now fundamentally trying to change the system of how they elect people in order to get people engaged.

Am I looking at something similar here, to the effect that you want to change the system by which you've hired people over some time? Because the other side of the issue is that you can encourage women to get involved in politics by financing of campaigns, educating young women, advocacy, and that sort of situation. So you have two sides to getting people involved.

One of the issues you brought up was that you had to be physically present in order to answer a call. Now, I apologize; I don't quite understand how that works, as opposed to someone who is home all the time and who wants to get involved and is unable to do so. Is this the type of systemic change that you want to see? My question to you is that in the list you have currently, my colleague makes a good point about seniority, and there seems to be a fundamental way of... Given the problems you have with it, would you agree that the list he's talking about is a good thing in order to allow more women in politics?