Mr. Speaker, I will try to be as brief and as concise as possible.
For those listening, so that they may understand properly, the final offer means that the union and management sides each make an overall proposal, and the arbitrator, or in this case the arbitration board, decides which of the two will be accepted.
For the public sector, this means that things are greatly distorted from the start, because the union members will want to be sure that their final offer as possible is accepted. This exerts terrible pressure and so, finally, the union offer contains virtually nothing, to ensure it will be accepted.
On the management side, in the public sector, there is a lot of time ahead. Nobody is talking about cutting the salary of the chairman of the board at Canada Post if no agreement is reached, nor of its executive director. If such a situation existed in the bargaining process, perhaps agreement would be reached more quickly.
The final offer, particularly in the clause we have before us, is a nebulous and complicated matter, and one which create new labour relations law. I believe that we should make sure that special legislation does not create a precedent which could be applied to other sectors and systematically lead to interpretations which would harm good labour relations.
I am dealing with clause 9, which is a key clause. I hope that the House will come up with an amendment to clause 9 because as it stands now, if we have final offer selection on top of it, it would amount to telling the arbitrator or the arbitration panel “Now you are going to manage this whole thing, and look at it as if it were a private company, a totally private firm, and at the same time you will be looking for the best way to settle the dispute”.
This would mean that to reach a settlement the union would have to accept working conditions similar to those in the private sector. We saw this kind of struggle at UPS in the United States. The union won because it convinced people of the need for regular workers, and permanent jobs. But with final offer selection, the union and workers involved would have been stuck with unacceptable conditions.
To conclude, the Reform Party's proposal may have been made in good faith, but in my view it is unacceptable because it is too vague and it does not provide both sides with a level playing field.