moved that Bill C-238, an act to amend the Canada Post Corporation Act (mail contractors), be read the second time and referred to a committee.
Mr. Speaker, I am very glad to have the bill come forward. I felt very fortunate when my name was drawn in the lottery and then very grateful when the standing committee chose to make the bill votable.
I believe it is an issue of broad public interest and something that is long overdue. I will argue, and I hope that I can prove to the House, that we have an opportunity to correct a longstanding injustice. We have an opportunity to right a longstanding wrong.
My bill, Bill C-238, is probably one of the shortest. It is certainly the shortest that I have ever seen. I think it might be the smallest bill on record. It is one line exactly. It calls for one simple thing, to repeal subsection 13(5) of the Canada Post Corporation Act.
Subsection 13(5) is a very small subsection that bars rural route mail contractors from the right to collective bargaining. They do not have the right to form a union. They do not have the right to join a union. They do not have the right to bargain collectively.
I know that support for giving these people these rights is spreading broadly. I know that the hon. member from Kamloops strongly supports the concept because in his rural setting there are rural route mail couriers who have probably sought him out to lobby and to explain the problems they run into.
Why is this particular group of workers barred from collective bargaining? The Canada Labour Code, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, international conventions and covenants all guarantee the right to free collective bargaining for employees. The reason is that subsection 13(5) makes the argument that these are not to be considered employees. They are to be considered independent contractors.
Faced with that problem, this group of workers went to the Canada Labour Relations Board and asked, “Are we employees or are we independent contractors?” They brought that question to the only avenue of recourse that they really could bring it to. The Canada Labour Relations Board ruled unanimously that these are not independent contractors and that their relationship with Canada Post is that of an employer and employee. At best, it is a wholly dependent contractor. Under the Canada Labour Code, a dependent contractor is, in fact, an employee.
One would wonder, then, what the problem is. This group of workers went and got the ruling they were seeking. The problem is that the government went to the Federal Court of Appeal and had the CLRB ruling overturned, not on the basis of merits. Frankly, the federal court did agree that these people are in fact employees. It came to the same conclusions that the labour board came to. It was strictly on jurisdiction. The Federal Court of Appeal ruled that the Canada Labour Relations Board does not have the jurisdiction to overrule a section in the Canada Post Corporation Act. That is something that only parliament can do and that is the reason we are here today, at the request of the many rural route mail couriers who feel strongly about this issue.
Who are they? There are roughly 5,000 rural route mail couriers. They are the people who deliver mail anywhere other than in an urban setting. They drive over the country roads delivering mail to farms, homes and businesses all over rural Canada. They get their work by tendering and contracting the work. The contract is given to them and they keep it for a period of five years. They then have to renew it after that period of time.
The difference is that if they are truly independent contractors there are a number of tests that they go through and look at to say what the difference is between an independent contractor and a dependent contractor or an employee. I would like to go through some of the things that the Canada Labour Relations Board looked at in making its ruling.
First, the concept of economic independence is one of the key issues. Are they being directed and controlled by someone else, or do they truly have control of their own job and workplace? In this case, the Canada Labour Relations Board found that they were economically dependent and not independent.
As far as the control over the day to day operations of their job, the Canada Post Corporation still dictates exactly how these workers must do their job, how they have to sort the mail, what route they have to take and when they have to drive it. It dictates virtually every aspect of the person's working day. If they were truly independent contractors they could make up their own mind as to how and when they would get the job done, as long as the job did get done.
When the Federal Court of Appeal reversed the decision, it left the rural route mail couriers with no option but to seek recourse in the House of Commons today. I am very proud to take the issue forward as a private member's bill. I believe, as I began in my comments, this is a historic injustice and it is fundamentally wrong.
This is the only group of workers in the country who are specifically barred from collective bargaining strictly for financial reasons. There are other groups that are not allowed to form a union. CSIS is not allowed to form a union for obvious reasons of national security. Even the Parliament Hill staff are not allowed to form a union, although I disagree with that. At least we could make some argument that there are reasons why we would not want some issues showing up on the bargaining table. In the case of rural route mail couriers, they are really delivering mail. It is not an issue of any kind of risk to our national security.
Not allowing the rural route mail couriers to have collective bargaining rights is a denial of their basic rights, the rights that all working Canadians enjoy. I firmly believe it is a violation of the principles conveyed and promoted in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It is certainly a violation of our international commitments to the ILO convention regarding the freedom of association and the protection of the right to organize. It is in violation of the international covenant on civil and political rights. It is a violation of the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights. These are all international covenants that Canada willingly enters into.
I have been to the ILO with the Minister of Labour and have heard wonderful, grand, eloquent speeches that the Minister of Labour has given at the ILO, saying that this country supports the right to free collective bargaining so that workers can elevate their standards of wages and working conditions. I believe him. I do not accuse the Liberal government of being anti-union in any way.
I am looking at an anomaly in subsection 13(5). When subsection 13(5) was put in, it was just at the time when the Canada Post Corporation Act was created in 1981. It was a time when the Canada Post Corporation was showing a huge deficit. There was a real money crunch. The lawyers involved obviously realized that when the employees went from being under the Public Service Staff Relations Act to being under the Canada Labour Code when the corporation was created and that the Canada Labour Code recognizes dependent contractors as employees, that they would have a problem with the rural route mail couriers. So they deliberately and specifically contemplated this with subsection 13(5). So that no application to have these workers considered employees could succeed, they would be specifically barred.
It was strictly financial. I have quotes from Andre Ouellet, the postmaster general at the time, admitting the same. He said that it would be cost factor if these employees were allowed to bargain collectively.
The tendering process, if it ever did serve the couriers well, certainly does not serve them well now. Never before have they needed to have the right to elevate their conditions somewhat. I will give an example.
One example that I am aware of concerns a courier named Mavis Wiebe who has been a rural route mail courier just outside of Surrey, B.C. since 1978. It is Rural Route Number 8 in Cloverdale. When she started she had 326 calls to make and she was paid $1,000 a month to do her 26 kilometre route. Some 21 years later, Mavis Wiebe's route is now 1,000 points of call and she is now paid $1,900 per month. Out of this, she has to pay for her car, gas, repairs and insurance. She gets no benefits whatsoever, like a normal employee does. There is no UIC, no CPP and no workers' compensation. She has no sick days. If she gets sick she has to hire somebody to take her place. Ironically, the minister responsible for Canada Post uses this as an example of why these people really are independent entrepreneurs. He says that they hire people. Well they only hire people if they are sick and they have an obligation and a duty to do their route. It is a fact that they do not have sick days.
Mavis Wiebe puts her operating costs at $1,000 a month, leaving her with $900 a month for days that can go as long as 12 to 14 hours during the busy season. She takes home an average of $6.84 an hour. If I was an independent contractor, I would not structure my lifestyle to make $6.84 an hour.
She has an interesting quote. She says “My granddaughter at 14 just started working at McDonald's and she earns $7.15 an hour, the minimum wage in B.C. She said to me, `Nana are you nuts? I make more than you do”'. There is clearly something fundamentally wrong here when a woman who has been doing this job faithfully for 21 years finds herself in a position where she is making less than minimum wage.
Further on in the article, many of the rural route couriers talk about the tendering process and how it has been bastardized. It is not a fair tendering system. When it is time to renew their contract they are often told that there is a lot of competition and that they had better bring their numbers down or they will not likely get their contract. That is interfering with the fair tendering process, yet there is case after case of this happening. Rather than having their salaries go up with the cost of living, they are actually being manoeuvred down and are getting less money now in many cases than they did from previous contracts.
I am very aware of the whole concept of independent contractors. I worked in the building industry where this has been a problem for quite some time. Contractors, who used to keep maybe 20 drywallers on their staff, would say to them “I am paying you guys $20 an hour. I will give you $25 an hour and you just be your own man. You are your own independent contractor now. You still have to be at work at 8 and go home at 4.30. You still have to take your lunch at noon. I am still going to provide everything else to do your job but for the purposes of the law, I am going to call you an independent contractor”. We could go into a place with 20 drywallers working in a big area and each one of them would consider themselves to be independent business. They have no workers' compensation, no UIC and no CPP. It is really trying to avoid payroll burden and payroll costs. It is a net gain to the employer.
That is the game that the Canada Post Corporation has been playing since 1981. I think it is wrong. It is wrong in the building industry and it is wrong in the mail delivery business.
The supervision aspect alone is enough to win the argument in terms of whether these individuals are dependent or independent, but we do not have to do that.
I would urge all members who plan on speaking to the bill or even when they get the opportunity to vote, to please read the labour board ruling, decision 626 from April 29, 1987. It is a very easy document to read. Canada Post Corporation is the applicant and various unions are the respondents. It is a very clear-cut decision. This is actually an area of labour law that has been very well studied. There is a lot of good jurisprudence that very clearly sets out the tests as to whether someone is independent or dependent.
For the sake of the 5,000 rural route mail couriers in Canada, I would urge all members to please have a good look at these rulings and see for themselves if it is not fair.
I would remind members that this is really a rural-urban issue. These people are being disadvantaged because they live in rural Canada. A disproportionate number of them are women. Some of them are working off the farm trying to get some supplementary income for their family. The going rate for a mail delivery person living within the city limits of Winnipeg or Toronto is $17 or $18 an hour, plus benefits. Because these rural route couriers live outside the perimeter highway they are at $6.86, lower than minimum wage with absolutely no benefits.
How do we defend that in this day and age? There is no justification whatsoever, certainly not for financial reasons. If we were going to conduct ourselves in that manner then why would we not put kids back in the mines? They would be cheaper than putting miners down there. We have to pay miners $25 an hour. Maybe we could get some 12 year old to crawl through the cracks with a fuse between his teeth like they did in the old days. That is obviously taking examples to a ridiculous end.
Money is not justification for denying people basic civil rights. Organizing a union or bargaining collectively is a basic right in this country. It is the only way we have managed to elevate our standards for working people over the last many years. Everyone agrees, our government agrees and states publicly that it is in favour of free collective bargaining. Here is the opportunity. This is our chance to demonstrate that we really do care about the freedom of workers to join and to form unions.
One of the reservations I have and the only reason I can give as to why this matter was not resolved years ago is the terrible hostility between the government and the union representing postal workers. We should not let this group of workers suffer just because of management's inability to get along with its own workforce. That is clearly a poisonous environment.
Nothing in my bill would automatically tie the rural route mail couriers to the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. Who is to say they will join that union? Who is to say they will join a union at all? They would just have the right to bargain collectively and they would have recourse to the Canada Labour Code like all other Canadian workers enjoy.
This issue has gained broad public interest and broad public support. There was a one hour special on one of the TV news magazine programs. There have been numerous articles in newspapers and magazines.
This group of rural route couriers has been very active politically. I would think that virtually everybody in this House has received some communication from the RRMCs trying to explain the basic fairness of their issue. It has been a long lobbying effort, 10 years long. These people have waited long enough to exercise the same rights that all other working people enjoy.
I would hope that there is broad support from other members in the House. I have canvassed most of the opposition parties and they seem interested in extending this kind of right. There is nothing more noble that we can do as parliamentarians than to extend rights and to expand the rights of Canadians so that we all enjoy and benefit equally from the protections in this case of the Canada Labour Code for employees.