Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to support Bill C-212 sponsored by the hon. member for Laurentides.
This bill would amend the Canada Labour Code, the Parliamentary Employment and Staff Relations Act and the Public Service Staff Relations Act. It renders any provision in a collective agreement concluded under these Acts—excluding a provision based on the seniority principle—of no force or effect where employees hired after a specified date do not receive the same employee or pay benefits or conditions of employment as those received by other employees covered by the collective agreement.
In practical terms, this bill is a protection for new entrants in the workforce and for and younger workers newly hired by a business.
This bill provides that these workers will receive the same pay and conditions of employment as those received by other workers.
This bill addresses the issue of what is commonly called the orphan clauses. These clauses provide for workers hired after a specified date conditions that are lower than those set out in the collective agreement for other workers, in terms of pay, probationary period, social benefits, employment security of retirement plans.
These clauses may be temporary or permanent, depending on whether or not the new workers will be able in the short, medium or long term to enjoy the same working conditions than the older workers.
There are four main types of orphan clauses.
The first ones are permanent clauses dealing with pay scales. Under these clauses, the pay of older workers and the pay of new ones increase according to different pay scales, and the new workers cannot reach the same pay ceiling as the older workers.
There are also permanent clauses concerning flat rates of pay. Under these clauses, older and new workers are paid according to a flat rate, the rate for new workers being lower than the one for older workers.
Third, there are permanent clauses dealing with both a flat rate of pay and a pay scale.
There are two possible scenarios under this scheme: either the older workers are paid according to a flat rate while the new workers are paid according to a wage scale without having the chance to ever reach the top rate given the older workers, or the older workers are paid according to a wage scale while the new workers are paid according to a flat rate which never reaches the pay ceiling granted to the older workers.
Finally, there are the temporary formulas applicable to wage scales, where the pay of old and new employees increases according to separate scales whose higher levels are established at the same rate.
It is clear that no matter what formula is applied, discriminatory clauses are causing a lot of frustration, are creating a cleavage between old and new employees and are generating tensions within businesses.
Discriminatory clauses can also affect the solidarity of union members, while undermining the credibility of unions with young people.
This bill addresses these legitimate concerns toward these discriminatory clauses that guarantee the working conditions of employees who are now in their position but that provide for reduced benefits for future employees. Discrimination toward new employees, mainly young people, is the direct consequence of these agreements.
This bill recognizes and supports the seniority principle. However, it would prevent the implementation, in a collective agreement, of other discriminatory clauses that would allow employers to fill vacant positions by giving reduced salaries or benefits.
Young people already have so much difficulty in the labour market without facing this additional discrimination. First of all, it is quite a challenge to find a job. Too often young people come out of universities and colleges, but cannot find work because they do not have the experience required.
It is a vicious circle where our young people are trying to gain experience but do not have the opportunity to enter the job market. Right now, once again, some people want to punish them and discriminate against them.
I can understand, having been a union negotiator in the past, that union representatives are sometimes pushed to the wall. They are being told that if they do not want this or that they will not have a collective agreement. Some governments have used blackmail, saying “if you do not want that, everybody will be fired”. So they did not have a choice and were caught in this war to try to keep the jobs of their employees or their members.
It is unfortunate to see that the member for Mississauga West has so little respect for unions when his brother worked for a union for years and his union salary allowed him to put food on the table. He was able to eat thanks to the steelworkers union.
He should be ashamed to rise today in the House of Commons and not be able to make a speech in all honesty and not even have respect for his own brother and for all the work he has done in this country.
For those who manage to find jobs, they are always temporary contract jobs that provide no security.
Once their contract is over, these same young people are left without a job and most of them are not eligible for employment insurance because of the 910 hours rule for new entrants. Once again, this is the fault of the Liberals and the Conservatives, who just keep hammering young people. That is what happened and today they still want to hammer young people by offering them salaries that are different from those of other employees.
Right now, only 15% of young people who are unemployed receive employment insurance benefits. For young women without a job, the situation is even more precarious. Only 10% of them get employment insurance benefits. As if the situation of young workers were not difficult enough as it is, we have multiplied the number of orphan clauses according which new employees are paid lower wages and get lower benefits than their fellow workers who perform the same duties.
We must put an end to such discrimination. Our young workers deserve the same wages and benefits as their fellow workers who perform the same duties. After all, it is a matter of equity.
When I was a union representative, I even refused that a student be paid differently than another worker who had more seniority in the business. Our young people must not be discriminated against, as they are our children. Any member who is unwilling to support our children does not deserve to represent his riding.
Today, I noticed that the member for Laurentides asked a question to the Minister of Labour on this subject. The minister answered this, and I quote “All collective agreements are drafted by management and the union. Therefore, it is up to them to include appropriate clauses in theses agreements”.
How can the Minister of Labour adopt such an attitude toward our young workers?
When we talk about the Minister of Labour's duties, we are mostly talking about the public sector. Does the Minister of Labour really want the future generation to lose everything we fought so hard for for so many years?
Young people's lives should get easier from one generation to the other. However, for the current generation they are getting worse. Post-secondary education is more and more expensive even if the quality of education is diminishing.
As I have said before, jobs are more difficult to find and working conditions are getting worse. We are now faced with orphan clauses which deal directly with our young workers' wages and working conditions. The Minister of Labour says that she has nothing to do with it. If she really wants to protect the rights of young people and workers, she should support this initiative.
As parliamentarians, we should ensure that future generations will benefit from a better quality of life than what we have now. However, we often consider only the short term and in so doing we neglect the needs of our young people.
This initiative of the member for Laurentides is a good opportunity to begin to correct this situation. It is a good occasion to tell our young people “You are important to us and we will make sure that your interests are taken into account”.
I urge all my colleagues to support Bill C-212 and to end this discrimination against our young people.
And to the Reform Party, which keeps talking about separation and separatists, I say that right now, on a Friday in the month of December, Quebec has not yet separated from Canada and we should not be talking about separation. We should work together.
I commend the hon. member for Laurentides for having introduced this bill in the House. I support it.