Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to enter into debate on final offer selection Motion No. 405 put forward by the member for Wetaskiwin. He and I have had this debate over the years.
In most settings or forums where industrial relations are debated the Alliance Party puts forward the idea of final offer selection as an alternative to work stoppage in just about any industrial sector. I made the point at the Standing Committee on Natural Resources and Government Operations where we amended part I and part II of the Canada Labour Code. I will make it again. Final offer selection is a flawed idea that is riddled with faults.
The hon. member's motion would make final offer selection a mandatory way of settling any kind of impasse in collective bargaining. This would take away the right of employees to withhold their services. The right to withhold services is an integral part of the collective bargaining process.
I am probably the only person in the House of Commons today who has personal and practical experience using final offer selection to settle an impasse in a collective bargaining setting. The province of Manitoba had final offer selection for a number of years as an option so that two parties could, if they chose, settle their collective bargaining round using this type of binding arbitration.
Having been the leader of the carpenters' union at the time the law was in effect in Manitoba, I had cause to use final offer selection in certain rounds of collective bargaining. The point is that it was the choice of the employees. Key and integral to any final offer selection legislation must be that it is the choice of employees whether or not to settle the round of collective bargaining through final offer selection.
I will explain how this was done in the province of Manitoba. Either party could make application to the minister to settle a round of bargaining through final offer selection or FOS. However the employees had to have a vote, supervised by the labour board, on whether or not they wished to use final offer selection.
In this way it became another tool in the toolbox of the negotiators as to whether it was to their advantage to use final offer selection. It did not take away the right of employees to withhold their services or the right of employers to walk out. It simply provided a third option.
We should be clear that final offer selection is available to all employees. We do not need special legislation to contemplate the use of final offer selection. In any round of collective bargaining the two parties can agree to resolve their impasse through binding arbitration. That is all final offer selection is. It is another form of binding arbitration. It has its place.
As I said, I have used final offer selection in some negotiations but only when the number of outstanding issues was reduced to a few simple and elemental issues such as money. Anyone familiar with labour relations will tell us that money is one aspect of a round of collective bargaining but sometimes a minor issue compared to things such as rules of work, benefits being negotiated, et cetera.
I will tell the House why it is risky to use final offer selection for anything other than dollars and cents. If all the parties are arguing about is a 50 cent pay increase the employer will come to final offer selection with, say, 25 cents and the employee will come with, say, 75 cents and the arbitrator will choose one or the other. That forces both parties to temper their demands with reason because they know if they put forward too outlandish a position the arbitrator will choose the other party. In that sense it forces a coming together of the two parties.
Let us say, though, that the outstanding issues were things like workplace safety, a day care centre for a factory or joint trusteeship on the pension plan.
Those are issues that are hard to quantify. It is hard to put a dollar value on those issues. Employees are at a disadvantage particularly if they go to the arbitrator with a complex series of work rules and the employer goes to the arbitrator with a simple wage increase. The arbitrator in all likelihood would take the position that could be quantified, which is the wage increase. Employees have little hope of ever getting the work rules changed.
Employees have to strike almost always for things like pension plans and on the job issues such as workplace safety and day care. Those kinds of things usually take the heavy hand or the blunt instrument of at least threatening to withhold services. Employees would be disadvantaged by the FOS process if all rounds of bargaining were to be settled by mandatory FOS.
In our own experience we found that employees would rarely vote to use FOS because they were aware of the shortcomings. The law was on the books in Manitoba for a number of years. During that time period about nine rounds of bargaining were settled by the final offer selection process where the arbitrator ruled. Five rulings were in favour of the employees and four in favour of management.
Even if the two parties opted to use final offer selection, the bargaining and talking would carry on. Nine times out of ten, at least, the two parties found some kind of resolve prior to the arbitrator making a ruling.
The motion finds its origins in a Canadian Alliance bias against employees having the right to stop work. It would take away their right to withhold services. That is why it keeps being raised over and over again by Canadian Alliance members. They see a perfect world where employees do not have the right to withhold services. In their minds there would be no more strikes and inconvenience of lost time and productivity.
What they fail to understand is that the threat of withholding services is the only tool employees have to add pressure to the collective bargaining process. It demonstrates a naïveté on their part and a clear bias against what most employees rely on to elevate their standard of wages and working conditions in the workplace.
I would speak against the introduction of any final offer selection measures unless they were at the option and choice of employees. Nothing should stand in the way of the two parties trying to resolve their impasse through FOS as it is. The labour code should not be amended in this way.