Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my hon. colleague on introducing the motion. I thank the hon. member from the NDP who just spoke for being so articulate in his particular bias at the same time. He accused the Alliance of being biased. I suggest that he is biased as well. There is not an unbiased person in the House except you, Mr. Speaker. You are about the only person who is unbiased because you have to be absolutely neutral on everything. The rest of us are all biased.
I remind the hon. member who just spoke that perhaps he should have read the motion. It states very clearly:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should introduce amendments to Part I of the Canada Labour Code to ensure that during a strike or a lockout an employer operating a freight or passenger service between North Sydney, Nova Scotia--
It is precisely the recognition that employers and employees do have and should have the right to negotiate their salaries and working conditions. They should have the right under certain conditions to become powerful and demonstrate how strongly they feel about particular issues. Perhaps the hon. member misread the motion. I encourage him to read it more accurately.
I would like to discuss labour and management relations. Our whole economy depends upon the ability of people to offer their services in the production of goods and services. It is just as important that management co-ordinate and operate these things. In certain quadrants of the country there seems to be some divergence of purpose. Somehow an organization exists either for management or for employees and it seems as if these two groups are at variance with one another. This is utterly false.
Nothing will get done unless management and employees work together. That is the whole point. Strikes and lockouts cause serious disruption in the service that is being provided and in the function of the particular organization. They disrupt actual relationships between people that were quite strong at one time. Sometimes it takes years. I have known of instances where they are never brought back together again. They frustrate the competitiveness and efficiency of business. They also frustrate the efficiency of both management and workers.
These are analytical differences, but when it comes right down to it we need a coming together in common purpose to achieve a goal for the benefit of all society.
Here we have a situation where the only transportation facility that exists is a ferry. It provides transportation and it is limited to that aspect. Will we say that it is perfectly all right for one group or another to stop the service because they cannot get along with each other and there is a disagreement about things? That should not be right on either part. A whole host of third parties would suffer as a consequence of one group unilaterally deciding to terminate the service. That is not reasonable.
How strongly would we feel if somebody put a blockade across the Trans-Canada Highway, for example? Would we or would we not feel strongly about that? We could take an airplane, a train or a car, but these poor people cannot do anything else other than take an airplane. They cannot drive. They have to take an airplane. Many things cannot be done by air that can be done by ferry. We need to recognize that this is a specific motion dealing with a particular case.
I would like to move the debate to a higher level by speaking to the whole business of relations between workers and management and the operational objectives of a particular organization. Unless there is harmony and goodwill it does not matter what kinds of laws exist. Things will not happen the way they ought to happen. The resolution of a strike or a lockout would help to provide better relations by using the final offer selection process.
It is not perfect. There has never been a perfect system and there is no perfect organization. Mr. Speaker, as competent as you are, there is probably no perfection in your office. You could probably become a little better than you are today but that applies to every one of us, and it applies here too.
I suggest that government members and the hon. member who just spoke recognize that this is a workable, practical and sensible solution which forces and encourages both management and labour to look realistically at a dispute that exists where both parties say they are right. It is probable that neither one of them is totally right. That is the whole issue of having negotiations and a mechanism in a dispute that allows it to be resolved. In the final analysis the conflict itself becomes clarified.
The hon. member from the NDP made some excellent points when he talked about some of the working conditions like day care centre operations. However he suggested that this did not have a monetary price attached to it. It is almost as if the only kind of thing that has money attached to it is salary. Talk about naïveté. That has to be the ultimate.
It does not matter what other working conditions there are. They all cost money. There is nothing wrong with their costing money provided there is a fair settlement for everybody, that the organization can move ahead and meet its goals, that productivity is competitive and can create a profit for the business, and that both management and labour can benefit from the profit. It is as if it is unilateral that profit always goes only to management and workers never get any part of it. That is utterly false. It does not work that way. We have to work together.
There are many things besides money that affect the working conditions of people. We know that. Any of us who have negotiated any kind of contract realize that there is a whole host of items that become elements for a dispute, disagreement, consideration or whatever the case might be. If one pushes any one of them to the extreme it becomes ridiculous and people begin to say they will never give in and they will go on strike on the issue. Why?
Let us be reasonable about these things. The whole idea behind negotiations and giving workers the right to negotiate is to find a way that is better so that both parties can function in a manner that is more co-operative and that meets the needs of both parties. That is the function of labour negotiations and that is what this is all about.
Labour organizations were created to recognize that there were things that were not being done that ought to have been done. There was a real strong case to be made. By getting together they could persuade management to do what was better for them. On the other hand management also had concerns about what was not happening. Both groups needed to get together and recognize the significance of settling their differences. It has worked.
We have all kinds of examples. We have them at the University of Alberta and on the west coast during the long shore dispute settlement. This process works. I emphasize that it is a mechanism that is used during a strike or lockout. It is not a predetermined situation. I believe that it should be there, should become law and should be made available as a tool. I encourage us to move on the motion and to vote on it.