Madam Speaker, once again I am pleased to speak on the bill. I spoke on it when it was brought to Parliament under the old system and I am going to be bringing up the same points today.
The hon. member who proposed the bill said it would force negotiations. Maybe in some extremely limited situations it would, but this is not going to alter situations where there is simply a strike or a lockout. It only deals with one specific little narrow window, that is, where a company continues to operate by the use of hiring new replacement workers. For example, if a company is totally shut down, the bill would have no effect. If a company is running in a limited manner using management personnel, again the bill would have absolutely no effect.
The other problem with the bill is that it is really half a bill, because it deals with replacement workers. Replacement workers are found in a situation where the company and the union go on strike, the company says fine, go on strike, we will simply hire a bunch of new people who are not in the union and have them do the work. The original workers can stay out on strike as long as they want and it would not affect the company. The truth of the matter is that I do not like that. I do not agree with it. I do not like the whole system of strikes and lockouts that we have right now. I think it is something we should have addressed a long time ago and found some alternative for instead of maybe fiddling with little bits and pieces of it.
In terms of the specifics of the concept that the hon. member brought up, I do not agree with the company being allowed to hire people outside of the union contract and bring them in to do the work. There is a contract, an agreement. There is a resolution process in the event of the dispute, either a strike or lockout, and I think that both sides should have to live with that.
Unfortunately the hon. member's bill only deals with that one side. It does not deal with what I would have to call replacement companies. Here is what a replacement company is. When there is a strike or lockout, if a company cannot use replacement workers it is shut down, but the union members can still be on strike and can go to work at another job.
I have an example of this in my riding at a newspaper in my hometown. There was a strike between the newspaper and its staff. It was a very long strike and a very bitter one. In fact, I believe that the company was probably out to try to break the union. What happened is that the union started a newspaper. It was supposed to be a temporary measure to provide them with some revenue during the time that they were on strike, in essence so that they had some strike pay. I do not remember how long this has gone on now; it has been years. What happened in reality is that the newspaper they were on strike from they are still technically on strike from; however, we now have a new newspaper in our town that is run by the people who indeed are on strike and in addition, probably, by some new people they have hired since that time. In essence, the union has replaced the company.
I do not agree with that either, frankly. I do not agree with a whole lot of the process. I do not like strikes or lockouts. I think they are very unproductive. They were useful in the beginning because there had to be some kind of dispute settlement mechanism and that was the one that was used.
We have a power company in my riding. A few years back the workers there went on strike. They were out on strike for quite some time and management personnel kept the emergency things operating. There was not a whole lot going on so they managed to keep it running. I am sure it probably caused some problems for the company, but it also saved them a lot in salary. They did not hire any replacement workers. So again, this bill would have absolutely no impact on that operation. Months went by and eventually the workers, who had been doing without wages, went back to work. They will never make up the money they lost. The raise they got was essentially the same thing they were offered before they went out on strike.
I respect the hon. member's intentions in bringing forward the bill, but I do not really think it addresses the problem. It addresses such a small part of the problem, and only one side of it, that I think in essence it is problematic. I support collective bargaining, but there is a lot of misunderstanding about what collective bargaining is.
Collective bargaining is negotiations, conciliation and mediation. That is collective bargaining. Strikes and lockouts are not part of collective bargaining; they are the result of the failure of collective bargaining. A strike or a lockout is referred to as a dispute settlement mechanism.
When unions first started, they were needed. Boy, were they needed. In fact, to go back in Canadian history to the beginning of the last century, in certain provinces in Atlantic Canada a person could actually be put in jail for asking for a raise. It was a law on the books. One could go to jail for asking for a raise. That was what we would call an incredibly loaded system, all in favour of the employer. The problem is that when we start to try to deal with these issues and the pendulum starts swinging, sometimes it swings a little too far the other way. Sometimes we lose sight of what we are really trying to achieve.
I think that we need to try to find a way to get away from what we have in collective bargaining primarily today, and that is a very confrontational sort of system. There is a confrontation between the employer and the employee. We have in essence an economic tug of war between the two sides to see who can do without revenue the longest, the employer or the employee. Unfortunately under our current system the winner is often the party that loses the least, and that is not really a very good solution.
We need to come up with something that does exactly what the hon. member said at one point in her speech, that is, force negotiations. Because when the two sides are not negotiating, they are not settling anything. There needs to be some kind of alternative to strikes or lockouts as an absolute dispute settlement mechanism. One that I favour very strongly and which my party favours is final offer arbitration. We do not think that it should be arbitrarily the catch-all that solves all problems, because it is not perfect. Unfortunately I do not know of anything that is. Certainly strikes and lockouts are not.
If a company and the employees want to agree, they can do it through any number of different methods that do not involve a labour disruption, but I think we need to have something in place that says if parties cannot come to any kind of resolution or cannot agree on a dispute settlement mechanism, then there should be something rather than a strike or a lockout, where everybody gets hurt and there is a lot of collateral damage. In fact, in today's economy, particularly in the federal arena, a handful of longshoremen could go on strike in Vancouver and a farmer and his family in Manitoba could lose their farm as a result of that.
The world is getting far too complex for this. We cannot allow that kind of harm to occur. We must have something that says we will find a way to settle this dispute without it involving a labour disruption. I used to be an air traffic controller, which also comes under federal jurisdiction. The problem we had in trying to negotiate is that we were too powerful. If we could not settle and we tried to go out on strike, a relative handful of people could shut down the air transportation industry of this country. So we got legislated. What was the good of us having the right to strike if we were never allowed to use it because we were so powerful?
We recognize that policemen should not be on strike to watch people get mugged, raped, robbed or whatever else and say they are not going to help because they are on strike. We recognize that firefighters should not be standing on a sidewalk watching a house burn down, perhaps with a small child inside it, because they are on strike.
If we recognize that and say there has to be an alternative for them, then perhaps we should also ask why they should be penalized because of their importance. Why can we not come up with something that deals with the need for them to continue working but be dealt with fairly? Why can we not find that and then apply it to everyone?
I am afraid that I cannot support the bill. However, because I agree with some of the concepts the member raises, I will abstain when it comes to voting on this. I am labour critic for our party. It is a very awkward bill. I do not dispute that the member is trying to do some good or that there are some agreeable parts to her bill, but as I say, it is only half a bill. We cannot take a system, as bad as it is, and take away the tools from one side while leaving all the tools for the other.
Let us imagine a hockey team where one side was told it could not have a goalie. It would not be much of a game. There must be balance. As much as I think the member's intentions are good, the bill would produce an imbalance in the system. What we need to do is come up with a much more total solution so that everyone is able to continue to work, draw a salary, aid their community and not cause problems for other parts of our country as well.