Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to say a few words on Bill C-419, an act to amend the Parliamentary Employment and Staff Relations Act.
The purpose of the bill is to ensure that staff of members of the Senate and the House of Commons who serve the members in their capacity as member, leader, House leader or whip will not be prevented from being in a bargaining unit. Simply put, the bill affords collective bargaining rights to political staff. It would essentially turn political staff into quasi-civil servants. That is a move with which I think our party would have some very fundamental problems. I would have some fundamental problems with it as well.
This is not the general course I would normally pursue, because I generally support legislation that gives full collective bargaining rights, including the right to strike, to workers in the vast majority of situations. However, political staff are an entirely different kettle of fish. I do not know how it could possibly work when we consider the hours of work that political staff put in and the flexibility that is required of the political staff in putting in overtime and what have you. I cannot see how it could possibly work.
Political staff are not civil servants. Neither are they simply management level civil servants who are exempt from a given bargaining unit. Political staff are simply that, political staff. Their relationship to the member is essentially personal and political. The nature of that relationship is as varied as the number of members in the House of Commons. How could we possibly have one set of rules that would apply to everyone? In this particular instance I think it is fair to say that one size does not fit all.
Members hire a political staffer for a whole bunch of different reasons. There is no criteria set out to hire a political staffer. Sometimes a political staffer is hired because he worked on an election campaign with us, or he is a friend who has a talent we recognize in one particular area. He may not fit the criteria set out in a job description and it might be very difficult to fit him into a certain job description.
One of the ways in which the uniqueness of the relationship between a member and a staffer is acknowledged in the House is by the vacation pay a member's staff receives on an annual basis. That is in recognition of the fact that political staff often work long hours. They work very odd hours. They have no provision for overtime and have no realistic expectation of the usual annual vacation leave that applies in the case of a civil servant.
One thing which struck me as strange was that temporary House committee staff are excluded from collective bargaining rights but they are lumped in with political staff to acquire those rights under Bill C-419. To me that is mixing apples and oranges. House and Senate committees serve all political parties, and committee staff, be they temporary or full time, are essentially civil servants. Therefore I cannot see them as being in the same category as political staff as far as collective bargaining rights are concerned.
I want to congratulate the member from the NDP for taking the initiative. Maybe it requires some debate but I cannot help but say that perhaps the relationship between the NDP caucus and its staff operates a little differently from the rest of the political world with which I am familiar.
I have been in political life since 1979 and this is the first occasion in which I have seen a serious proposal to significantly alter the collective bargaining rights of political staff. Of course, they have no collective bargaining rights at the moment.
Political staff are not rank and file civil servants. They are not public service management staff. They occupy a unique position in the governmental spectrum and one which I feel is not suitable for the stated intentions of the bill.
Regrettably, I do not believe we can support the bill. Again I want to congratulate the member and say that it probably requires some further debate, but on the surface of it, I think we would have some difficulty in granting collective bargaining rights to political staff. It just does not seem to fit.