Mr. Speaker, I am trying to tell a story that happened in the 1990s as a graphic illustration of why our side gets so animated about these issues. The employer padlocked the door on the outside. Underpaid rural black women from North Carolina who largely made up the workforce were taking home wing tips so they could make soup out of it and the place caught on fire: 43 employees died and another 110 were hospitalized. This was the worst industrial relations incident since the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory of 1913 in New York City, so we have come full circle.
If anyone has travelled in rural Pennsylvania, rural North Carolina, or Florida, I think there are 60 of these right to work states, which smashed the labour union in the United States thinking it was the road to prosperity. I saw a bumper sticker the last time I was in the United States that said, “At least the war on the middle class is going well”. That is the only war they are winning. They have gone from the richest and most powerful civilization in the history of the world to almost a failed state. It is a false economy.
There is no utility in forcing wages down. We are not going to shrink our way to prosperity. Fair wages benefit the whole community and the direction we are seeing revealed in the Conservatives' weaker moments when they are tired, sleepy and grumpy and their true colours start to show, scares us a great deal. It is not the Canadian way. We are 33% unionized.
My colleague argues we should be more unionized because fair wages and free collective bargaining have led to labour peace. That was the post-war compact. Right after the war there were a lot of wildcat strikes and a lot of violence on picket lines. Guys had their heads split open on picket lines, but by free collective bargaining through a prescribed negotiations process we eliminated that violence. We eliminated work stoppages with fair wages, et cetera.
The Conservatives are inviting labour unrest the likes of which we have not seen since the 1930s and they are starting with the most volatile industrial relations environment in the free world, which is the Canadian post office. Believe me, one does not mess with the Canadian post office's labour relations. One does not invite tourists to the bargaining table in that particular environment, because it is a tinderbox that is ready to blow at any given time and the government just pressed the plunger. The postal workers have offered to go back to work.
If it were not for the irresponsible, reckless, mean-spirited, inflammatory actions of the government with this unnecessary back to work legislation, the workers have agreed to go back to work with no rotating strikes. However, they want to press their agenda because it is the tea party all over again here. It is the Republican Tea Party political environment. Conservatives have to throw some red meat to their base, so they are going to take on the big, bad union of Canada Post Corporation and show it a thing or two with a stable majority Conservative Government.
The government does not know the damage and the misery it is inviting. The worst thing that could be done for an economic recovery is to invite labour unrest and that is what it is doing. Conservatives are a bunch of amateurs.