Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to be here once again to debate this important issue of providing rights to rural route mail couriers.
As was mentioned in previous speeches, I had a private member's bill that was virtually the same. It was debated in the last parliament. I was very optimistic at that time that the bill had support on all sides of the House but in the final vote, as some members may remember, the count was 114 against and 110 for; in other words, at that time we lost the vote by 4 votes. Two people voted the other way. We were very disappointed but we were committed not to let the issue drop.
In spite of what the member from Mississauga would have us believe, the issue is about the workers' rights, not about any one union trying to expand its membership.
Rural route mail couriers are the only group of workers in the country who are specifically barred from free collective bargaining. I should point out that free collective bargaining is a right and a freedom guaranteed to all Canadian workers under the Canada Labour Code, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and all international conventions and covenants of all sizes, types and shapes. Therein lies the rub.
When the Canada Post Corporation Act was implemented in 1980, the corporation did not want these employees to be viewed as employees for the purposes of the Labour Relations Act so it put in a clause that would specifically bar this group of workers. It says that even though for all intents and purposes these people look, walk and act like employees, because in fact they are employees, from here on forward they will be considered independent contractors and therefore not subject to the Canada Labour Code.
That is simply not true. I have been in labour relations for much of my working life and there are a series of tests in law that one must meet to be considered an independent contractor. At best, these workers are dependent contractors, wholly dependent on one source for all of their earnings and income. What makes it completely unfair is that the Canada Labour Board ruled in their favour and said that they were wholly dependent and therefore employees. However because of that one clause, that one provision in the Canada Post Corporations Act, they could not avail themselves of all the rights that other workers enjoy.
It is a complete red herring to say that it is CUPW trying to expand its membership on an organizing drive because nothing in what the rural route mail couriers have said even mentions any specific union. They might form their own association but they do want the right to bargain collectively, and implicit with that right comes protection under the Canada Labour Code regarding strikes, lockouts and the use of arbitration and mediation. All those rights stem from the definition of being defined as an employee.
I worked very closely with the rural route mail couriers over the course of these many years. I opened up my office to them so that they could come to Ottawa and lobby on the Hill. They worked out of my office for two weeks while they came and visited members of parliament to try and explain to them the inherent unfairness of this. They are the only group of workers in the country who, for purely economic reasons, are barred from the right to organize, the right to bargain collectively and all the other rights that stem from that.
There is no justification for that other than economic. André Ouellet, the president of the Canada Post Corporation, has admitted that it was the corporation's motivation in 1980. At that time, the Canada Post Corporation was hundreds of millions of dollars in debt. I do not think its operating deficit was that much but it did have an accumulated debt of that much. It was simply trying to streamline its operations by not paying fair wages in rural Canada.
Fair wages benefit the whole community, whether it is a rural community or an urban community. No one can deny that it is unions that have elevated the standard of wages and working conditions to create the middle class which makes Canada great today.
Even the member from Mississauga grudgingly admitted that the unions had played a role in elevating the standards to the middle class, but yet we now have a disparity. We have a group of employees delivering mail in the city who are making, on average, $17 or $18 an hour, about $35,000 a year. It is not a fortune but it is a fair and living wage. However we have a group of employees in the country whose average take home pay, under the current contracting system, is less than the minimum wage paid to a McDonald's employee.
The current contracting system has been abused. The member from Saskatchewan, who spoke just prior to me, claimed that he knew of no abuse. Well many of the almost 7,000 rural route mail couriers on contract have come to me with graphic examples and illustrations showing how the contracting system has been abused, in that for the same contractors to keep their contracts they get a phone call from Canada Post telling them them that there is an awful lot of interest in their contracts and that for them to be guaranteed their routes they had better lower their bids a couple of bucks, and so it is jacked down again.
Those contractors have to pay for their own fuel, gas, insurance, car and all the other expenses that an independent business person would have to pay. They do not receive any benefits. They do not pay into a Canada pension plan, UI or worker's compensation and they receive no sick days, and it is all because they are not deemed to be employees for the purposes of the act . However, instead of their salaries going up with the cost of living and cost of inflation, they are being negotiated down. That is not a free tendering contract system. That is interference, dominance and abuse of power for Canada Post to call the people and tell them that if they want to keep their contracts they will have to take a little less.
When the Canada Post Corporation Act was first created over 20 years ago some of the rural route mail couriers were keeping their heads above water. However some of them are getting less now than they were then, for heaven's sake. Clearly the system has failed them. It is like it has been l throughout history. When a group of workers did not get to share in the benefits of this great nation, they were motivated to come together, to act collectively and to form their own association.
The rural route mail couriers have never said that if they were granted the right to organize and to bargain collectively that they would join the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. They may join the Canadian Autoworkers Union or form their own inhouse association for collective bargaining purposes. We do not know. It is a complete red herring to assume that it is just the Canadian Union of Postal Workers that is trying to expand its membership.
I thank the member for Chambly for raising this important issue on behalf of working people around Canada. It is at their request that we are keeping the issue alive. I am disappointed that the reason the vote on my bill lost was because of deliberate misinformation being spread by that side of the House. Everyone knew that we were only talking about rural route mail couriers being allowed to organize and bargain collectively. They took it to mean that all mail contractors would be included, in other words airline and trucking companies that had been contracted to carry mail on behalf of Canada Post.
That was never the purpose or the point and we had made that abundantly clear. However at the 11th hour, even though we had enough Liberal MPs willing to vote for us, especially those from rural Canada who knew the reality of rural route mail couriers, they were interfered with and misinformation was spread that it would have been a huge complicated thing that would involve trucking companies, shipping firms and airlines. That was nonsense and tripe.
All we are talking about is an issue of basic fairness to correct an historic injustice perpetrated by André Ouellet himself. We want the minister to intervene and to order and direct Canada Post Corporation to extend to rural route mail couriers the same rights and privileges that all Canadian workers enjoy and the protection of the Canada Labour Code. It is the very least we should be able to expect. It frustrates me that year after year goes by and we have yet to make this important step.
