Conservatives appear out to trim worker rights
Little- noticed sections of omnibus budget bill would ‘ fundamentally change’ balance between employees and employers
OTTAWA — Is the Harper government fundamentally anti- labour?
The question arises after Labour Minister Lisa Raitt threatened Wednesday to table back- to- work legislation, after employees at CP Rail went on strike. She has previously legislated against strikes at Air Canada and Canada Post.
Critics say the government’s true colours are showing clearly with systemic changes proposed in the controversial budget bill. They say these will fundamentally change the power balance between employers and employees, to the detriment of workers.
One of the measures is so sneaky, says NDP MP Pat Martin, that nobody seemed to notice the line buried deep in the 452- page Bill C- 38 that simply states, “The Fair Wages and Hours of Labour Act is repealed.”
With those 10 words, Ottawa intends to wipe out a 1985 law compelling contractors bidding on federal contracts to pay “fair wages” and overtime.
“I would have missed it, and
They seem to think that low wages and maximizing profits are more important than a good solid middle class in Canada.
KEN GEORGETTI PRESIDENT, CANADIAN LABOUR CONGRESS
I’m from that industry. It was number 68 of 70 bills that they changed,” said Martin, a former journeyman carpenter and construction worker. Martin notes that unlike most measures in the budget bill, there was no discussion of the measure or even a signal such a change was contemplated.
“It’s a solution without a problem. The only conclusion I can come up with is that it’s a war on labour and the left. It’s what the Americans did with the right- to- work states, and the end result is $ 8 or $ 9 an hour is now the average wage in places like North Carolina.”
Along with the little- noticed provision, Bill C- 38 calls for changes to immigration rules, the temporary foreign workers program and the employment insurance system — all with an eye to make it easier for companies to bring in workers with the skills they require and to reduce disincentives to work in the domestic labour market.
Human Resources Minister Diane Finley is expected to announce details of the changes to the EI program today, establishing the types of jobs workers receiving benefits will no longer be allowed to refuse and possibly trimming benefits for repeat claimants.
In recent statements, government ministers have defended the proposed measures by citing “unprecedented” labour shortages in some sectors and regions of Canada, particularly Alberta and Saskatchewan, and the approaching labour shortage created by retiring baby boomers.
Perrin Beatty, president of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, believes labour shortages are already a big problem for employers. While he applauds the government’s actions, he adds more still needs to be done.
“That’s the No. 1 issue for us this year,” Beatty said from Vancouver, where he was continuing a series of round table talks on skills shortages.
“We have pockets of persistently high unemployment in this country at the same time as in other areas there’s a desperate need for skills. In some cases it’s a specific skill that is needed, in others, like Alberta and Saskatchewan, they are saying, ‘ We will take anybody who’s willing to work.’ ”
That is hard to square with a national unemployment rate of 7.3 per cent, and new figures showing there are 5.8 unemployed workers for every job vacancy. Officially, there were 1.37 million Canadians looking for work in April, and that doesn’t count the hundreds of thousands of discouraged workers, involuntarily selfemployed or part- timers wishing to be employed full- time.
Labour economist Erin Weir of the United Steelworkers says he has never bought the labour shortage argument, noting that in a market economy if that were the case wages would be increasing. Instead, they are barely keeping up with inflation.
It might be fair to point to a skills shortage in certain hot sports, he says, but the solution to that issue is training, not macro- economic measures designed to increase the labour pool generally.
To Canadian Labour Congress president Ken Georgetti, the measures add up to a decidedly pro- business agenda. And that’s a shame, he said, because what the Canadian economy needs most is a strong middle class that can afford to pay down debt and start consuming.
“They seem to think that low wages and maximizing profits are more important than a good solid middle class in Canada,” he said.
The government, of course, doesn’t see it that way.
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty recently outlined what he sees as the major challenge of workers facing the country, maybe not this year but in the next decade and beyond.
“We are going to have significant labour shortages in this country,” he said. “That means we are going to have to encourage more persons with disabilities to work, more seniors to work, more aboriginal people to work, including young people. We need to get rid of disincentives in the employment insurance system to people joining the workforce.”
The statement could well apply to all the measures dealing with workers in the budget bill, not just EI.
TD Bank economist Craig Alexander says the approach is typical of how the Harper government likes to operate — incremental changes that collectively carry a big wallop.
“They often tackle things not by announcing a bold new national strategy but by identifying a priority and then they pick away at it,” he said.
If that’s the case, the government may be just starting the process of altering the labour market landscape in Canada. The changes announced so far are too modest to make a big splash, Alexander said.
“I’m really not worried about modest changes in the labour supply acting as a major constraint on wages, because over the next 10, 20 years demographics will win out.”
“Businesses are still going to be faced with shortages and they will have to find ways of keeping workers in the labour force longer.”