LONDON AND DISTRICT CONSTRUCTION ASSOCIATION
ENERGY AND CHEMICAL WORKERS UNION
BREWERY, MALT AND SOFT DRINK WORKERS, LOCAL 304
WOODSTOCK DISTRICT CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
LONDON AND DISTRICT LABOUR COUNCIL
ST THOMAS AND DISTRICT LABOUR COUNCIL
CONTENTS
Thursday 20 August 1992
Labour Relations and Employment Statute Law Amendment Act, 1992, Bill 40
London and District Construction Association
Ken Romanuk, past chairman
Tom Dool, general manager
Energy and Chemical Workers Union
Daniel Ublansky, national legislative coordinator
Brewery, Malt and Soft Drink Workers Union, Local 304
John McNamee, assistant business agent and counsel
Johnson Controls Ltd
Rick DeBruyne, plant manager
Ralph Lassel, employee relations manager
Woodstock District Chamber of Commerce
Robert White, president
Beaver Foods Ltd
Allan Greenslade, senior director, human resources
Paul Bachand, vice-president, human resources, Cara Operations
London Chamber of Commerce
Ed Holder, chair
Jim Thomas, vice-chair, policy
London and District Labour Council
Jim Ashton, president
St Thomas and District Labour Council
Steve McMurdo, president
CAW Canada, Local 1451
Larry Aberle, board member
Guelph Hydro
Joyce Robinson, chairperson
Jim MacKenzie, general manager and secretary
STANDING COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT
*Chair / Président: Kormos, Peter (Welland-Thorold ND)
*Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: Huget, Bob (Sarnia ND)
Conway, Sean G. (Renfrew North / -Nord L)
Dadamo, George (Windsor-Sandwich ND)
Jordan, Leo (Lanark-Renfrew PC)
Klopp, Paul (Huron ND)
McGuinty, Dalton (Ottawa South / -Sud L)
*Murdock, Sharon (Sudbury ND)
*Offer, Steven (Mississauga North / -Nord L)
Turnbull, David (York Mills PC)
Waters, Daniel (Muskoka-Georgian Bay / Muskoka-Baie-Georgianne ND)
Wood, Len (Cochrane North / -Nord ND)
Substitutions / Membres remplaçants:
*Brown, Michael A. (Algoma-Manitoulin L) for Mr McGuinty
*Cunningham, Dianne (London North / -Nord PC) for Mr Jordan
*Ferguson, Will (Kitchener ND) for Mr Dadamo
*Hayes, Pat (Essex-Kent ND) for Mr Klopp
*Hope, Randy R. (Chatham-Kent ND) for Mr Wood
*Phillips, Gerry (Scarborough-Agincourt L) for Mr Conway
*Ward, Brad (Brantford ND) for Mr Waters
*Witmer, Elizabeth (Waterloo North / -Nord PC) for Mr Turnbull
Also taking part / Autres participants et participantes:
Winninger, David (London South / -Sud ND)
*In attendance / présents
Clerk pro tem / Greffier par intérim: Decker, Todd
Staff / Personnel: Anderson, Anne, research officer, Legislative Research Service
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The committee met at 1000 in the Sheraton Armouries Hotel, London.
LABOUR RELATIONS AND EMPLOYMENT STATUTE LAW AMENDMENT ACT, 1992 / LOI DE 1992 MODIFIANT DES LOIS EN CE QUI A TRAIT AUX RELATIONS DE TRAVAIL ET À L'EMPLOI
Consideration of Bill 40, An Act to amend certain Acts concerning Collective Bargaining and Employment / Loi modifiant certaines lois en ce qui a trait à la négociation collective et à l'emploi.
LONDON AND DISTRICT CONSTRUCTION ASSOCIATION
The Chair (Mr Peter Kormos): It's 10 am and we are ready to resume these hearings. The first participant is London and District Construction Association. People, tell us your names and titles, if any. We've received your written submissions, which will form an exhibit and part of the record. Tell us what you will and please try to keep the last half of the half-hour for exchanges. Go ahead.
Mr Ken Romanuk: My name is Ken Romanuk and I have my own business.
Mr Tom Dool: My name is Tom Dool. I am the general manager of the London and District Construction Association.
Mr Romanuk: I'd like to start by going through our written submission.
My name is Ken Romanuk and I am president of Romanuk Design-Build, past chairman of various chamber of commerce committees, past chairman of COCA, the Council of Ontario Construction Associations, and past chairman of the London and District Construction Association. I'm happily married and I have three sons. I've coached soccer, baseball, football and basketball.
I just want to make sure you're listening.
The Chair: I'm listening to everything you have to say. I've read it already. Go ahead.
Mr Romanuk: Good. I was an employee for 14 years and I have been an employer for the past 15 years. I'm a citizen of London, Ontario, Canada. My first job out of school was here and I chose to live in London.
I have had opportunities to present the construction industry's views to various government committees in the past, and on behalf of the LDCA, we welcome this opportunity to speak directly to this committee looking at Bill 40.
I want to tell you what's happening here and now in London, Ontario.
The majority of jobs out for tender now and in the recent past -- and the recent past goes back a year and a half -- have been government-funded projects. On a week-in, week-out basis, "the majority of jobs" means that 80% to 100% of the work we're tendering is government work.
Private enterprise is not expanding. The sluggish world economy, the horrendous paper burden imposed by all levels of government, the presence of a socialist provincial government and the presence of Bill 40 in its present and previous forms are causing businesses not to expand and build new facilities.
My business for the past nine years has been building commercial and industrial buildings. My firm employed an average of 14 people for 14 years. Our slogan was, "We build business." Today I have one employee, because businesses are not building.
COCA has done studies. The first Ernst and Young survey was based on the original proposal, called the Burkett report. It showed that up to 430,000 jobs would be lost if the report were implemented and $12 billion in investment would be lost. A second survey by the same firm was done after revisions were made to the Burkett report. This survey, from a different group of companies, indicated that the revised proposals would still cost Ontario 295,000 jobs and $8.8 billion in investment.
The NDP has said that the numbers are wrong, but it has not done its own survey. If they have done a survey, the results are not available.
COCA did further studies. I want to point out highlights of the Environics survey.
There is a high awareness and low support of what's being proposed in front of us. Most Ontarians, 55%, say they are aware of the Rae government's new labour legislation. Of these, 54% oppose it directly and only 32% support it.
Job loss: When it is revealed that the NDP's legislation would give greater power to labour unions to organize and shut down employers' operations during a strike, a majority of all respondents, 66% -- including even NDP supporters, 50%, and union members, 59% -- believe the legislation will cause jobs to be lost in Ontario.
Economic impact studies needed: An overwhelming majority of Ontarians, 78% -- including NDP supporters, 70%, and union members, 73% -- believe the government should be doing more to investigate whether the proposed legislation will result in job losses.
Good for union leaders, bad for Ontario: A majority of Ontarians see that the legislation is biased towards union leaders. A majority of those aware of the legislation believe it would be good for union leaders, 66%, and workers, only 50%, but they also believe it would be bad for business owners, 66%, and for Ontario as a whole, 52%, while 60% of those aware of the legislation believe that the Rae government cares more about union leaders than it does about workers' jobs.
Rules changes opposed: A majority of all Ontarians, 67%, whether aware of the new labour legislation or not, believe that this is a bad time to change the rules of the Legislature to limit opposition parties' ability to delay the passage of legislation.
Joining a union: As to the ultimate goal of Bill 40, an overwhelming majority, 73%, of Ontarians who are not now unionized have no interest in joining a union. If given the opportunity, 59% of union members' families would not join a union.
Bad timing: Finally, the vast majority of Ontarians, 68%, believe that this is not the time to introduce new labour legislation. Even NDP supporters, 53%, and union members, 62%, believe that the legislation either should await better economic times or does not need to be introduced at all.
We are the largest industry in the province, and our unemployment rate is now over 22%. I wonder how many employees have given up looking altogether. We depend on investment for jobs. Investments are being driven out of or away from Ontario. Private money is needed to drive the economy. Tax money will not, in the long run, do it. As we lose businesses and jobs, the government loses taxes. It's a downward spiral.
Please talk to the industry now, before Bill 40 becomes law. Please look at the economic impact of this bill. Commission your own study that could be undertaken concurrently with these hearings. Please get the facts before writing your report. Use this opportunity to start restoring Ontario's image as a good place to invest and create jobs. Use this opportunity to tell your constituents that, as their members of the Legislature, you care about protecting jobs as much as they do.
In closing, gentlemen, there are two further comments I want to make. One is a quote from Abraham Lincoln that I think is fantastic. He said:
"You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn. You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves."
Finally, in today's Free Press, an article sums up my feelings pretty well. Mr Tym Coba, a resident of London, a Canadian of Ukrainian background, a man who had spent three and a half years in German prisons and concentration camps, had a fight with government. He sums up his dealings with these words:
"I tell people that I suffered under Russian Communist socialism, I suffered under German National Socialism and now I suffer under Ontario democratic socialism. If you opposed the Russians or Nazis, they would destroy you. Here they are more humane; they don't destroy you but they ignore you and tell you to go to hell."
The Chair: Mr Offer, Mr Phillips and Mr Brown.
Mr Gerry Phillips (Scarborough-Agincourt): I appreciate your presentation. The latest unemployment numbers in the construction industry are very discouraging. I think you're probably aware that in July, which historically is the upturn, we see another 40,000 fewer people working in construction in July of this year over July of last year, so the recession continues in your industry, and I feel badly for it.
What's the construction association's view, or your own view, on why the government is proceeding with this legislation? What would you perceive to be the rationale for it?
Mr Romanuk: My personal opinion is that I believe there's a conflict of interest with the NDP government and this legislation. What I perceive and what I know is that the NDP receives most of its support from the big unions. Are they losing ground? They're losing their funding, their basis of support. I think this makes it easier for unions to organize small business to increase their money base. That's what my feeling is.
Mr Dool: A few years ago, at the OFL annual meeting, they came up with a wish list. I think all of you are aware of that wish list. You're seeing it in front of you. It's called Bill 40. It's been tempered a little bit, but there it is. You can go back two years. Maybe some of you were actually at that convention and recall some of the items that were the goals, if you will, of the Ontario Federation of Labour. Indeed, you're looking at it. It's somewhat tempered, I admit, but in fact that's what it is.
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A lot of the pundits have said that this is simply a payback to the supporters of the NDP for their tireless support of the NDP over the last 20 or 25 years. What other choice is there to make? The government has said to us that this is an effort to balance labour relations in Ontario. If you take a look at some of the things, there's no balance there. You're going to create confrontation. If you get into the technicalities of it, you have no choice but to come up with the conclusion that there's no balance here; there's a bias.
But that's not our concern here. Our concern is investment dollars. We live and die on investment. The more nails you pound into the investment community and turn it away from Ontario, the more unemployment we have and the more company failures we're going to have. And nobody's listening.
Mr Steven Offer (Mississauga North): May I ask a question? Mr Phillips will hopefully get in another question, but I want to ask a very quick question with respect to the impact studies. You know that's a matter that really has dogged this legislation from the very beginning.
There have been two private sector studies conducted. My recollection of those studies is that the first was done based on the cabinet submission proposals and the second was done based on the consultation document proposals. I believe COCA was a leader in this area. Are you aware whether the private sector is conducting an economic statement based on the actual proposals in Bill 40?
Mr Dool: It's ongoing; I can't tell you when it'll be produced. That's all I can tell you at this point. I can tell you, though, given the retractions, if you will, from the original cabinet document and the furthering of public knowledge of the information that was coming out at the time in the original public consultations, the numbers went from I think 430,000 jobs to 295,000 jobs, and something in the order of $21 billion of lost investment to $8.8 billion. I can almost assure you that those have not become plus numbers. If it's $100,000 or $20,000 or $25,000 of lost jobs or $1 billion of lost investment, it's too much. That I can tell you.
Mr Phillips: The Labour Relations Act amendments are an attempt to improve the process. I know overall you're against the proposals, but are there some elements that will assist the management side in carrying out its collective negotiations? Can you see anything in the proposals that represents a step forward for the management side?
Mr Dool: I think the legislation basically directs itself not to labour-management relations but more towards the certification aspect of things: the beginning of entry of the union as a separate entity into labour-management relations. I don't myself think there are any, but I admit I'm biased.
Mr Phillips: I couldn't find any, but I thought you might have.
Mrs Elizabeth Witmer (Waterloo North): Thank you very much for your presentation. Unfortunately, I think it highlights the impact of Bill 40, the very uncertain economic climate that's been created in this province because of the process the government has used to introduce legislation to facilitate unionization.
Certainly, in talking to people throughout the province, we are hearing that investment is not taking place. We heard yesterday from the chemical producers about the meeting in Detroit, where the Americans had indicated, because of the replacement worker section in particular, we had created a barrier around Ontario, and they simply were not prepared to invest here.
Last week I heard from two people in the Waterloo-Cambridge-Kitchener community that they were not expanding their business because of the uncertainty, and that means a loss of approximately 350 jobs in my community. Obviously if these people were investing, there would be jobs for people such as yourself in the construction industry. So it certainly is a fact that Bill 40 is not encouraging new investment in the province.
You say you have reduced your numbers, Mr Romanuk, to one employee from 14. What are the other 13 doing at the present time?
Mr Romanuk: I know two of them are working for other firms. Four of them have started their own businesses. They couldn't find other jobs, so they're out working on their own. I don't know what happened to all of the rest of them.
Mrs Witmer: What would be the total impact on the construction industry in the London community? How many companies have gone bankrupt? How many workers would have lost their jobs over the last few years because of no new building initiatives?
Mr Romanuk: My guess would be that today, of 500 firms that belong to our association, I would be willing to bet 80% of those firms are now into their retained earnings. I would say by the end of the year or the start of 1993, 20% or 25% of our member firms will no longer be member firms.
Mrs Witmer: That's not unlike what's happening across the province. What would you say to this government concerning Bill 40? What must it do in order to encourage job creation and new investment in this province? What can it do with Bill 40?
Mr Romanuk: I'd really love to tell you, but we're being recorded. I think they should start all over again. They should stop at this particular time. They should do an impact study. They should go out and find out what's happening. From everything I've seen, they've not done it. If they've done it, they're probably embarrassed with the results and won't tell us. I don't know.
Our studies, and through COCA, are telling us that it's not good. I think if they're going to make some changes, make changes, and make them both ways. One part they've never touched and no one ever seems to bring up in the Labour Relations Act is one clause that I think should be struck from it. It's not part of Bill 40. It's the clause that says if you are an employer, you own a company and you become certified, if you go bankrupt or for whatever reason you change jobs, you're always going to have to have a union company. You can never start non-union. Whereas a union employee, if he works for a union and gets laid off, can turn around and work non-union at less wages or whatever. It's not a two-edged sword; it's all one way.
Mrs Witmer: There's not a balance.
Mr Romanuk: I think it should be completely redone if you're going to redo it, but talk to somebody about it. Talk to the other side. Don't talk to three or four people. Talk to industries.
Mrs Witmer: I guess that's what we're hearing. I know the small business community has been telling us that it feels it has been totally ignored in the discussions. It appears we have a bill that is attempting to meet the needs of all people across the province, and the government, unfortunately, hasn't taken a look at the tourism industry, the construction industry, the small business person, to really see how this bill is going to impact. We're hearing over and over again about the very negative impact the bill will have.
Mr Romanuk: I think it's very negative. I tend to have a hard time in my situation differentiating between me, the employer, on one end of a deck, hammering, and my employee at the other end. I think we should have the same rules. I don't think it's fair.
Mr Dool: If I may, Mr Chairman, just to go beyond that, I think you're going to find as you go through the province that the speakers, the people who are making the presentations, are not anti-union here. We've worked with unions for 15 years and we've gotten along well with them. They're doing a fine job.
In the past, the two parties have sat down and discussed legislation changes and have thrown out those things which are drastic and can't possibly be agreed to; those things they agreed to automatically went into legislation. You people basically discuss it and everybody's happy and away she goes. But aren't you finding, Mr Chairman, that the opposition to this is probably outstanding, if you will, as compared to that in the past? Because there has been no cooperation, there have been no real bipartite discussions.
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We've asked for impact studies of the government; the government has not provided them. Why not? Are they afraid of what it's going to produce? We're not. If they come out great, we'll live with them. But we have seen nothing, so we did it ourselves because we're a little concerned. Right? As we got into the results of those surveys we became more and more concerned, and that's why we're sitting here today. There's no need for us to sit here today. Labour Relations Act changes have occurred twice in the last year and they've gone through lickety-split simply because both parties were consulted properly and the legislation was agreed upon.
The Chair: Thank you. Mr Hope and Mr Winninger.
Mr Randy R. Hope (Chatham-Kent): First of all, it says "six-county area," and I'm just wondering for my own information what areas those are, the counties that you represent.
Mr Romanuk: Basically from here to Owen Sound.
Mr Hope: Which is from here upward.
Mr Romanuk: Yes, and Elgin.
Mr Hope: You talk about the reduction in jobs, and I'm looking in my own area, the Chatham area, and I know a number of London firms have contracts in Chatham. As a matter of fact, they built our police station there and they're working on another construction job of private enterprise.
When I look at what you're saying in your presentation, I know you kept specifically to the survey that was done and you talk very little about your workplace and the impacts this would have, so I want to try to put this in a little bit of a context. You said most of your projects are government-funded -- that could be municipal, federal or provincial -- but when I look at this I'm saying, "Well, what's happening in my area, the impacts that I've seen?"
I have a number of investors I'm working with right now to put in my own location. They're not looking to build, because there's a surplus of buildings available, and most of those buildings became available because we are parts manufacturers and we've been affected by the free trade agreement, which is called free enterprise. They're saying, "Why should we build when you have the vacant ones?" The municipal government's not trying to build anything. They're trying to use up the vacant buildings we currently have.
Then I look at my retail sector and walk down my main street in Chatham and there are empty buildings all over. Naturally there's not going to be any construction, because the major role of the municipalities is to try to get those buildings filled.
I see you make reference a lot to the stuff of the studies but very little to the specifics of the economics that are currently facing us. Isn't it true there is a surplus in buildings available right now because of an impact that was done to a lot of our municipalities after 1988? Wouldn't it make more sense that most of your projects will only come from government-funded projects, which are going to be less as government faces restraints?
That's why I'm having a hard time. You never talk specifically about your own workplace. I heard you just make mention of 14 years of good labour relations with your workers, working side by side. You probably wouldn't have a problem with strikes, they would understand, you're there with them. But when you make specific recommendations or talk specifics to the studies that were done, I have a hard time comparing that.
Mr Romanuk: We're not building any more commercial buildings or industrial buildings, because they're empty. The businesses are going broke or they're closing up because they can't keep on going.
Mr Hope: And why are they doing that?
Mr Romanuk: Well, there are a number of things.
Mr Hope: It's all of a sudden -- Bill 40 is not even introduced and yet you're telling me --
Mr Romanuk: Bill 40 is part of it. It's all part of the process. If you just go back and read -- you said we never addressed it. We addressed it.
We're not saying Bill 40 is the only thing. That's another bloody nail in the coffin. The whole world is slowing down. We're just saying that in the commercial-industrial business we're going to have to wait. After things pick up it's going to be another two or three years before we're going to need new buildings. They're going to have to fill up the space. They're going to have to fill up the empty desks. What we're saying is, let's encourage business. Let's get them, let's get those desks filled up, let's get those buildings full, let's get people back in building, in the construction business.
I can go back to a year ago to my last president's message. This is 1991: "In the last four weeks, June 10 to July 5, the plan office at the LDCA has averaged about 30 projects for tender. In the first week, 31 of 33 projects were government or government-funded projects. Only two jobs were for private industry, and one of these was a bank. In the last three weeks we had only government or government-funded projects out for tender.
"Well, we are all in the building business and we need work. It's false economy to believe that only government-funded work keeping us busy can foster long-term survival. We need an economic structure, building places for businesses that can pay for the buildings. We cannot survive building buildings for a government that can't pay for them. If you believe in free enterprise and an hour's pay for an hour's work, let the politicians know."
We understand that. Just make it easy for us to make a living.
Mr Hope: Around the trade policies which are making specific recommendations to encourage private investment in Ontario, because I've seen --
Mr Romanuk: Probably the best thing that's happened to our country is free enterprise.
Mr Hope: The same ones you're talking about doing studies on -- I remember a study back in 1988. We made it very clear that to get a lot of people onside in order to encourage private investment in rural Ontario, we needed to make sure that the free trade agreement that was being put before us was taken away because one of the protection clauses which generated --
The Chair: Mr Hope, do you want to leave time for Mr Winninger? He's given you his time.
Mr Hope: Yes, I would. If he has time, I'll let him go ahead then if he only has a short period.
Mr David Winninger (London South): I'm not going to indulge in a debate as to why there's a downturn in the construction industry --
Mr Romanuk: There are a lot of reasons.
Mr Winninger: -- although, like Mr Hope, I believe there are a lot of reasons other than our modest labour reforms. You quoted from the London Free Press. I'd also like to quote from an article in the London Free Press today which indicates, according to the Department of Labour, that unionized workers, fearing for their jobs, hit by government-legislated wage caps and possibly reassured by the absence of inflation, are swallowing the smallest wage increases on record, and at the same time, the number of days lost to labour disputes have reached an all-time low.
I ask you this: Given that you've had a number of years of what I guess you've described as harmonious relations with your employees, given the necessity of bringing in the labour sector as a full partner in the creation of economic wealth and given the fact that in the figures you cite in your paper from the Environics poll that 73% of Ontarians who are not now unionized have no interest in joining a union if given the opportunity, why can't the business community and the construction sector relax a bit and acknowledge that these reforms should go through and not continue this propaganda campaign to drive jobs out of Ontario?
I was pleased to see that Ontario was leading the country in terms of construction starts, residential permits for housing. It's true, it might be in the non-profit and cooperative sector, but it's creating more jobs than the other provinces have been able to achieve.
Mr Romanuk: You asked a number of questions on that article. That same particular article I read that's right in front of you, it talked about somebody -- I can't remember the name -- who was all upset, and they need this legislation because the rest of the employees in that particular company voted to decertify. But it only talked about the one person who still wanted to have the union. It didn't talk about the rest of the people in the company who decertified a union. That was sort of biased.
Mr Winninger: Sorry, you're referring to a different article, but I'll give you a copy to take away with you. This is from today's paper.
Mr Dool: I'd like to comment, too. The wage hikes that you see today are indeed quite low in a relative manner. A $2.70 increase over the next three years is not a low amount. It might be low percentagewise. The cost of living of course is down. The unions reflect that in their wage demands and what they expect over the next two or three years. So you would expect wage increases to be lower.
The Chair: I want to say thank you to you gentlemen, Tom Dool and Ken Romanuk, for appearing here today on behalf of the London and District Construction Association. You've played an important part in this process and we thank you for your interest and attendance.
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ENERGY AND CHEMICAL WORKERS UNION
The Chair: The next participant is the Energy and Chemical Workers Union. Please come forward and have a seat. Please, sir, seat yourself in front of a microphone and tell us your name and title, if any, and proceed with your submission. Please try to save the second half of the half-hour for questions and exchange.
Mr Daniel Ublansky: My name is Daniel Ublansky. I'm the national legislative coordinator of the Energy and Chemical Workers Union. Just for your information, the Energy and Chemical Workers Union is a trade union with approximately 35,000 members across Canada, approximately 40% of whom are located in Ontario, so we're a small union.
We certainly welcome this opportunity to present our comments to this committee and hope they will assist in developing a legislative program for reform of the Labour Relations Act. I'm sorry I don't have a written copy to submit to the committee at this time. I will certainly make that available afterwards. Unfortunately, due to vacations and short notice, I wasn't able to produce it in a written form at this point.
To give you an idea of who I am, I've worked for the Energy and Chemical Workers Union for the last 17 years, since 1975. I'm not an economist; I'm just a labour relations practitioner, although I see this bill in perhaps more than just a narrow focus. On the other hand, my perspective is that of someone who has been involved in protecting and representing workers for 17 years. So maybe sometimes I lose sight of these large economic issues that seem to be dominating the debate, and perhaps I'm more interested in the nuts and bolts because I've been working with the act for so long.
I presume everyone has looked at the preamble to the existing Labour Relations Act, which has been in place for quite some time and has reflected the public policy of successive governments of all political stripes: It is in the "interest of the province of Ontario to further harmonious relationships between employers and employees by encouraging the practice and procedure of collective bargaining between employers and trade unions as the freely designated representatives of employees."
That goal, which as I say is contained in the present act, has been endorsed by both Liberal and Conservative governments in that past. However, there has been no attempt until the election of this government to actually evaluate the effectiveness of the act in relation to the goals it professes to promote.
We believe this government is to be commended for having the courage to take a serious look at the issue of labour law reform in this province and to actually attempt, hopefully successfully, to introduce provisions which actually, truly promote the goals which everyone says they believe in.
As I've said, it is at this moment, and has always been since the introduction of the Labour Relations Act, public policy in this province to encourage the practice and procedure of collective bargaining. However, I think it's obvious to everyone, certainly in the labour relations community, that the Labour Relations Act, which is the instrument of the implementation of that policy, has been a dismal failure.
The provisions in the existing act have been totally inadequate in protecting the right of workers to join the union of their choice. The Ontario Labour Relations Board handles between 500 and 1,000 complaints every year relating to certification applications in this province.
Unfortunately I didn't have the latest report, but when I looked last night in the 1989-90 annual report of the Ontario Labour Relations Board, the board noted, "In complaints against employers, the principal charges were alleged illegal discharge of or discrimination against employees for union activity in violation of sections 64 and 66 of the act, illegal changes in wages and working conditions contrary to section 79, and failure to bargain in good faith under section 15." These charges were made mostly in connection with applications for certification.
The board also reported that in cases settled by labour relations officers and those in which board awards were made, compensation amounting to about $474,965 was made to aggrieved employees, as well as offers to reinstate. I might note again, as someone who's been a practitioner for 17 years, that not all complaints get to the board, and not all complaints are as amicably resolved at the board. There are many cases of intimidation, threats and coercion which occur that don't find their way to the Ontario Labour Relations Board, and I'm here to tell you that this is true.
Even if you're going to stick with the statistics, clearly they indicate that threats and intimidation by employers is a common feature of all organizing campaigns in this province. The time has long been overdue for the Legislature of this province to send a clear message to employers that the terror campaigns launched against workers who seek to exercise their democratic rights will no longer be tolerated.
The provisions in Bill 40 represent a modest attempt to make it more difficult for unscrupulous employers to frustrate the democratic rights of their workers. It is an insult to the intelligence of working people in this province for many of those same employers to oppose those measures on the grounds that they are undemocratic. Employers are not champions of workers' rights in this province. They never have been, and until Bill 40 is passed, there's no hope that they ever will be. We can always hope that Bill 40 will usher in a new era of enlightenment, but the truth is, we're not there yet and we're not there now.
The Labour Relations Act has also failed to promote the goal of achieving harmonious relationships within workplaces which have been organized. As the previous speaker has pointed out, and as the literature of Project Economic Growth, which I happened to glance through yesterday, points out: Although, as has been noted this morning, that trend may be changing, it's often said and often pointed out that Canada has lost 5.2 million person-days due to strikes and lockouts in the past year.
Clearly that is a reflection of the failure of the existing labour legislation to come to grips with the difficult problems which exist in today's workplaces. Those strikes are not the result of greed; they are the result of frustration. Again, I speak as someone who has walked picket lines, who has been involved in strikes, and who has fought on behalf of workers seeking justice and dignity. Try it when you've been on that side for a while and see how your perspective changes.
The proposals for reform contained in Bill 40 will genuinely contribute -- they certainly won't achieve a magic transformation -- to the achievement of harmonious relationships between employers and employees by providing a more balanced framework for the exercise of power within the workplace.
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Clearly, ultimate power will always rest with the employer, but the unilateral exercise of that power by employers is not in the interests of the people of this province and it never has been. Experience in other countries, in Europe and other jurisdictions, clearly demonstrates that.
The time has come in Ontario. Workers in the 1990s are demanding a greater measure of equality in the workplace, and the fact is that it is in the economic interest of all that those demands be accommodated. If this province is indeed ever to pull itself out of the depths of the present economic crisis and move on to a vigorous recovery, it will have to do so on the strength and vitality of its workforce. Business in this province needs well-motivated and enthusiastic employees to produce goods of the highest quality. That is our only salvation in this world of global competitiveness. If industry leaders believe that this can be achieved by force or by thwarting the exercise of free choice by employees, they are sadly mistaken and out of touch with today's reality in the workplace.
Reform of the Labour Relations Act can be the perfect mechanism for guiding this province to a new prosperity in the upcoming century. We urge industry in this province to take a serious look at the government's proposals and to see beyond narrow, parochial concerns. Look at what we all stand to gain, rather than focusing on loss of control in the workplace, and in my view that is indeed what this is all about.
Our union supports the position of the Ontario Federation of Labour on the specifics of Bill 40, and I don't propose to repeat what is contained in the OFL brief. There is one issue, however, I would like to highlight, because it does relate to one of the ongoing programs of our union.
Specifically, section 22 of Bill 40 deals with the introduction of a mandatory "consultation provision" into the collective agreement. Our union has had what we call a continuing dialogue program in place for the last five years to deal with workplace issues during the term of collective agreements. Unfortunately the primary obstacle to the success of that program has been finding employers who are willing to talk in a meaningful way about those issues. Most employers are simply unwilling to acknowledge that trade unions have a legitimate role to play as economic and social partners within the workplace and society as a whole. That has certainly again been the underlying message in the reaction of the business community to Bill 40 as well.
Our union has recently been involved in an unfair labour practice complaint with Union Carbide, which is reported in the May 1992 edition of the Ontario Labour Relations Board reports. That case involved a decision by the company to relocate a portion of its operation to another facility, as it turned out in the same community, although it was not quite as simple as that. In any event, during the course of the hearings it came to light that the decision to relocate was virtually made six months prior to the actual announcement. When company representatives were asked during the hearing why the union was not informed at an earlier stage of preparation of what the company's plans were, these representatives responded that only final decisions needed to be communicated and there was no need to involve the union until all decisions had been made and it was virtually too late to affect or change the plans.
As it turned out, the Ontario Labour Relations Board held that by not revealing its plans during negotiations for the renewal of the collective agreement, the company had violated section 15 of the act, which is the duty to bargain in good faith. While that result was more than justified on the evidence before the board, we achieved that result only because the timing happened to be right. If the decision-making process had been completed within the term of the collective agreement, the company's actions would have been completely legal under the Labour Relations Act. Thus, workers would have been denied the opportunity to know in advance what the company intended to do and to have some input into the decision-making process that would, in the result, have such a vital impact on their future.
What this case points out, I believe, is the need for an ongoing duty to bargain in good faith throughout the life of a collective agreement, particularly where the employer plans significant changes which affect working conditions or job security. I believe that provision has been dropped in Bill 40 from the government's original discussion paper. I regret that decision. There is a need, and that need ought to be complemented with an effective remedy as well. This ongoing duty to bargain exists under US law. Quite frankly, without it, it is highly doubtful that employers in this province, at least in the year of Our Lord 1992, would be willing to accept that the union has an equal say in the implementation of restructuring and other workplace changes.
I would direct similar comments at the government's proposal in Bill 40 dealing with plant closures. Subsection 41(1) of Bill 40 provides that employers must bargain in good faith and make every reasonable effort to make an adjustment plan, but then denies the board the power to remedy breaches effectively by taking out the same remedial power as is given in section 15. Unless I'm mistaken, that seems a rather puzzling omission and leaves workers totally at the mercy of employers in plant closure situations, one of which I am dealing with at this moment, and it's not the first time. The sad reality is that when plants close, employees have little or no bargaining power, no leverage, nothing to try to achieve some form of justice and dignity in negotiating the terms of the closure. I think that is a significant omission and I would certainly ask this committee to reconsider that decision.
Those are my comments. I'm available for any questions that may be directed.
Mrs Witmer: Unfortunately, your presentation this morning is another example of the polarization that has been created around Bill 40.
I take exception to one of the statements you made, that employers are not champions of workers' rights. I do not believe we can paint all employers with that brush. I would like to tell you that I have received several letters recently from employees who are very supportive of their employer and the fact that their employer has been a champion of their rights, and they wanted me to be aware of that point. I think it's unfortunate that blanket statements like this are made about employers. I don't think we should make blanket statements about any individual or group.
Mr Ublansky: Or union.
Mrs Witmer: Exactly. That's what I said: "or group."
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We're here for five weeks to hear comments about Bill 40. If we're going through a consultation process that's costing the taxpayers of this province a tremendous amount of money, what compromise are you prepared to endorse as far as Bill 40 is concerned? You're aware of the concerns on both sides of the issue. What are you willing to see changed in response to the concerns that have been expressed by the employer group?
Mr Ublansky: With all candour and all frankness, most of the submissions I've heard from employers have been similar to the one that preceded mine. I certainly haven't heard any constructive alternative suggestions reported in the press. That may well be a product of the polarization you were talking about, because that's certainly what the press has focused upon. Quite frankly, from where I sit, that has been a deliberate campaign that was started by industry. It's unfortunate that sometimes when you play with fire you get burned. I don't think labour is responsible for creating the polarization.
A comment was made before which I think is apropos in respect of the question you were asking. I don't profess to be at the upper levels of decision-making in the province on behalf of labour, but as far as I know, there in fact have been extensive consultations over more than a year with respect to the Labour Relations Act. The passing knowledge I have of that process tells me that there virtually is no will or no desire on the part of industry to do that. As I recall, the first reaction to the so-called labour wish list was that there's no need to change anything.
Mr Bob Huget (Sarnia): Thank you for your presentation. I want to carry on with that point that there was no need, in somebody's view, to change anything. What I want to look at is the balance and fairness of the current act. Indeed, that's been the comment that has come before the committee many times, that we have currently a balanced act, that it's a fair balance between employers and workers and the system is working in balance and in fairness, so indeed why change it? Knowing that you've had extensive experience as a practitioner, what has been your experience in terms of the fairness issue? Is the act balanced now? Is it a fair act?
Mr Ublansky: Obviously I wouldn't be here if I thought it was. It's clear, as I've said, from the statistics -- and that's just the tip of the iceberg. I don't use the word lightly and I don't use it to be provocative, but I've been around for 17 years and virtually every organizing campaign I've been around is like a terrorist campaign. You have to sit down and plot strategy, you have to be careful and do everything you can, you have to decide who you can trust and who you can't trust -- all aimed at protecting workers from their employers if the news gets out that they're trying to organize.
I've seen the fear in people's eyes. It exists, it's real, it was there 17 years ago and it was there yesterday. I helped organize a small group in London. Yesterday we had our first meeting with the employer after we finally got certified, and the terror and fear are still there. They can't believe they can actually sit in the same room with their employer and talk about their working conditions. They can't believe that can exist. That's all because of the fear.
I saw a number of incredulous reactions to what I said about strikes. I've been there, I've been on the other side of the fence, and I'm telling you, there are not very many strikes I've seen, certainly in the chemical industry, which is what I'm most familiar with, that are the product of greed. They're the product of frustration, sometimes years of frustration, at the inability to achieve some measure of fairness in the workplace.
Mr Michael A. Brown (Algoma-Manitoulin): I'm interested in your comments at the beginning, when you talked about purpose and the signposts of successful labour legislation. I would ask if you could indicate to the committee what the signpost of successful labour legislation would be in this province.
This bill's going to pass, and it's going to pass the way it is. It's a railroad. It's going to happen in a short time frame. We all know that, so this stuff is kind of fun but not much use. What I want to know is, three years from now, as a legislator, if I look at this, how can I tell whether it worked or didn't?
Mr Ublansky: First of all, as I said, you have to identify what the goals are, what it is you're trying to achieve. The goals in Bill 40 are relatively modest. As I indicated, there are a number of provisions in Bill 40 which attempt, somewhat indirectly, to make it more difficult for employers to terrorize their employees. I don't know how you're going to measure success there.
Mr Brown: Does it mean there'll be more union members? Does it mean there'll be fewer? Does it mean there'll be more strikes? Does it mean there'll be fewer? You tell me --
Mr Ublansky: If the polls that are --
Mr Brown: You tell me how I know.
Mr Ublansky: If you'll let me finish, I will. If the polls that are quoted are correct and people really don't want to join unions, then likely it's not going to have any impact. If that's true; that remains to be seen. Personally, my experience is that people don't join unions in large measure because they're afraid of the result; they're afraid of what it might mean to their job security. If some of these modest changes give them a greater sense of comfort, it might have some impact on organizing and might mean more union members. But as I've said, if people really don't want to join unions, then it won't have any impact.
With respect to people who are already in unions, a number of provisions in Bill 40 attempt to strike a more even balance within the workplace. How do you measure that? Perhaps it will be reflected in a continuation of the trend that has already begun with respect to decreasing the number of strikes, because my experience tells me that most strikes are the product of frustrations built up over a period of years based on the treatment people get in the workplace. Very few strikes really are about dollars and cents or the difference between dollars and cents.
The Chair: Mr Ublansky, we have to thank you -- we don't have to, but we want to. We have to because it's that time to do it, to thank you for your participation in this process.
Mr Ublansky: I appreciate the opportunity.
The Chair: We're grateful to you and the people you represent, the Energy and Chemical Workers Union, for your interest and eagerness to be here this morning.
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BREWERY, MALT AND SOFT DRINK WORKERS, LOCAL 304
The Chair: The next participant is the Brewery, Malt and Soft Drink Workers union, if they'd please come forward, tell us their names and titles, if any, and proceed with their submission. We've got your written submission; it's an exhibit. Everybody will read it or has read it. Please try to save the last 15 minutes of this half-hour for questions and exchanges.
Mr John McNamee: Thank you, sir. Good morning. My name is John McNamee. I have with me George Redmond, who is also a full-time officer of the union.
Very briefly, given the time available, let me tell you that the union has about 3,500 members throughout virtually every walk of life in Ontario with the exception of the construction industry. All of those members are covered by the Ontario Labour Relations Act.
I personally have also been involved in labour relations for 17 years. I am a lawyer as well as a full-time representative of the union and I have extensive experience both of negotiating appearances before the Ontario Labour Relations Board and rights tribunals and other matters.
I would like to start by thanking the committee for taking the time to listen to our submissions and to advise you that in general we concur with the thrust that Bill 40 puts forward. However, we did not read Bill 40 with an uncritical eye.
In our approach to this bill we tried to look at the objectives that a labour relations act ought to achieve. It seems to us there are two. The first objective is that there should be a prescribed code of minimum standards of conduct and enforcement mechanisms. The second objective ought to be to move labour relations in this province towards a form of more harmonious and productive, less antagonistic relationships. In effect, something which one would expect to come out of it in fact is -- I'm going to say the word -- greater productivity and competitiveness.
However, in order to do that, it seems, the first objective should reinforce the second by removing from points of contention and argument things experience has shown cause unnecessary or exacerbated conflict.
So we would see the act working both those ways: starting a new direction in terms of a better working relationship between employers and employees, and at the same time enforcing codes of conduct which say, "If you don't need to fight about this" -- because experience has shown that -- "then don't." It seems to me that makes some considerable good sense.
Essentially, we see the ultimate objective of a labour relations act as promoting some kind of shared responsibility in the proper operation of business or undertaking. The ultimate goal, we suggest, should be a form of the European codeterminism which has worked so well. The difficulty we have in getting there is that North American attitudes have been so antagonistic and so unfortunate, perhaps, that employers and employees have real difficulty in getting there. We believe it is up to the Labour Relations Act to provide direction towards that kind of goal.
In that regard, we particularly welcome two aspects of the bill which we think have received too little attention.
The first of those is the advisory service. I'll tell you from my experience that with respect to most employers who are newly certified, their reactions are far more on the basis that they don't understand what they're getting into and they are scared to death than anything else. I don't believe that most of them consciously set out to breach the act. They have a real difficulty, however, in understanding what the act requires of them.
We go through this on page 9 of the brief, but it is our view that the advisory service should contact both parties to an application for certification no later than immediately after the application is filed and offer them both, either jointly or severally, the opportunity to meet to discuss matters which may be difficult in terms of the coming relationship and try to meet in a non-confrontational setting while giving the employer, and perhaps the union as well, the opportunity to gain a basic understanding of what's happened.
My experience is that most employers, whether or not they are represented by legal counsel, do not understand how the act applies, and they work on the basis, quite frankly -- and it's not too surprising -- that nobody is going to come in and tell them how to run their business.
Some kind of consultation with the use of the advisory service ahead of time, I respectfully submit, is just a wonderful idea, and that is particularly so because the beginning of the relationship sets the tone for years to come. To that extent it's extremely important that the parties start off on the right foot.
We therefore have some criticism of the first-contract arbitration provisions the bill provides. We don't believe that two mechanisms to achieve the same end make sense, and we believe that the as-of-right application, which only occurs or triggers 30 days after a no-board report is issued, is far too late. By that time there could have been far too much unnecessary damage to the relationship.
We would suggest -- and you can see it; I believe it's on page 7 of the brief -- a much simpler procedure which would still place the onus on the parties to reach an agreement, but (1) is not something which is a two-part process -- which, respectfully, is a bit silly; you don't need two mechanisms to achieve the same end -- and (2) you want something which can be invoked at an early stage before too much damage has been done.
The other aspect of the bill that we welcome is the consultation aspect, the provision which requires at a minimum that an employer and the union sit down at least once every two months, if demanded, and discuss issues of mutual concern. We believe the idea here is absolutely right: What should happen is that the parties should move to a greater exchange of information as a first step to greater codeterminism.
I would simply say, however, that as a first step it is too weak. There should be some minimum standards of disclosure required of both parties in those meetings which, with respect, will give them the opportunity to form a better relationship. I deal with some 20 employers on a daily or weekly basis and have a good relationship with any number of them. We do not fight much. With some I don't. I do not honestly understand why in one case I can make a real go of it and in another case I can't. I think some of it is haphazard and some of it has to do with personality. But we need a legislative nudge to move people in the direction where you can build and hold a good relationship, because once you've got one you prize it and you work to keep it.
To that extent we have been extremely disappointed by the nature of the employer lobby. It seems to us it has been an entirely negative resistance to change for the sake of change and that the employers in this province and elsewhere are going to have to change. The attitude which says, "We want better-educated, more versatile employees; we want to empower them more in order to avoid the costs of supervision" -- and that's what all the management gurus are telling employers -- does not fit with a suggestion that in the end you sit there and the real authority of responsibility that you give employees is merely an illusion that can be pulled back at any stage. That will not work.
Employers who want better-quality employees are going to have to understand that those employees are going to demand something back, and so they should. I don't mean in the financial sense -- although that's always nice -- I mean in the sense that the employee, together with the extra responsibility for taking care of the employer's business or undertaking, has a real sense that he is part of it.
I tell you, in our view very strongly, that the difficulty with competitiveness in this province is not the fact that there are well-educated, good employees available, but an employer attitude which says they are unable to take advantage of that because they're still based on a master and servant relationship which says you negotiate wages every two or three years, and every other day you sit there and the employee does exactly what he's told. Those two concepts don't fit together. If you want a smarter, brighter employee, then don't expect him to be smarter and brighter just when he's negotiating wages. It's going to happen every day.
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I realize my 15 minutes are running short. I would like to take you through a couple of points in the submission that we specifically would like to comment on, generally with respect to the bill. Anything that is not mentioned in the submission we concur with.
On page 3, in terms of the eligibility for collective bargaining, the extension to certain agricultural employees, domestics and so on is a good idea and is long overdue, but frankly will have little impact as long as the board can certify bargaining units of only two employees. It makes no sense to say to the one employee, "If there was somebody beside you, you could negotiate terms and conditions of employment, but since there isn't, you're in the situation where if you don't like what you get, quit." That doesn't make sense.
With respect to the statements of desire -- I can tell you, as a lawyer, I have been through tons and tons of these -- the halfway house the bill provides is silly. All you are going to do is end up with employers interfering in an organizing campaign -- they do -- at an earlier stage in order to rush off to the post office and get the statement of desire in before the union gets the application in. You will have the same forms of silly litigation. It's not worth it. The Canada board and most other labour boards in this country don't accept statements of desire. We see no reason why they have to be accepted here.
With respect to section 12 of the bill regarding access of union organizers to private property, we understand there have to be limitations, but we do not believe the limitations which talk about "at" or "near but outside" entrances and exits make sense. It is too conducive to employer supervision. The right to privacy certainly will not be there. With the greatest respect, the bill should say that the union organizer has the right to be on private property, subject to undue disturbances, of course, and allow the board the discretion to deal with individual cases.
With respect to the adjustment provisions set out in the bill, we would suggest that you can't take the member halfway and say, "Well, if you don't happen to have a collective agreement in force at the time, you can take the issue off to arbitration, but not otherwise." It makes no sense from an employer's point of view as well. The Canada labour code has a variation of it in terms of the automatic termination of a contract under certain circumstances. We would suggest that those issues always be able to be taken to arbitration. That's an advantage to the employer as well, because then you don't have to negotiate adjustment provisions well in advance, using only a crystal ball to guess as to what might happen.
We would also suggest, by the way, as a technical matter, that there be a basket clause included in terms of the issues an adjustment plan may include.
We have one technical concern with respect to the just-cause rights arbitration section: that is, it leaves open the potential that an employer, instead of discharging an employee, may lay him off. With the lack of a seniority provision in those circumstances, the board may well be constrained to find that the just-cause provision can be avoided. I would suggest there be something included to prevent that.
With respect to the sale of a business, I can only say that we were both surprised and disappointed that there was nothing dealing with the issue of contracting out, which is subject to as much abuse as contracting in.
We have two technical concerns with respect to the back-to-work protocol, the first being that the language of the proposed bill, where it refers to the end of a strike or lockout, is imprecise. We suggest that this ought to be tightened up to ensure that the board can find quickly when that point occurs.
The second point deals with the question of recall, and Bill 40 refers first to the provisions of the collective agreement in terms of recall. As this will most likely be an issue if a union is attempting to surrender, it should not be open to an employer to insist upon very weak recall provisions and thus avoid the act again.
With respect to strike replacements -- perhaps the most contentious point of this -- I would merely say that experience in other jurisdictions has proved that the language and the concept work. In fact, the Quebec conseil des employeurs just last week dropped its appeal against similar legislation and said it understood it worked. We do, however, have a problem with the requirement that 60%, rather than the union's constitution of 50%, applies.
I realize I've gone through that very quickly and I apologize, but I wanted to leave time for questions.
The Acting Chair (Ms Sharon Murdock): Thank you very much. Mr Hayes and Mr Ward, you have four minutes for the whole caucus.
Mr Pat Hayes (Essex-Kent): Thank you very much for your well-put-together presentation. I'm pleased to hear you talk about the advisory service because I think that's a very helpful tool to bring parties together to sit down and deal with mutual concerns or widespreading concerns. At the same time, with that service we're talking about the replacement workers; in fact, you indicate in your brief that this particular piece of legislation to ban replacement workers will in fact bring people together.
I'd like to ask you really bluntly: Could you give us some cases, if people you represent were out on strike, how it would have affected them on their strikes, the length of strikes, had we already had this legislation in place?
Mr McNamee: I can tell you about a strike to a soft drink manufacturer in northern Ontario some five years ago. Most employers would not be impacted by this legislation, because most of our employers don't attempt to operate during a strike; but then we have very few strikes because we work hard to avoid them. But certainly in that case, that strike went on for almost six months. It was an unfortunate situation because there really was no understanding, no means of communication between the parties.
Had we been in a situation where the employer felt under pressure to reach an agreement on terms other than its own -- I'll tell you, I made some mistakes in that set of negotiations as well -- that strike would not have occurred. But the employer came to believe that it had nothing to lose in that set of negotiations because it could end up operating without the employees, and it ended up doing so. We ended up with a strike which badly damaged the employer's business -- it obviously suffered -- and caused considerable distress to the employees. It should not have happened.
Mr Brad Ward (Brantford): I'd like to thank you for your presentation as well. Do you feel that under the existing act we do have a level playing field as far as power and labour relations in this province are concerned? Also, from your experience in the trade union movement, could you expand on the obstacles that employees face when they do make the conscious decision and say, "We think we need a trade union to represent us"?
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Mr McNamee: The act is absolutely not balanced at present. It provides minimum degrees of protection, largely on the basis of the employee's right to join the union, and the board does a good job of enforcing what is there. But in terms of the Supreme Court of Canada's oft-repeated view that the employer has all the rights in a bargaining relationship and anything in the Labour Relations Act or, for that matter, a collective agreement is a derogation from that, which is usually read quite narrowly, the act is not balanced.
Employees very much are terrified of joining unions, I'd say -- and I've been in this business 17 years -- more so now than they were 17 years ago. Just yesterday I met with an employee -- I haven't checked this out yet -- who says he was fired for merely mentioning the word "union." He is still terrified to join the union, even though the employer has done the worst he can to him. He is still terrified because he doesn't know that there may not be more consequences.
Mr Phillips: Thank you for the presentation. The unemployment rate in Ontario is probably 13% or 14%; it says 11%, but it's that level. It is 13%, because there are at least 100,000 people who have dropped out of the labour force, so it's nominally 11% but it's running 13%. Plants are closing at an increasing rate, and 70% of the people who are affected by the plants are unionized. I think all of us are frightened about the economic future, and that's the backdrop we all face. I think that's one of the reasons you see the business community responding the way it does.
I think you said the two objectives you set for this legislation were harmonious workplace relations and more effective collective bargaining.
Mr McNamee: No, I don't think I said that.
Mr Phillips: What did you say?
Mr McNamee: I said provide a minimum code of conduct and remove from dispute unnecessary items, and move the province to a different and better labour relations climate which would indeed talk about greater productivity.
Mr Phillips: That's why we need your written brief, I guess. In any event, for the business community, as it looks ahead at the relationship it's going to have with the government and with unions, this is the first real piece of evidence: "Here's the litmus test of how we are going to work together."
What many in the business community say to the committee is, "As we look at this legislation, it isn't balanced, in our view." Maybe you think that's right. There are about 32 major recommendations in the legislation, and the business community would suggest that all 32 are in favour of one side, so as they look ahead at the relationship they ask, is it going to be balanced harmoniously if the first piece of relationship we see is virtually all one-sided?
Maybe they're wrong. Maybe you can give me the three or four or five or eight recommendations in the legislation that in your view are for the management side of it. That would be perhaps helpful in our discussion with the business community because, to repeat myself, it is frightened to death about the economic future. They see this piece of legislation as the first test of what the relationship is going to be in the future, and to them it looks like it's zero for them, 32 for the trade union movement.
Mr McNamee: The question does not admit of an answer. This is the comparison: When I go into collective bargaining --
Mr Phillips: Give me the three or four things that in your view help the management side.
Mr McNamee: Let me try to answer the question my way. When I go into collective bargaining and I sit down for the first time with an employer, the employees I represent have no rights -- zilch -- except some rights under the health and safety act. When I sit down with the employer and say, "I want to negotiate an agreement that talks about a code of conduct and a way to deal with it," I've got nothing further to give him, because he has all the rights. So what I am talking about is, no question, a derogation of his rights.
That's the same comparison here. What we are talking about is an employer, who has virtually all the rights in a relationship, being asked to deal at some minimal level in terms of a code of conduct, which will have to change over the years as workforces, working relationships and business change. My criticism of the employer lobby comes back to the point that the employer lobby, instead of constructively trying to build an act which will work in the 1990s instead of one that's based on something that came out of the Industrial Revolution, has said, "We don't want any change for the sake of change."
Nor would I suggest, by the way, in the preamble to your question -- I don't know about the litmus test. I can remember Sunday shopping issues. I can remember car insurance issues. Employer lobbies have done very well.
Mr Phillips: But am I wrong? Is this zero to 32?
The Acting Chair: Sorry, Mr Phillips, the time.
Mr Phillips: I didn't get my answer, that's all.
Mr McNamee: What you got, sir, was an answer which said we are not counting score; we're trying to build a good relationship.
Mrs Witmer: I appreciate your presentation. There's a lot here, and I will read it again. I appreciate the points you made.
You expressed regret that the employer community -- and you mention it again on page 17 -- really has not seized the opportunity to help redesign the labour relations system. I would remind you that in the fall, the business groups did indicate a willingness to sit down and look at the issue of labour relations in the tripartite consultation process. Unfortunately, that was rejected by the government.
We've also seen many presentations from employers recommending some very positive changes to Bill 40 that would make it more acceptable to them. For example, they're looking at a secret ballot vote and some changes in the replacement worker section, and there are other areas which they certainly can support. What's your response?
Mr McNamee: My response to that is that my view of the public employer response -- not necessarily the response to this committee or to the Legislature -- has been entirely negative. They have tried to create the impression, which I believe is totally misleading, that the only issue here ought to be whether they can make a greater profit, and if they can make a greater profit, they say there will be more jobs. That is totally misleading and it will not work into the next century.
The employer lobby as a group will have to understand that when you ask more of employees, when you have better-educated employees, you're going to have to give them something in exchange to keep them. I don't think that's an unreasonable proposition.
I do not say the employer lobby has been totally destructive, and I don't think I said that; I said that in general its approach has been, "Don't change; and if you change, make it as small as possible."
Mrs Witmer: I would remind you that the employer group did ask for tripartite consultation. They asked for labour, business and government to sit down, take a look at the act, take a look at what the problems are -- and believe me, we've heard numerous problems from all sides -- and try to, through consensus, arrive at solutions.
You've been negotiating for years and years. You know the only way you're going to arrive at consensus and have a win-win situation and a harmonious relationship is to sit down and look at the problems and at solutions. The employer community feels it never had that opportunity. How can the government correct what's happened so far and make the process more equitable and fair?
Mr McNamee: I personally believe that if the employer community thinks it did not have that opportunity, it is, shall we say, mistaken. They were successful in watering down from the government's first initiative a number of very important parts of the bill. Whether or not there was a formal tripartite presentation, there certainly was a great deal of employer input before Bill 40 reached its present form, and if an employer says differently then that is misleading.
The Acting Chair: I want to thank you for taking the time to come down. It's always good to hear from a practitioner, and I know we'll be reading this again.
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JOHNSON CONTROLS LTD
The Acting Chair: The next presenter is Johnson Controls Ltd, Ralph Lassel and Rick DeBruyne. Welcome. As you may have noted if you've been sitting here, if you use part of your time for the presentation and leave part of the time to ask questions, it would be most helpful to us.
Mr Rick DeBruyne: My name is Rick DeBruyne. I'm the plant manager of Johnson Controls Ltd in Tillsonburg, Ontario.
Mr Ralph Lassel: And I'm Ralph Lassel, the employee relations manager.
Mr DeBruyne: We'd like to start by thanking the committee for giving us the opportunity to present to you our concerns with respect to Bill 40. Associations of which we are members, including the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association, the Canadian Manufacturers' Association and the Human Resources Professionals Association of Ontario, have done an excellent job of speaking out on our behalf with respect to Bill 40 already, but we feel that we have some specific issues we would like to deal with to make the committee aware of the concerns of our particular industry.
Before we get into those, Johnson Controls Ltd, Tillsonburg, is part of Johnson Controls Inc, headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, so we are US-owned. Founded in 1885, Johnson Controls today operates globally from more than 470 locations, employing over 43,000 employees. We are market leaders in four different industries -- the controls industry, automotive seating, plastics and the battery divisions -- so we are widespread.
Johnson Controls Ltd produces foam seats and foam headrests and armrests for the automotive industry at its Tillsonburg operations. Currently we employ over 500 employees. Our hourly employees are represented by the Canadian Auto Workers. We have the capacity to produce 34,000 car seats and 24,000 headrests and armrests every day. Our product can be found in the Canadian-built Toyota Corolla, the Honda Civic, the Geo Metro/Suzuki Swift, the Ford Tempo/Topaz and the new Chrysler Concord, Dodge Intrepid and Eagle Vision, which is the much-acclaimed Chrysler LH program -- which was awarded to Canadian business, by the way.
However, this is a very small portion of our business; 62% of those car seats we produce and 90% of the headrests and armrests are shipped just in time to the United States. We export very heavily.
With so much of our product being shipped to the US, it becomes increasingly difficult to justify the existence of our Tillsonburg operations. Certainly Bill 40 is yet another reason for our divisional offices in Plymouth, Michigan, to question why new business should be sourced in Ontario.
Let me explain this further. In Tillsonburg we compete with nine other Johnson Controls plants for North American business. That's just Johnson Controls alone, other foam plants. Of these, seven are based in the US and one is located in Juarez, Mexico. We have one other plant located in Orangeville, Ontario.
Let me give you an example of what happens. Until 1990, Johnson Controls Ltd in Tillsonburg supplied all seating for the Crown Victoria and Mercury Marquis assembled at the Ford Talbotville plant. The Ford facility is approximately 50 kilometres away from our operations in Tillsonburg. Since 1990, our sister plant in Juarez, Mexico, has been producing all seating requirements for these automobiles. On the surface it may not make sense, but this is the new reality. Investment and production location decisions are becoming ever more fluid. The free trade agreement and now the North American free trade agreement have redefined investment strategies.
It should be noted that Johnson Controls has already made disinvestment decisions in Ontario. We've gone from four manufacturing facilities down to two. In February 1991, Johnson Controls announced that it was closing its Port Perry, Ontario, manufacturing facility. The plant, which supplied manual seat tracks to Chrysler, Ford and GM, shut its doors for ever in April 1991. Over 175 lost their jobs permanently. On February 4, 1992, less than a year later, Johnson Controls announced the closing of its car battery plant in St Thomas. The plant produced private-label automotive batteries, including the Sears DieHard and batteries for Ford and Volkswagen. Another 170 employees were out of work permanently.
These plants didn't close because of Bill 40. I'm not trying to indicate that they did. They were closed for a host of competitive reasons. It's our contention, however, that Bill 40 will make Ontario even less attractive to businesses such as Johnson Controls.
Mr Lassel: I'd like to review a few of the concerns we have. Certainly it doesn't mean we're reviewing all our concerns, but we do want to highlight a few.
The first one is replacement workers. I guess we should note, before we get into that, that we were recently unionized and we've never experienced a strike. My hope would be that we never do experience a strike, but we do want to address this issue. Certainly a strike is a no-win situation for both parties. Bill 40 proposes fundamental restrictions on our ability to operate during a strike, should one occur, by prohibiting the use of new hires, employees from other locations and contractors.
The government's view that, under Bill 40, employers will not have to shut down their operations if their workers go on strike is semantically correct. We aren't legislated to shut down during that time period. Our operations, however, would effectively be shut down. An immediate transfer of business would have to take place to ensure that we would continue to meet the needs of our customers.
Bill 40 guarantees that our first strike in Tillsonburg will be our last. If our Tillsonburg operations cannot guarantee just-in-time shipments to our North American customers, business will be transferred to other plants. That's the reality. Johnson Controls Inc, our American parent, will not let itself be placed in a situation which risks shutting a customer down. Once the cost of transferring business to another location has occurred, the chances of the business being transferred back is highly unlikely. That will be a permanent decision. Our very existence is predicated on our demonstrating and assuring our continuity of supply.
Again, we've mentioned how much of our business now is being exported to the United States. Bill 40 makes the ban on hiring replacement workers contingent on a secret ballot strike vote in which at least 60% of those voting support a strike. As you're aware, in the vast majority of cases, unions received a strike mandate well before any real threat of strike was evident. An early strike vote usually gets 90% approval. Thus the 60% threshold will not be a real impediment to unions.
The issue of replacement workers, I think, comes up because of our next point. A lot of proponents of Bill 40 have argued that the ban on replacement workers is necessary in order to reduce picket-line violence. I think it's been mentioned in these hearings before that if picket-line conflict is the reason for that portion of the bill, our solution is simple: enforce the law.
The Ministry of Labour fact sheet on replacement workers -- it's one of our appendices -- notes that this proposed law is similar to one which has been in force in Quebec since 1978. That's true. Quebec, we should note, is the only jurisdiction on the continent with a law barring the use of replacement workers.
Our Tillsonburg operations do not compete with any plants in Quebec. However, we do compete with plants in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee, California, Maryland and Missouri. None of these locations has similar legislation. Our position is simply that there should be no restriction on the right of employers to have replacement workers during a strike, subject to a duty to bargain in good faith.
Along the same lines, we're looking at the issue of restricting bargaining unit employees from voluntarily returning to work or refusing to participate in a strike. Currently, bargaining unit employees may voluntarily return to work or may refuse to participate in a strike.
Bill 40 prohibits striking employees from returning to work until the union decides to end its work stoppage. Employees would also be prohibited from staying on the job during a strike. Bill 40 takes away an employee's fundamental freedom of choice. The employees would be required to obey a union strike call regardless of how unreasonable that may be. Again, Bill 40 effectively prohibits a company, specifically ours, from operating during a strike. Employees should have the freedom, our position is, to choose whether to work or to strike at one's normal job.
We do want to comment on organization and certification. The Honourable Bob Mackenzie, Ontario Minister of Labour, has stated his belief that a labour-management partnership can best be obtained in organizations where employees are represented by a union. Towards this end, Bill 40 would eliminate employee petitions opposing a union after a certification application. That is, there would be no mechanism for the revocation of membership cards. This proposal eliminates the basic right to change one's mind. Employees would be denied the opportunity for sober second thought. It is surprising that post-application petitions will be eliminated even though petitions always lead to a free and democratic vote on the issue of certification.
As you know, in addition, the requirement that employees pay at least $1 to join a union has been eliminated. This payment was designed to get employees to think about the implication of their decision to join a union. It does reinforce to the prospective members that they are, in fact, making an economic decision.
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The elimination of the requirement of the union to show adequate member support when a board is considering automatic certification in certain cases is questionable. The result will be the certification of workplaces where the majority of employees do not wish to be unionized. Also, the level of support for a representation vote has been lowered to 40% from 45% of the bargaining unit.
These proposals will certainly facilitate trade union organizing campaigns. They will not, however, ensure that all employees make their choice to join or not to join a union freely, with full information. I speak on behalf of both management and labour: It is time to eliminate -- speaking with respect to both parties being involved at times in these tactics -- all coercion, threats, interference, intimidation, promises and secretiveness from the organizing procedure.
We're supportive of a bill that was introduced by Elizabeth Witmer, and certainly the position of the APMA is in line with the thinking that secret ballot votes for certification and for ratification of collective agreements would solve some of these problems. Employees should have the right to decide for themselves, free of any interference or intimidation from any source, whether or not to have a union represent them, to accept the contract or to go on strike. The emphasis should be on determining the true wishes of the employees, not of facilitating union certification.
In summary -- and my apologies for two typos in that first paragraph -- as we know, Bill 40 contains the most comprehensive set of labour relations provisions in North America. We have reviewed only three of our concerns.
Our concerns as an automotive parts manufacturer are numerous. The APMA, CMA and HRPAO continue to speak on our behalf with respect to these concerns. We agree with the Honourable Bob Mackenzie, Ontario Minister of Labour, that "fair, balanced labour legislation brings greater dialogue to the workplace and, in doing so, makes Ontario strong." We would argue that Bill 40 is neither fair nor balanced.
The government believes Bill 40 will have a positive impact on the economy of Ontario. Ernst and Young's report, The Impact of Proposed Changes to Ontario's Labour Relations Act, concludes that as many as 480,000 Ontario jobs could be threatened. Furthermore, 70% of the firms surveyed outside of Ontario indicated they would be less likely to invest in a jurisdiction which adopts these changes. We are in agreement with the conclusions reached in that report.
In these turbulent economic times we are dismayed that the government sees fit to proceed with a bill which clearly ties the hands of industry and muzzles the voice of the individual and then lays claim to having fostered a new spirit of cooperation and harmony between labour and management. By speaking out, we hope to have an impact on revising this legislation, thereby making it possible for businesses to compete effectively and to thrive in Ontario.
We join others -- and there have been thousands of petitions -- in asking the Minister of Labour, the Honourable Bob Mackenzie, to table the results of independent empirical studies of the impact that Bill 40 will have on investment and jobs before proceeding with the bill.
Those would be our comments.
The Vice-Chair (Mr Bob Huget): Thank you very much. Questions? Mr Offer.
Mr Offer: Mr Brown has the first question.
Mr Brown: I was obviously interested in your brief, but I was also interested in a brief we had yesterday evening from the Oxford Regional Labour Council, I believe, in which it mentions your company in particular. I'm not sure you're aware of that.
It says in here, and this is relating to your company: "In the first drive the union signed 59% of the workers to membership cards. At this point the company had a petition sent out and brought the percentage down to 53, causing a vote to be taken. The union lost by two percentage points."
I asked them how they explained the difference between 59% with cards versus, I guess, a 49% support in a secret ballot. They said the difference was company intimidation. I quote from their brief further on. They said, "During the drive, the employees were threatened, especially if they showed any outward support for the union." I thought this would be a good opportunity for you to place your side of the case.
Mr DeBruyne: I guess I can answer first and invite Ralph to interject anything he might add.
I believe when you read that you said the company implemented a petition. That's incorrect. That petition was introduced by employees, not by the company at all. In terms of specific coercion and intimidation, there was none, sir.
Mr Brown: Then what would your explanation be for the 10% difference in the support in a secret ballot versus the petition?
Mr DeBruyne: My comments would be that there are a lot of pressures on an individual to sign, or not sign, by people who are in favour or who are not in favour. Once given the opportunity to make their individual choice, they so decided.
Mr Offer: You're involved in the area of automotive supply. There are a number of automotive suppliers in this province, all on a just-in-time basis. In Toronto we heard from the parent association, who indicated that the just-in-time aspect is one which is becoming more concrete, more definite. The time aspect is in fact becoming shorter.
Though you've spoken about very specific aspects of the legislation -- and I thank you for that, especially for your constructive suggestions as to how they can be addressed -- tell me how you see this legislation affecting your company, and companies that do your type of work, in the future.
Mr DeBruyne: If I understand the question -- I apologize if I don't -- to start with, "just-in-time" is a term that's fast changing. Some of our customers now refer to it as "just-in-sequence," which means you actually load the truck in such a fashion that, as it's unloaded, it goes directly to the line and it will be assembled forthwith.
If this answers your question -- I hope it does -- there's really no room for distrust in an organization today. We've got our work cut out for us as a management team, and as an employee team that's represented by the CAW. We are going to be forced, without Bill 40, to pursue harmonious relationships. Are we there? Not totally. Do we make mistakes? Yes, we do. Do we need a government bill that skews the representation at the bargaining table? No, we do not.
Mrs Witmer: Thank you very much for your presentation. We heard the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association last week on August 13. I guess the primary concern of your industry is the fact that you will not be able to maintain supplying the people you have contracts with during a strike. Are you saying that if that were to happen -- now, you did have a strike at the plant here, and one of the other firms in the United States was forced to take over the contract -- that in all likelihood the plant here would be eliminated?
Mr DeBruyne: Yes, I am.
Mrs Witmer: Do you see that happening?
Mr DeBruyne: The very real possibility of that occurring is there, yes. I can't say yes, it will happen. That sounds like a threat or coercion and that's not my intent. I'm saying the very real possibility is there. Should we risk supplying our customer? There is no doubt that the business will have to be moved, because we can't run that risk.
Mrs Witmer: That's one of the areas of concern the government needs to take a look at more closely, because we're hearing it not only from yourself and the automotive parts industry but from other individuals who are saying companies are now looking at the total North American continent and that they don't need to have a plant in both Canada and the US. They're looking at one location being sufficient. Unfortunately, Bill 40 puts a barrier around this province. If people are looking to make an investment in North America, this bill certainly does eliminate the possibility of them even giving it serious consideration.
Are you aware of these concerns? I know it was pointed out in Detroit, at the meeting in June, that American investors are very concerned about investing here in the future.
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Mr DeBruyne: Yes, we're aware of those concerns, and we agree with them. This is very difficult for our Tillsonburg operations. The amount of foam that's required in the Canadian automotive seating business, the cars that are assembled here in Canada, Tillsonburg can supply all of those Canadian-content cars. There are other competitors in Canada that have a share in the business, so our share of Canadian business is minimal. We rely on export to the US to continue to supply jobs to ourselves and to the hourly workers. We need that export business. My boss has reflected his concerns about what's happening in Canada. There's no doubt about it.
Mrs Witmer: So what would you say to this government? I know you've given some suggestions here. What should it be doing to make sure that we do continue to have good jobs for people in this province and that new investment is encouraged to come?
Mr DeBruyne: I think you touched on it at the last presentation. I'm an advocate of change. Change for the sake of change is somewhat risky, and I think change for the sake of progress is what we need to be pursuing. I think that could be done if we could get labour and management, or industry, and the government to sit down and discuss all the needs of all sides. I don't feel that's being done at this point.
Mr Winninger: Just in response briefly to Ms Witmer's point, we do have a list here of manufacturers, including Fleck Manufacturing, which actually has decided to come back to Ontario to create 75 jobs in Tillsonburg, and I think that's a very positive development.
I must admit that I do have fundamental difficulty with a couple of points you made. First of all, you made the point that you came here on behalf of both the employer and the employees. Second, you talked about employees being able to choose their collective bargaining agent without fear of threats or intimidation.
I have here a document which was filed with the Ontario Labour Relations Board -- it's at least 19 pages long -- which details a deliberate and identifiable course of conduct by your company vis-à-vis its employees, intending to and having the ultimate effect of improperly interfering with its employees' selection of a trade union bargaining agent. That's replete with documents and correspondence from the company to the employees documenting that course of conduct and alleging threats and intimidation.
According to the brief filed last night by the Oxford Regional Labour Council, all of these tactics contributed to many months of delay and years of mistrust and bitterness that is just now beginning to diminish. I take it the organizing drive was ultimately successful, notwithstanding the documented attempts by the company to thwart the desires of the employees.
How can you talk about employees being free of the threat of coercion and intimidation when there's a well-documented case here that the company was pursuing exactly that course?
Mr DeBruyne: Without having that in front of me, I would have to ask that you read further. We were not found guilty of coercion or efforts of --
Mr Brown: Oh, details.
Mr Offer: Small points.
Mr DeBruyne: It was not found to be correct.
Mr Winninger: The petitions were unsuccessful and the organizing drive was.
Mr DeBruyne: But there was no automatic certification due to coercion or whatever wording you used there.
Mr Lassel: On your first point, let me comment that I misspoke if the interpretation was that I'm representing employees of the CAW. The point I was trying to make in my summary was simply that when we talk about these very things, about coercion and threats and intimidation, we are not saying that one party in all cases is responsible. I'm not pointing a finger at the CAW. Other parties are certainly capable of those sorts of things. My point was simply that for those reasons, we're supportive of a secret ballot, which would eliminate those things across the board.
The Chair: Mr Ferguson, Mr Hope having yielded to you.
Mr Will Ferguson (Kitchener): Both of you seem reasonably bright and intelligent. I would ask, given that you're in agreement with the conclusions reached in the Ernst and Young report, how you could agree with those findings when in fact they establish that 50% of the people questioned had no idea what the proposed changes were in the Labour Relations Act but were asked to comment on them anyway: "Never mind whether or not you know anything about this. Do you agree with it or disagree with it?" How could you agree with a report that came up with those conclusions when half the people asked had no idea what was in the report?
Mr Lassel: I'm not skirting the issue, Mr Ferguson. If you are in disagreement with those results, again we would ask that the government table its own empirical data. That's all we're asking for. That's all we have to go on. Sir, if you want to table your own data, that's what we're asking you for.
Mr Ferguson: You say in your summary, "We are in agreement with the conclusions reached in the report." The way they obtained those conclusions was that they asked people their opinions and they asked people whether or not they were aware of the changes to the Labour Relations Act. Half of the people weren't, and they said, "Even though you're not aware of the changes, are you in favour or are you opposed?" How could any reasonably minded individual agree with the report when they asked respondents that type of question and half of them had no idea?
Mr Lassel: Let me first say I'm glad to see that you haven't lost the aggressiveness you showed at Kitchener council. I'm glad to see it's still there. Let me further comment that if you have other data that don't support these conclusions, I'd like to see them.
Mr Brown: Table your poll as well.
Mr Hope: Have I got time?
The Chair: Yes.
Mr Hope: I'm surprised there's even a little bit of time left. How much time do I have, Mr Chair?
The Chair: Go ahead, Mr Hope.
Mr Hope: When I was listening to your presentation and I started to understand it -- and I'm listening about the just-in-time theory, because I come from a small parts manufacturing plant -- and when I'm listening to you about strikebreaking, isn't it the goal, especially dealing with the just-in-time theory, of the small parts manufacturers to sit down and bargain in good faith and to try to come up with a mutual understanding in dealing with the report in there? Do you predict there's going to be a strike?
There has to be a resolution in place that both management and labour are going to sit together and consult and talk to one another. Bargaining doesn't take place 60 days before termination of a contract. Bargaining takes place throughout the three years of the term of a contract. I'm sitting here saying, in the three-year time frame, if you're doing things appropriately through management relationship, you're going to consult through that three-year time period.
I know most of the people probably in this plant and other plants, when they have three-year collective agreements, it's "Through the three years of that time frame, I'm going to help you make as much profit as possible, but I want to make sure you understand that at the end of the three years I'm coming back for some of the profits I helped you achieve." With that in mind, and I know most trade unionists have that in mind, there will not be the confrontation of strikes.
Mr DeBruyne: No argument from us. The efforts between our bargaining unit and ourselves have to be to avoid a strike and come to a harmonious relationship. I don't disagree with what you're saying at all.
Mr Hope: With that theory in mind, then there should be no fear of any strikes, no fear of putting that in for those employers who do not do that during the three-year time frame. They're the ones who are going to have to be concerned, because the only time they will really sit down with the union is at the end of the three-year collective agreement. But with the philosophy you carry, there should be no fear of any replacement worker law being put in place, because you've been understanding and you've been communicating with your employees on a three-year term, no fear whatsoever.
Mr Lassel: The premise that your argument is based on is simply that unions always take reasonable positions. I would say that may not always be the case. We've never had a strike, we don't look forward to having a strike, we don't project a strike, but if it should occur, for the survival of our business we would need replacement workers to run the plants.
Mr Hope: That's the same premise you use that it's going to cost jobs and it's the same premise you have to use that you have to work on a three-year time frame. If your contract's for three years, you negotiate after day one. The achievement is to make as much profit. The people who are at that bargaining table are employees who work in that workplace. They are not about to sacrifice their jobs. Is that not true? Your employees are there to help you produce.
Mr Lassel: With all the plants closing, I guess I can't agree with that statement.
Mr Hope: Look at how the plants are closing. They aren't closing because of labour relations.
The Chair: Mr Lassel, Mr DeBruyne, I want to thank you for appearing here today on behalf of Johnson Controls Ltd. As you probably know, there were a large number of groups, individuals, companies, associations that wanted to appear. We weren't able to accommodate all of them. However, you are one of the Tillsonburg and Tillsonburg area participants. We express our regrets to the balance of those people from Tillsonburg wanting to discuss both sides of the issue. None the less Tillsonburg has been reasonably well represented here. Thank you, gentlemen, take care and have a safe trip back home.
Mr Lassel: Thank you very much.
Mr DeBruyne: Thank you.
The Chair: Other than there being any matters that people want to raise, we are recessed until 1:30 this afternoon.
The committee recessed at 1201.
AFTERNOON SITTING
The committee resumed at 1330.
WOODSTOCK DISTRICT CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
The Chair: It's 1:30. We're ready to resume. Our first participant is the Woodstock District Chamber of Commerce. Please tell us your name and title with the Woodstock District Chamber of Commerce, and go ahead with your submission. Please try to save at least the last 15 minutes for exchanges and dialogue.
Mr Robert White: My name is Robert White. I am the other Robert White.
Mr Brown: You're not Premier Bob.
Mr White: No, I'm not, but I am the president of the Woodstock District Chamber of Commerce.
Some brief background on our chamber: We're a long-established chamber. We've been in the city of Woodstock since 1877. We have some 260 members and we represent the vast majority of local industry and commerce in the Woodstock area. We have been assisted in what we have been doing in the last four or five months by the Ingersoll District Chamber of Commerce and by the Tillsonburg District Chamber of Commerce as well.
What we want to do is tell you a little bit of what we are encountering in our area as a result of the proposed changes to the legislation. When the changes were announced in the Legislature, a subcommittee was struck in our chamber representing a very broad segment of the commercial and industrial businesses in this area.
This subcommittee undertook an educational campaign through our local newspaper, the Daily Sentinel Review, and also on local radio station K-102 to familiarize the residents of the area of the changes that were impending. We also invited businesses, anybody in the area, to write to the Sentinel Review, our local newspaper, and express their comments as to how they felt the legislation is going to impact on them.
What you have attached to our presentation are copies of some of the letters that were written to the editor as a result of the advertisements and the campaign the chamber has been conducting, and these letters are from a cross-section of what we consider to be industry and commerce in our city.
We are very lucky in the city of Woodstock because we are very close to the Cami operation in Ingersoll. It's just down Highway 401 from us. We have been very fortunate in attracting to our area a number of automobile parts suppliers to Cami. Of course you will all be aware of the fact that if you're going to be working for the Cami operation, you're going to work with Cami on an integrated supply and inventory control system, just-in-time.
What is coming back to us from the members of our chamber who are involved in the Cami operation and of course from the municipal officials whom in our active campaign we are running across is the impact of a single strike on the Cami operation.
It's really fun to go through this plant and see how it works, how the Cami operation is joined by television and fax and telephone to these various suppliers. You'll have a supplier who provides all the windows for the cars or all the seats. A strike in one of these suppliers to the Cami operation could have some very substantial impact on our area.
People are suggesting to us, "This is a very great concern in our area." I suppose you could equate this to what President Bush did when the railway strike happened in the United States. That could very well be the same kind of impact on our area, and we have heard and are hearing a very great deal of concern from our area because we are very heavily oriented towards the automobile manufacturer. There have been suggestions, because of the critical nature of the automobile industry in the community, that perhaps the Legislature should consider an exemption for that particular portion of the industry. It represents such an important sector of the industry, and I ask you to give that some consideration.
The other thing that we are also hearing and that is of gravest concern to us is the fact that we're very lucky to have a bunch of Canadian subsidiaries of American operations. What we are finding is that we are hearing from these Canadian subsidiaries of American parents that there is a much more difficult time in justifying their existence in the Canadian operation because of the anticipated impact of the changes, particularly the lack of replacement workers.
It was these Canadian subsidiaries of American manufacturers that brought to our attention articles that were appearing in American publications that had been pointed out to them by their American parents, saying, "What is this going to do to you?" These are articles which you probably are all familiar with: the article in the September Wall Street Journal and articles in other newspapers, the Detroit News and so on.
What's happened in our area is these Canadian subsidiaries of American parents are coming to the chamber and saying: "This is what we're running into. This legislation is not only having a tremendous impact here locally, but don't make any mistake about it, the American parents of our plants know what's happening up here and we're having a difficult time justifying our very existence. We don't want to make any mistake about it."
That's a very clear message that we are getting from our Canadian subsidiaries, companies like Thomas Built Buses. You see the big yellow buses driving around. They're manufactured in Woodstock. There are hundreds of employees at Thomas. The message we're getting from Canadian executives of that industry is, "It is becoming more difficult to justify our existence here." That is of very great concern to us.
We are also concerned when major automobile parts manufacturers indicate at the convention in Hamilton that, although there is a hunt going on for manufacturing locations for the automobile industry, Ontario is not on the list because of the anticipated impact of this legislation by what is seen to be the American investing public. So do not sell short the impact that the legislation is having outside this country. It is having a decided impact. We're hearing about it and we're very concerned by it.
I want you to have a look at the letter the president of Timberland wrote to the Daily Sentinel Review. Here is quite a different situation. Here is a Canadian heavy industrial manufacturer with approximately 60 employees with an American subsidiary in Louisiana. The president of Timberland wrote a letter to the Daily Sentinel Review and said that investments are being made in the US; they're not being made in the Canadian operation located in our city. As you can see in the letter he wrote, he is the individual responsible to the board of directors for investment decisions. He's the guy who's making these investment decisions with the board of directors. We're losing this investment in our town and we're not happy with it.
In addition, you'll see a letter there from another manufacturer in the city of Woodstock, Canada Stampings and Dies Ltd. He has written a letter to the Premier. He indicates in the letter he wrote to the Daily Sentinel Review that he has 31 unionized employees, and he is suggesting that he can no longer see his entrepreneurial operation in Ontario if this legislation comes into existence.
I went to public school and high school with the man who wrote this letter. I've known him all my life. I hope nobody thinks he's kidding, because he's not. In his letter he said he had told Kimble Sutherland that "if his party enacts the amendments as proposed I am all done being an entrepreneur in Ontario. I don't think he believes me." I just want you to understand very clearly that in our area -- this man isn't kidding -- we're of course concerned by matters that relate to investment in this province.
I'm a lawyer. Several months ago I wrote a letter to the Premier. In my practice we don't represent major entrepreneurial operations throughout the county or the province, but I've been doing this sort of thing for better than 20 years. I wrote the Premier to tell him of the number of my clients who are taking investments out of this province.
I told him that I've never seen anything like this in my 20-plus years of doing this and that I have clients now who have one foot in another jurisdiction, either Manitoba or the northern US, and the other foot in Ontario. I don't like that. I'm very unhappy with the fact that clients of mine seem to feel that their entrepreneurial operation is endangered and somehow or other they have to take assets out of Ontario. Surely that is not the intent of the legislation.
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There are many parts of this legislation that we can certainly live with. As a matter of fact, what happened on January 31 -- you'll also see in the material we've given to you a list of people who attended the offices of Kimble Sutherland, the MPP in Woodstock. We went to his office so that these 21 people would have an opportunity to express their views as to the impact of this legislation on their business.
What you see there in that attached list is a very representative cross-section of commerce and industry. One by one they had an opportunity to tell Kimble Sutherland how this was going to impact them. I assure you each one of them told him that it was going to make it more difficult for them to carry on their business operations. That's what's coming back to us.
Of course the problem we have is that if this is what the end result of this legislation is going to be, then we have a great deal of difficulty believing that the legislation should be implemented at this particular point in time. We are having a difficult enough time down in our area with the various economic difficulties that all of you are well aware of, and I assure you that this is making things more difficult, particularly in our area where we have a lot of Canadian subsidiaries of American operations.
I've had one of the larger industries tell me that it is running into questions like this. When they are meeting their American customers, their American customers are asking: "What are you doing in the US to guarantee your product's supply to me when your industry is closed down by a strike, as this new legislation appears very likely to do? Do you have a parallel operation in the US?" Of course the answer is no. That's the kind of question that's very difficult for anybody to answer, not necessarily for politicians, such as all of you are. How do you answer these people outside this country upon whose financial interests this legislation is making a very substantial impact?
That's what we're running into. We would like you to very seriously consider some kind of meaningful, consultative process to determine the legacy of this legislation. This legislation could very well end up being one of the worst things that has ever happened to the labour movement, because it may very well end up being associated with the flight of capital and the flight of jobs. Heavens, everybody here knows investment is jobs. That's trite. It is. We're losing it in our area; we're losing jobs in our area.
Whatever the aim of the legislation is, and everybody's read plenty about it, it is not working. That's our message to you. Something has to be done with this legislation or we are going to be very severely damaged in our area.
I'd be pleased to attempt to answer any questions, Mr Chairman.
The Chair: Ms Witmer, four and a half minutes, please.
Mrs Witmer: Thank you very much, Mr White, for your presentation. I appreciate the views you've put forward. Obviously you know that the views you've expressed are very similar to views we're hearing across this province from people very concerned about the ability to create new jobs and the loss of investment in the province. In speaking to someone from the Brantford community yesterday, I understand they're also in a similar position to yourselves, where they are concerned about future job loss as well.
We're here, hopefully, to listen to people such as yourself and to take into consideration your point of view and incorporate it into the changes in Bill 40. I know we'd all like to go back to the point where we would have tripartite consultation, but if that is not to be -- and the government has indicated that's not to be -- what is it you would recommend that it do with this bill? What do you find most objectionable?
Mr White: Our basic recommendation would be that the implementation should be delayed. I don't think the real legacy is known, because this is hurting investment and jobs. If that is not to be, if that can't be, then there are a number of changes. The obvious one, of course, is replacement workers. That is the one we are hearing most about in our area in the automobile industry, particularly with the Cami operation. We're very frightened of what could happen, because that would be a very devastating blow, and we've been so bloody lucky.
This is my own opinion: I don't think our area is as badly hit as other areas in this province because of Cami. Cami's just up and running for three years. It's going full blast and we are the beneficiaries of all of the parts manufacturers. But if something like that happened, it would be a very severe body blow to our area. So it's the replacement workers that we think are the key; that's the issue.
If any changes are going to be considered or implemented, I think the change should be examined from the point of view of how it's going to impact on investment and jobs. That's the ultimate matter. As far as we're concerned, we don't believe this legislation necessarily should be thrown out. There are a lot of things in this legislation that perhaps could be very helpful. But guys like the president of Timberland are telling us that because of those provisions in the bill, the money's going to the States and we're losing; and we have guys like Bob Hewitt, who I've known all my life. The 31 people are very concerned about what's going to happen to them, and I don't blame them. Bob Hewitt is not the kind of guy to write a letter to a newspaper; he's very quiet. He means it. There's something wrong.
I don't know all the answers, but I don't think you do either without sitting down in a consultative process with the people who make investment decisions. That's the real key to this.
Mrs Witmer: I would agree with you. I don't think all the partners involved in decision-making have really had an opportunity to sit down and take a look at the Labour Relations Act, determine what the problems are and mutually decide through consensus how we can arrive at solutions.
Mr White: That seems to be what people in our area are saying. Everybody knows the only way we can really compete in world markets is for labour, management and capital to work together. That's the only way we're going to be able to compete with the rest of this world. I can tell you now, as you all must know, this isn't doing it. This is not doing it. It's not doing it in the investment area, it's not doing it in the area of the creation of jobs and it is not doing it in the area of labour peace. That's the great concern we have.
Mrs Witmer: Thank you for your comments.
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Mr Hope: Mr White, I was going over the information package you provided, the column "The NDP and A Goose Called `Industry.'" I was wondering if you've ever seen the movie called Mouse Land, produced by Tommy Douglas, because I think it will show a part of that.
You were talking about business investment. I remember working for a major international corporation called Rockwell International. One of the emphases was that we never aired our dirty laundry in front of potential customers, because we never wanted to leave a bad taste in their mouth. Whatever happened in our workplace had to be dealt with behind closed doors, because we were always trying to encourage investment.
But I see the chambers of commerce coming before this committee with a very negative perception of what is going on in the business community, really painting a very negative view for the potential consumers who live in our communities. Somebody says, "I may move my plant outside the province of Ontario," and many employees employed there are starting to say, "Maybe I'd better not spend any money in my community, because the potential of my job leaving is unknown."
I was also going through the letters about the rapid growth of wages between 1985 and 1989, when prosperity was in a lot of our workplaces, when companies were making profits and were dishing it out too. A lot of negotiations took place without it.
I understand some of the concerns business has, and giving up management's rights has always been a contentious issue between workers and managers. But when I read the presentations, I'm wondering if you're not, by the negative campaign, defeating the purpose of helping your economic development officers encourage business in the communities you live in. You made reference to Cami and how Cami is prosperous. Well, there are some things going on right now with Cami that are not good and one of my communities happens to be affected by Rockwell International with Cami. It's not because of any labour issue; it's because of what's happening around the trade market, what's happening with the free trade agreement and the potential agreements that are coming up with Mexico.
I just wanted your views on that. You put together a good presentation, I thought, from the heart, but I just wanted to express those points of view. Are you not using a double-edged sword?
Mr White: No, I don't think so, because what we're trying to do is deal with results. We don't think we should come to this committee and suggest what's good for the province of Ontario and what isn't. That's what you people are elected for. All I can tell you is what's happening about 30 miles down the road. What we're trying to deal with here is what's factually happening. It isn't me, I assure you. The chamber had nothing to do with the delivery of the article from the Wall Street Journal. Maybe the Wall Street Journal is not the bible of the financial community, but I'm telling you, it's a big chapter in the New Testament. People read that, they look at this article that has been written about the province of Ontario. Are you familiar with the article?
Mr Hope: But how's it being promoted?
Mr White: Basically, what I'm suggesting to you is the impact this legislation is having on the Canadian subsidiaries of our American manufacturers. These are facts. These cause us very, very great concern. People in the United States are reading articles that say, for example, "What died in Russia is still alive in Ontario today." I don't believe that, but there are a lot of American people who do when the Wall Street Journal tells them that. That's the problem: the perception of what's going on in this province outside this province itself. That's what we're hearing in the chamber, because we've got so many -- Thomas Bus, with hundreds of employees. We went to our MPP and said to him, "Look, we're not politicians, but we can tell you this is what's happening to us."
I don't want to be cast in the view that I'm trying to tell you how the legislation should be written. That's your job. What I am telling you is that this is hurting us badly. I don't care what you do with the legislation to fix it; that's your job to figure out, not mine. This legislation is costing jobs in Oxford county, this legislation is driving investment away from our city: facts.
Mr Hope: What jobs have left because of this legislation?
Mr White: Yes.
Mr Hope: What jobs? You said facts prove that jobs have left.
Mr White: The investment, for example -- why don't you call the president of Timberland and ask him? The president of Timberland, with the American subsidiary down in Shreveport, Louisiana, who wrote the letter. I spoke to him, and he said: "I cannot justify it. My investment is down in Louisiana." They mirror the Canadian operation, but because of the anticipated problems this legislation is creating, that's where the investment went. With it went the jobs that would have been here.
Mr Hope: But is it not so that --
The Vice-Chair: Thank you, sir.
Mr Phillips: I appreciate very much the chamber's presentation, and I appreciate the members of the chamber who have had the courage to speak up. Just for your information, Mr White, and your members', we have a problem here. Many of us do very much agree with your hypothesis that we are going to lose jobs and investment. The Premier himself said that the future of the province depends on our manufacturing sector getting world mandates for products, in other words, the Canadian plant getting the exclusive right to produce one product. But if an organization or an investor is going to find that the plant cannot produce any of that product for some period of time, I'm afraid we'll lose that investment. We right now see our unemployment running at -- I think it's 13 1/2% in Ontario -- it's nominally 11 -- and plant closures at record numbers.
I appreciate your analysis of what it's going to do for jobs. The problem is, I honestly don't think the government members believe that's going to happen. Certainly the union leadership doesn't. The union proposals say the business community's gone hysterical, that these are minor -- the earlier speaker this morning said it -- essentially minor amendments that are being made. So we've got a problem, and we'll only know probably in two to three years. Unfortunately I happen to think you're right.
Mr White: That's the way I see it.
Mr Phillips: By then we will have lost not just three years, because investments take an awful long while to come back; we'll lose 10 years. The business community I think has tried to make its voice heard, but I think the government members think it's hysterical. Correct me if I'm wrong. Certainly the unions consider the business community to be hysterical.
I have more of a comment for you than a question. You have done a good job of pulling out for us the specifics. It takes a lot of courage for a company to come forward and say, "I might leave," because it just creates public grief for it and for its employees.
From my perspective, I basically support the chamber's contention about lost jobs. I may not agree that it's going to be as bad as perhaps the chambers in the province, but it's going to be bad.
We'll do the best we can in terms of the legislation, but I honestly think the die is cast. I think this legislation will be through the House by Thanksgiving. For your information, the rules are set. The timetable is set. There is not going to be a prolonged debate at third reading. They've already passed those rules, over our objections. We will do whatever we can. I just urge the chamber to continue to do what you're doing. I think this is a very responsible brief you've given us today.
Mr White: It's all we can do, really. We're not the big area in the province, but this is what's happening --
Mr Phillips: No, and I have a lot of respect for your chamber as well. I have some understanding of it. I'm sorry I don't have a question, Mr Chairman, other than just a comment on the brief. I think Mrs Witmer asked the question I was interested in, that is, assuming that it is going to be going forward, what areas are you most concerned with. Because of the manufacturing base in the Woodstock area, I think you've lit on the replacement worker issue, and I think it's a big issue for the Premier too.
If we are going to go after world mandates where companies are going to invest in one plant producing exclusively their product for the world and there's a risk that they would be put out of the potential to produce that product for an extended period of time, I think we have two concepts banging right up against each other to the detriment of the workers of the province.
The Vice-Chair: I'd like to thank the Woodstock District Chamber of Commerce and you, sir, for your presentation here this afternoon. You provided valuable input to the committee. I'm pleased to meet the other Robert White. It's nice to have met you.
Interjection: That's the guy we've read about in the other papers.
Mr White: No, I'm not the guy.
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BEAVER FOODS LTD
The Vice-Chair: The next presenter is Beaver Foods Ltd, if they could come forward. Welcome. Please identify yourselves and proceed with your presentation. If you could allow about 15 minutes of the half-hour allocated for you for questions and answers, I know all the committee members would very much appreciate that.
Mr Allan Greenslade: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of Beaver Foods, I would like to say that we are pleased to be here today and to have this opportunity of responding and discussing the impact of the proposed changes to Bill 40 and the effect that will have on our establishments and our company as a whole.
My name is Allan Greenslade. I am the senior director of human resources for Beaver Foods. For your information, Beaver is a contract foodservice catering firm serving a very diversified range of clients across Ontario and in fact the rest of Canada. With me today is Paul Bachand, the vice-president of human resources of Cara Operations, of which Beaver is a part.
I would like to say that we do support the views and share the concerns put forward by the Ontario Restaurant Association. However, because of the limited time available, I will not go over the issues already discussed in their submission, as I'm sure you're quite familiar with them.
Our approach to the Ontario Labour Relations Act and to the proposed changes embodied in Bill 40 stems from our belief that the interests of workers in the workplace should be paramount under the act. It therefore follows that trade unions are merely the means, or only one of the means, through which the interests of the workers in the workplace can be secured and/or protected. The act as presently written in many instances ignores the rights and interests of workers in the workplace. Bill 40 goes further to negate workers' rights and interests; its effect will be to transform the act into a sort of charter for the extension and entrenchment of union power in our economic and political life.
In his statement to the Legislature on June 4, 1992, the Honourable Bob Mackenzie said in part that, "This legislation...prohibits unfair practices by both unions and employers." Continuing, he said: "But even more important, it sets the tone for employer-employee relationships throughout every sector in Ontario. It plots a course for a more open workplace, one which is more responsive and democratic." The minister goes on to ask those who have been vocal in their opposition "to this forthcoming legislation to assess it with an open mind. There is a genuine need to accept that change is necessary and inevitable."
We agree that change is necessary and that it is inevitable. We also wish to assure this committee that we are heeding the minister's refrain to assess the proposed legislation with an open mind, as we hope that the Ontario Legislature, through you, will give consideration to our views expressed here with an open mind.
In this spirit, before raising some important issues with respect to several specific sections in Bill 40, we wish to make a few general observations in light of the honourable minister's statements before the Legislature in part quoted above.
The minister reassures us that the proposed Bill 40 sets the tone for employer-employee relationships and that it plots a course for a more open workplace, one which is more responsive and democratic. If the minister is alluding that Bill 40 sets the tone for a more harmonious employee-employer relationship, then he will be disappointed. Harmony and democracy can only be achieved where at the root of an employer-employee relationship is mutual trust and respect for each other's rights, coupled with respect for dignity of the individual. Such a relationship can only be facilitated by laws which are, and are perceived to be, fair providing for a level playing field for the competing interests in the workplace.
We respectfully submit that Bill 40 does not advance the cause of mutual trust between the employer and the employed. Worse, in many ways it negates the democratic rights of workers, leaving aside its obvious anti-employer bias. The more you open your mind studying Bill 40 and its consequences, the more obvious it becomes that the focus of this legislation is upon unionization and union power in the workplace, with workers' interests being only incidental to its main thrust.
In support of our contentions, I will now address several specific sections in Bill 40.
Purposes: In keeping with democratic principles and rights of workers, at least before their workplace is unionized, the act should unequivocally state that workers also have a right not to join a union. Thus, we are proposing changes to paragraph 1 of section 2.1, which would then read, "To ensure that workers can freely exercise the right under this act by facilitating the right of employees to choose to join a union, or not to join, and be represented by a trade union...."
Dealing with membership in a trade union, section 8: No one will lament the elimination of the requirement to pay $1 to signify one's considered intent to join a trade union. Often this token fee is paid by the union as organization expense. However, Bill 40 is silent on the subject of abuses surrounding a union membership drive: misrepresentation, unrealistic promises and outright intimidation.
The act must protect the rights of the worker and enable him or her to make a considered decision -- probably the most important decision in a worker's work life -- to join or not to join a given trade union.
To remedy this gap in Bill 40, we recommend that the act provide for a prescribed membership application form to be signed by the worker wishing to join a trade union. Such membership application form should clearly detail all conditions of membership in that particular trade union, especially including amounts of any initiation fees, membership dues or other monetary assessments.
Deficiency in this area in the current act more often than not is the reason for petitions to the Ontario Labour Relations Board by workers who were misled to sign trade union membership cards during a union organization drive, asking the labour relations board not to consider them as members of the given trade union.
Representation vote, subsection 8(2): The whole process of representation vote, or no vote, together with the certification procedure of a trade union under the current act is undemocratic, cumbersome, time-consuming and prone to abuse. As such, the whole process is perceived to be unfair. It is particularly unfair to all the workers, including those who, after having signed a trade union membership card, often under dubious circumstances, have no say in the certification process with the exception of when and if a representation vote is ordered by the labour relations board. The result of this flawed process is conflict and bitterness in the workplace, lasting years following certification of the trade union. Bill 40 does not remedy this condition. On the contrary, it is reinforcing the perception that the system is stacked, arbitrary and unfair.
We recommend that all provisions in the act prescribing different treatment, when different levels of worker support for a trade union exist, be repealed; in their place to be introduced a simple, democratic and the only fair process to ascertain the true wishes of workers under all circumstances -- the secret ballot at the workplace administered by the labour relations board.
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The procedure leading to the secret ballot should be as follows:
The trade union first obtains not less than 45% support of all eligible workers in the workplace by way of signed application for membership forms and files them with the labour relations board.
Mr Ferguson: Slimebucket.
Mr Greenslade: The labour relations board orders that two general information meetings of all eligible workers be convened, one for the trade union presentation and one for the employer's presentation.
After the second meeting, the labour relations board will order a representation vote by secret ballot to be conducted at the workplace not less than 24 and not more than 72 hours after the last information meeting.
Fifty-one per cent or more of votes cast in favour of the trade union will result in certification.
Aside from it being a democratic and fair process, our proposal will leave no room for all the skulduggery surrounding the process under the present act, and we are sure Bill 40 as is will improve nothing in this area.
Paul, perhaps you would like to proceed.
Mr Paul Bachand: Evidence: We have already pointed to one reason why workers petition the labour relations board to disregard their signed trade union membership cards. There are other reasons which are difficult for the labour relations board to ascertain, such as intimidation and other forms of pressure to join a trade union. To deny petitioning the labour relations board once the application for certification is filed with the labour relations board, as proposed in Bill 40, is a high-handed and arbitrary denial of due process where fundamental rights of workers are concerned.
Petitioning is a very difficult procedure for workers to follow under the present act. Bill 40 will turn the petitioning provision of the act into a meaningless sham. An ordinary worker is no match for a union machine in the race to file documents with the labour relations board.
It is begging the question to ask whose interests are being served by erecting more obstacles in the line of last defence of the worker's right not to be manipulated or coerced to join a union before the closed-shop provision of the act forecloses his or her freedom of action.
The best way to restore and enhance the worker's rights here is to adopt our recommendations above with respect to subsection 8(2), which would render subsections (4), (5) and (6) redundant. Alternatively, the act would specify a procedure for workers petitioning the labour relations board at any time before the trade union is certified. Provisions should also be made for workers to obtain promptly all necessary information and relevant forms for petitioning from the labour relations board offices.
Certification when act is contravened: Section 9.2 is open to abuse through premeditated acts of provocation on the part of union organizers goading the employer so as to create an apparent contravention of the act. Charges and countercharges follow with legal challenges and so on. For the labour relations board to certify a union under such circumstances constitutes an arbitrary and unfair punishment not only of the employer but also of the workers involved, who are innocent bystanders and whose rights to choose are thus grossly and irrevocably violated. Such arbitrary action in itself contravenes the principles of natural justice and fair play. No one in a group of people with a community of interest should be compelled to join a trade union or any other organization without at least allowing the majority of that group to first consent to becoming a member in a given organization.
Should it be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that an employer did in fact contravene the act, then the labour relations board could dispense with the 45% requirement for union membership in a workplace and proceed to the information meetings stage as recommended under the secret ballot representation vote mechanism outlined in subsection (2) above.
Replacement workers: Considering the fact that a major thrust of Bill 40 is to prohibit hiring of replacement workers by the struck establishment, it follows that a parallel restriction should be codified in the act restricting picketing. The regulation of picketing should not be left to the discretion or the whim of the labour relations board. If the purpose of picketing is to inform the public about the labour dispute within a given establishment, the number of pickets should be commensurate with that purpose. No obstruction of entrances and exits should be permitted -- no mass picketing, no picketing by anyone who is not a worker of the establishment being picketed.
As well, picketers from other locations or hired picketers should not be permitted. Only employees from the struck location should be permitted to picket at the geographical location.
The non-use of replacement workers during a strike in our industry would have a severe effect on the establishments we cater, especially in hospitals, universities and isolated campsites where we are the only supplier of food. Without the use of replacement workers these businesses would have to be completely shut down, which would be disastrous for these clients -- the workers, patients or students, as the case may be.
Powers of the Ontario Labour Relations Board: These two clauses are the first of many in Bill 40 which strike at the very heart of our system of government: the separation of powers into legislative, administrative and judicial branches of government. Here the government is creating another quasi-judicial agency and endowing it with vast powers, including powers to make and change its own rules at will and make it responsible to no one. Such agencies destroy the citizens' respect for the rule of law and thereby subvert our democratic system of government. For the good of labour relations in Ontario and the good of society in general, we recommend that all sections in Bill 40 dealing with the powers of the labour relations board be considered and reworked.
Contract services, successor employers: Section 59 of Bill 40 would implement amendments to the Ontario Labour Relations Act which would establish the automatic rollover of a union's certification as well as an employer's responsibilities under the Employment Standards Act from one employer to another when a foodservice contract is awarded to a new contractor. As a major foodservice contractor we support the principle of this provision because it would increase the fairness between companies competing for foodservice contracts as well as protect the rights of our employees.
We are concerned, however, that the objective being pursued in this policy initiative is not adequately reflected in the text contained in Bill 40. We believe, for instance, that the legislation does not adequately define the property owner as the contractor in the event a foodservice contractor's contract expires or is cancelled and the services are taken in-house and performed internally. Further clarification is required in Bill 40 to ensure that the mechanism requiring the rollover of employment standard responsibilities applies when the service is taken in-house. It is important that all providers of this service are treated as contractors for the purpose of the rollover mechanisms.
Bill 40 also needs to be amended to ensure that the seasonal aspects of some foodservice contracting are reflected in this legislation, in particular relative to the requirements that a reasonable job offer is made to existing employees. Many foodservice contracting operations are seasonal, especially those serving educational institutions. This means that at certain times of the year the foodservice operations are not functioning and a reasonable employment offer cannot be made until the operation resumes later in the year. An amendment to Bill 40 must be introduced which would ensure that an employment offer to the employees of the former contractor can be made in a time frame which reflects the seasonal nature of some foodservice operations.
In a way, the issues we raise here are philosophical. We believe in the rights of the individual; therefore we placed the rights of the worker in the workplace before the rights and privileges of a trade union. The goals of a trade union are not always the goals of individual workers in the workplace. This fact is completely ignored by the proponents of Bill 40. Workers' rights and interests in the workplace should be given precedence over trade union interests before they, the workers, are compelled to become part of a union shop which, we repeat, is often an abridgement of individual rights in favour of the trade union.
We thank you for the opportunity to appear here today and to express our concerns regarding Bill 40. We hope you will adopt the ideas we have put forward.
The Vice-Chair: Questions? Mr Hayes, about three minutes.
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Mr Hayes: Thank you, Mr Greenslade and Mr Bachand, for your presentation. I was just noting on the one part there when you talked about membership in the trade union and you talk about the fact that the bill "is silent on the subject of abuses surrounding a union membership drive," abuses such as "misrepresentation, unrealistic promises and outright intimidation."
We've had a few people who are opposed to the bill who have indicated the fear of abuses from organizers, but we've also had several people come in here and give us some specific cases and some of their own personal experiences of the abuse, intimidation and coercion and things of that nature. Could you give us some specific cases you're aware of where this has actually happened on the part of organizations or organizers?
Mr Greenslade: The answer I would give to that is, in all honesty, in some cases I am reflecting information that has been given to me. However, personally, the first thing that would come to my mind is the type of: "You should join. Everyone else has joined. If you don't, you'll be the last one. You're the only holdout." I realize that is not necessarily the kind of --
Mr Hayes: No. But you don't have any specific cases. This is just a --
Mr Ferguson: Names.
Mr Hayes: No names of anything or the name of any union, for example. You don't have any of those specifics you would give us.
Mr Greenslade: Absolutely no.
Mr Hayes: Very quickly, do you agree, either one of you, with the Environics study that was taken dealing with Bill 40?
Mr Greenslade: Yes and no.
Mr Hayes: I know it said that 73% of Ontarians who are not now unionized have no interest in joining a union if given the opportunity. Do you agree with that?
Mr Greenslade: The percentage? Probably not.
Mr Hayes: You're saying it's probably a high percentage then.
Mr Greenslade: Yes, I think so.
Mr Hayes: If you actually agree with that, then I would have to ask you, why are you so afraid of this particular bill if you believe in that study? The study says there's not going to be a large influx of workers wanting to join unions.
Mr Bachand: In our industry, unionization has been a very slow process. I think that's shown by the number of unions that actually exist in the foodservice and restaurant area. However, we have been informed publicly that our industry has been picked as a target for unionization in the future because of lack of memberships the unions are experiencing in general.
Mr Offer: I hope we're able to deal with two areas, firstly the contract services, so that you could maybe flesh out a little bit how that operates within your establishment and the impact the bill would have, but my first question deals with the replacement workers. In the third paragraph you talk about, "The non-use of replacement workers during a strike in our industry would have a severe effect on the establishments we cater." You speak about "hospitals, universities and isolated campsites." I'm wondering if you can explain that to the committee. I'm not absolutely certain as to what that means.
Mr Greenslade: The nature of where we operate and how we operate, it could result in where workers or students or patients in hospitals could be severely affected by a strike, for instance.
Mr Offer: I guess I'm asking you: In a hospital there are cafeterias, and they may be run by yourselves, or by someone else?
Mr Greenslade: In this instance I'm referring to a case where that is the case, yes, or that would be the case.
Mr Offer: Is it your feeling that under the legislation, in a cafeteria in a hospital that you operate, if there is a labour disruption, a strike would be permitted where replacement workers would not be able to be used?
Mr Greenslade: We very often would not only manage the cafeteria but we would also provide patient services.
Mr Offer: I'm sort of hearing two different impacts of the legislation. On the one hand, in fairness, I'm hearing from others that it wouldn't apply, and I'll use the hospital as an example, in a hospital that is catered by outside services such as yourselves. Here I'm hearing the opposite, and I think that's a fairly important point and I thank you for bringing that up. Perhaps the ministry officials who are here could take note and respond to us as to whether in a hospital setting, if the catering is provided from an outside service, in the event of a strike with the individuals involved, the replacement worker provision would kick in.
Mr Bachand: If I could just add, we have accounts with universities where we are the sole supplier of meals to students who live on campus, as well as campsites where we are the sole supplier of meals to the employees who work in mines.
Mr Offer: I hope the ministry staff heard where you are also expanding the examples to universities and campsites.
Mr Greenslade: We operate in many very remote camp operations where we are the only source of food.
Mrs Witmer: Thank you very much for your presentation. I do appreciate the fact that you have, I think, done exactly what's been asked. You've gone through the document and you have made recommendations for changes and amendments and given reasons as to why those should be considered by this particular committee. I hope we will be able to incorporate some of the amendments you have proposed.
I'd like to focus on section 59, the contract services. You asked that the bill be amended to ensure that the seasonal aspects of some food service contracting is reflected. I'd really like for you to expand, because I guess as it is now there is no allowance for the fact that some operations are indeed seasonal. What would be the impact, do you think, under the present legislation?
Mr Greenslade: As I interpret the present legislation, depending upon when the contract change took place, if it took place during a down time -- in other words, when the educational establishment is closed -- it would not be possible for us to meet the requirements of the act in terms of a reasonable offer, both from the reasonableness standpoint of the offer as well as the timing of it. We could not meet that legislation.
Mrs Witmer: What would happen, then, to your operation?
Mr Bachand: There's a possibility, for example, if I can just go on a little further, that the employees who are laid off in June, for example, in school sites, and are back to work in September, if a contract change happens, those people could actually be omitted from a process. Okay? There would be no job offered to them at all because they just weren't employed at that time. What we're asking for is that you take a look at that and consider those people as employees. Proper job offers should be made to them when the facility opens again in September, is what we're saying.
Mrs Dianne Cunningham (London North): Thank you for your presentation today. You seemed to unnerve at least one of the members on the opposite side, as he shouted out, I think it was, "slimebucket" or something as you were speaking. It's hard for some of us to understand that there is an intimidation on both sides.
Although you presented your concerns as managers, I'm just wondering if in fact you're also concerned that there may be some intimidation, as the government has stated, on behalf of employees, and if this isn't two ways. I guess what we need in putting forth a recommendation for change, meaning an amendment under section 8, which you talked about -- you talked about "often under dubious circumstances," but I have to tell you that we have had examples from both sides. I'd like to give you a chance to clarify why you think this is unfair, cumbersome and time-consuming and why your recommendations will improve it for everybody; section 8, page 4.
Mr Bachand: I can probably cite examples where employees, unions and companies have been before the Ontario Labour Relations Board based on allegations of companies interfering, unions interfering, companies alleging such and processes taking in excess of a year and a half to two years. By the time the process is done, whether they become unionized or non-unionized, the employees who are actually onsite at the company, due to turnover, for example, are totally different people from when the process started.
What we're suggesting here is a system that would happen quickly, cut costs on behalf of companies, unions and employees in hiring lawyers to go through the fight, and just put it to a vote and let the people determine whether they want to be unionized or non-unionized without all the fighting, and in a fair, quick manner.
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Mrs Cunningham: I was just trying to give you that opportunity to underline it was both sides you were speaking on behalf of.
The Vice-Chair: I'd like to thank Beaver Foods for making its positions known to the committee on this piece of legislation, and both of you for taking time out of what I'm sure is a very busy schedule to come down and very eloquently present those opinions. Thank you very much.
LONDON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
The Vice-Chair: The next presenter is the London Chamber of Commerce. Welcome. Could you identify yourselves and then proceed with your presentation. Try to leave approximately 10 or 15 minutes for questions and answers; I know the entire committee would appreciate that opportunity.
Mr Ed Holder: Thank you very much. My name is Ed Holder. I am chair of the London Chamber of Commerce.
Mr Jim Thomas: And I'm Jim Thomas. I'm a vice-chair of the London chamber.
Mr Holder: Ladies and gentlemen, the London chamber has represented the views of business in London for 135 years. The chamber has 2,100 individual members, most of whom own or work for businesses in the city of London. The membership includes 1,200 incorporated companies, most of whom are smaller businesses that together employ about 70,000 people in London.
The London Chamber of Commerce welcomes this opportunity on behalf of our members and the London business community to speak to the reform of the Ontario Labour Relations Act, which has undergone second reading in the provincial Legislature.
As we read details of the legislation, we become increasingly disturbed that debate on reform of the act has resulted in polarization of the relative and traditional positions of business and organized labour. That was probably inevitable, as we are dealing with an act that governs collective bargaining, and collective bargaining is, regrettably, by its nature adversarial.
It seems to us that we need to look at the issue in a broader perspective if we are to speak effectively on behalf of all stakeholders in this process. In fact, the legislation is so monumental and so all-encompassing that we have provided this committee with a point-by-point assessment of the legislation in hopes it will be read and acted upon.
In the time allotted for this presentation we can only scratch the surface of all the components of the legislation that troubles business and should concern every worker in Ontario.
We ask that our written submission be accepted and entered into your records as the position of the London Chamber of Commerce. Our oral presentation to this committee will concentrate on several major aspects of the proposed revisions of the Ontario Labour Relations Act, and our focus will be on the following points: job loss; restrictions of individual liberties; the economic implications, and what we call the next step. I'll be pleased to present my formal comments to you after this meeting just for your reference.
Ernst and Young prepared a study which predicted that should the changes to the Ontario Labour Relations Act go through it will result in the loss of close to 300,000 jobs. We have heard reports from the vested interests in the legislation that that forecast is aggressive. So I suggest to you, what if they're only half right? Do you, as members of our Legislature and all the people's representatives, want on your consciences the knowledge that you conspired in the obliteration of tens of thousands of jobs in this province? Will you, as members of our Legislature and all the people's representatives, accept the responsibility for the ensuing financial devastation of these same individuals, the same people who believe they have the right to work if the opportunity is there?
Perhaps what has not yet been figured out by the legislators and the vested interests in these changes is that the best welfare solution is a job. We've talked about the jobs that we lost because of this legislation; however, there is another constituency that everyone is ignoring, and that is the current jobless. Your heart should go out to those people. I'm speaking about the people who have not worked in the last six or the last 12 months or more, and the prospects of them working in the next six or 12 months look pretty glum. As members of our Legislature and all the people's representatives, will any one of you tell me what hope you can give the current jobless with this legislation? What personal commitment can you give to London's unemployed and Ontario's unemployed that this legislation will give them a job? Ontario's jobless are disenfranchised. No one is speaking for them, and I ask the question, do you care?
Let me tell you that the London Chamber of Commerce cares. In fact, in its policy report adopted universally by all chambers of commerce and boards of trade in Ontario at our recent annual meeting, when talking about the role of business in our provincial economy, the chamber of commerce stated, "Taking care of business means taking care of people." Please listen to those words well.
Let me make it clear: It is in the interest of Ontario's businesses to have an Ontario workforce that is employed, not a workforce on UIC or welfare that is left without hope and left without dignity.
Our second point addresses the restrictions of civil liberties on Ontario's workforce which will be legislated by the changes to the Ontario Labour Relations Act. Until this legislation, an employee had to deposit a nominal $1 when signing up for a union. This we all know. This at least had the modest effect of having the employee ask what he or she was signing. Under this legislation, not even that dollar is required. Once you've signed your card as an employee, there's no cooling-off period, no refund. It's interesting that even consumers who purchase items, potentially under duress, have the right of cancelling this commitment if, on second reflection, they decide it is not in their interest. This legislation confirms that someone buying a vacuum cleaner door-to-door has more rights than an employee in Ontario.
One thing I have never understood is why there does not need to be a secret ballot vote by employees when deciding if they should join a union. Currently, just over half the members of a working unit sign a card to say they will join a union, then the union is formed; no ballots, no votes. I find this appalling. I challenge any of our elected members of the Legislature to stand up now and tell us that an open-ballot process is fair and democratic. It is not. Would you accept being elected that way? I don't think so. It is fraught with the potential of duress, home visits and other imposing pressure tactics that deny opportunities of clear, free choice. That's suppression, not democracy.
Another clear violation of civil liberties of employees is denying the right to cross the picket line under this legislation. It seems the drafters of this legislation were more concerned with the vested interests of solidarity than the rights of the individual worker. Would any of you say to the employee who couldn't make a rent or a mortgage payment and lost their home that it's going to be okay? Solidarity is small consolation for kids left homeless or hungry and who depend on their parents' income just for basics. Don't deny basic human dignity.
The only thing that separates people and poverty is their ability to earn an income. Don't take away that right. On the day the NDP won its overwhelming majority, Gord Wilson, president of the Ontario Federation of Labour, blithely announced that organized labour was finally going to get its anti-scab legislation. He has certainly become a prophet; however, he is a prophet of doom who has sounded the death-knell for employee rights. How dare any of us refuse an employee the right to work?
This legislation underscores a clearly vested position that the only good worker is one who belongs to the union movement, and that's not right. Let me tell you that Ontario businesses are gravely concerned. These changes shift the balance of power from a delicate balance of negotiation, of give-and-take, to one heavily weighted in favour of unions. We will never know the full opportunity/job loss from companies that won't set up in Ontario or have moved or will be moving their companies from Ontario because of the tremendous instability and imbalance caused by the fear of this legislation.
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In Canada, in Ontario, we have suffered the worst economic recession in decades. The reality is that many businesses have gone bankrupt and many thousands of employees have lost their jobs, and there's not a great likelihood that these jobs will return. So can any of you tell me what the economic impact of this legislation will be in Ontario? Can any of you tell me how many jobs, aside from union organizers, will be created? If you are struggling with the answer, then there's all the more the tragedy.
Business capital, which is small business and big business, flows as a function of confidence in its ability to be profitable, to create wealth and have an employed workforce able to purchase its products and services, but business resources today are strained as never before. This is the result of world recession and global competitive pressures. Ontario does not have a divine right of sustainable employment. That right must be earned by sending clear signals to the business community that Ontario wants business to invest and to stay here. Business investment and confidence is what allows Premier Rae to call Ontario the economic engine of Canada. Please don't screw it up. Times are tough enough.
Let me provide an example of the implications of this legislation. Suppose you are a company that depends on suppliers, as we all do, to supply our products and raw materials. Because of economics, companies are unable to maintain large inventories. Therefore, they depend on suppliers as never before to deliver materials on a timely basis. Tell me what you think the natural outcome would be if, at the time you need your inventory most, your Ontario supplier was on strike and unable to provide your necessary goods. The reality, as you well know, would be to find another supplier. The other reality is that they would not be looking for that supplier in Ontario; they couldn't afford the risk. So why are we risking the jobs of workers and the viability of business in Ontario? Ladies and gentlemen, that's not fearmongering; that's reality.
What is the outcome for Ontario's suppliers in these positions? Economic loss and employee job loss. For large companies, this will cause severe strain and hardship. For our smaller companies, it will wipe them out. We are all aware of companies that, when developing expansion plans, are setting up in the United States to protect their customer base. Those jobs should be in Ontario, not the United States. Your challenge and mine has to be to keep those jobs in Ontario.
Finally, I want to talk positively about something. Call it the next step. The London Chamber of Commerce believes this legislation must be withdrawn. Instead of enacting bad legislation in haste, this whole issue must be considered in the context of a complete and thorough economic impact study. We must have equal representation from government, business and the workforce, and task these parties with recommending credible changes to the Labour Relations Act based on consensus.
Our NDP government is in a unique position, with its labour support, to draw all parties together to find that consensus. That's your job; you should be doing this. This is your great opportunity to show leadership. Ontario's citizens, our taxpayers, are tired of partisan bickering and economic uncertainty, so let's get on with the job. Ontario's workers and Ontario's business community deserve no less.
Mr Phillips: Thank you for your presentation. I think, in the opening comments, you indicated that the result of what's happening now is a polarization -- I think it was you who said that -- and I very much agree with that. Tragically, we do have a polarization taking place between the business community and the organized labour community.
I'm personally very worried about the economic future of the province. I said earlier to other speakers that the unemployment rate in the province right now is at least 13%. Among our young people it's 25%. The plant closures, rather than slowing down, are actually increasing. At the end of July this year, they were about 30% ahead of the same period for a year ago, about 45% ahead of the same period two years ago. I am extremely worried about the economic future.
I think, on the other hand, the government members would say: "Listen, the business community is simply pushing its own agenda. They're grossly exaggerating the impact of this. These are minor changes that will have only minor impact. Once they're passed, the problem will go away." That's our problem. I happen to think, as I say, that it will have a significant impact, but we won't know that for two or three years.
It's a long-winded way of saying that the chamber -- can you give us any specific examples? I was appreciative of the Woodstock chamber that spoke an hour or so ago because I think it had some specific examples from specific businesses. Does the London chamber have anything that might be helpful to all of the committee members in terms of the impact this might have?
Mr Thomas: Maybe I can respond to that. One of the problems with any individual company responding to its plans is the overwhelming aspect of government intervention. If you have a surplus in your pension plan, if you have other administrative dealings with the government, you don't know how it's going to wind up. There's nothing but grief associated with a firm announcing that it's going to leave or that it's making investment in other jurisdictions.
I can only say that I have recently met with a group of business people that are overwhelmingly in favour of this legislation. They're the business development officers from Michigan, Ohio, New York, Tennessee and Kentucky. They really think this is great legislation because every week there's someone from Ontario coming down looking for a plant site.
Mr Offer: Thank you for your presentation. I share the concern of my colleague about this polarization. Certainly we're seeing that clearly, and in fact a little bit more evidently, as we proceed through these hearings. The interesting part of that is it isn't just a "business on one side, labour on the other" polarization. We're hearing concerns from school boards, municipal hydro services, municipalities and children's aid societies. They also have concerns with the legislation.
None the less, there is this polarity of some intense dimension that is forming. When all is said and done, do you believe that one of the ways this chasm could be narrowed is if the government would say: "Let's just do an economic analysis on a sector-by-sector basis. Let's look at what we think the impact of the legislation will be before it's enacted into law"?
Mr Holder: There are a couple of comments we really have to respond to to give you an appropriate answer. I think clearly an economic impact study that has not been done must be done. This is too grave an issue, ladies and gentlemen, to just get into an ideological discussion. There is too much at stake. At stake is the worker in Ontario and the viability of business in this community, and I don't mean just the community of London but the whole province. In the sense that Ontario is that economic engine for the country, imagine the impact on the country on a much broader basis.
There are a lot of mentalities that have to be overcome. The economic impact study is simply one issue, but it's the major issue to try to determine the sense of job loss and fiscal impact of this kind of legislation. That's critical and it must be done. But I think the other concern has to be the mentality of all sides on the issue. We talked about the adversarial nature of negotiations and collective bargaining.
It was very interesting that at that same meeting where the chambers of commerce and boards of trade across this province talked about all the stakeholders we had the Windsor District Labour Council president come in and say: "We are not the stakeholders. We will come to the table with our view, you, as business, must come to the table with your view, and we'll fight it out there." I'll tell you, that's a pretty sad statement. There are a lot of things that must be overcome if we're going to be in a better position to negotiate the future health of this province.
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Mrs Cunningham: Thank you very much for your presentation today. I think my colleagues should know that the London chamber has been most helpful to all of us at Queen's Park as we do our best to represent the citizens of London.
I only wanted to add one fact today, that you should know that since 1953 we are witnessing the lowest level of spending in a budget in Ontario, and that level is 4.9%. One third of that goes to service a debt which we have left our children and to pay people who are unemployed; one third of the increase during these tough times goes to service a debt and pay the unemployed.
It's a dreadful situation we find ourselves in and we're not shocked to hear that today, once again, a business community, representing a cross-section of individuals and employers and employees in London, is advising us to stop now and reassess what we're doing.
I wanted to focus on page 6. It's something that we're happy you've given us such good specifics and we'll be looking at them. You are talking here about the Ontario Labour Relations Board, and again I'm going to emphasize complaints we've had from what appear to be both sides. Employees and employers are not happy with the operation of the Ontario Labour Relations Board.
You've given us some specifics, but I'm interested to know that you're not recommending a legislated solution. I wondered if you could just speak a little bit to this issue right now because I notice you're talking about again probably an impact study on your recommendation before we move forward. I'm wondering if I'm correct in assuming that's what you mean.
Mr Thomas: If I could respond, I think that's exactly right. It's important before we make any changes that the economic impact be studied very carefully in terms of the cost to government and increasing bureaucratic levels of activity. Perhaps many of the solutions are administrative in nature and can be resolved without legislation and can be best done by a tripartite study group to take a look at it.
Mrs Cunningham: Thank you for that. I do thank you for your presentation. I do appreciate the fact that you have focused on what is the real problem in this province, and that is unemployment. We have thousands of people who are without work and are continuing to lose their jobs and, unfortunately, Bill 40 does not address that issue. It will not create one new job. In fact we're hearing over and over again it's going to lead to further job loss in the province.
How do you feel the government can correct that particular situation, if what we are looking for is the right of every individual to a job? What should this government be focusing its attention on at the present time?
Mr Holder: The first thing it must do is withdraw Bill 40. I'll say that again in case anybody didn't hear. You must withdraw Bill 40. It becomes the starting point. If you do that, then business and the workforce and government can sit down and talk as equals to see if in fact we are representing the best interests of all instead of very specific vested groups. That's what this issue is about.
I asked a lot of questions in my presentation, and I'm not sure that I heard anyone say how many economic jobs. Maybe I could get a show of hands -- Mr Chairman, I'm not trying to be flip on this -- but can I ask --
Mr Hope: But you are.
Mr Holder: -- well, less than some maybe, but perhaps I can ask the question, sir: Can anyone please tell me how many jobs will be created as a function of this legislation? That's a troubling question, but it's one I pose to you, if I may, in return.
The Vice-Chair: Thank you, sir. Mr Winninger.
Mr Winninger: I would respectfully submit that this legislation is designed neither to create nor to diminish jobs. We have several other programs designed to create jobs and I think we're doing a good job.
My question to you -- and I would preface this by saying that I too agree that the local chamber of commerce has done a good job in availing itself of the opportunity to meet with the local members to convey its views -- but given the fact that large corporations, like GM, like Ford, like over 50% of the domestic and foreign investment in Canada, seem to feel Ontario is an okay place to invest and certainly there are studies that show that unionized workplaces tend to be more productive than not, I wonder why there's so much concern in the business community that enhancing the right to join a union is going to cause an outflow of jobs.
I'm particularly interested in hearing from Mr Thomas, because having met with him before I know that he used to be down in the southern United States and now he's up here, and I wonder, if it's such a bad climate to invest in, why Mr Thomas is here and not there.
Mr Thomas: I like cold weather to begin with. Let me say one of our chief concerns about the legislation is that it imposes unionism on people who do not necessarily want it. We think in all cases that individuals should have the right to vote in a secret ballot at the worksite so that everybody in the worksite has an opportunity to vote. That's the only fair and democratic way to respond to a desire to belong or not to belong to a union.
Your comment about whether Ford and GM continue to invest in Ontario is quite interesting, because I think a stay of execution in Oshawa is not exactly a vote of confidence. There is no question there's been a good investment in the Ford facility, but I don't think any of those investments offset the jobs that have already been lost and are going to offset the jobs that are going to be lost in the future because of this legislation.
Mr Winninger: We've also got companies like Fleck that are coming back to Ontario; and creating jobs in places like Tillsonburg.
Mr Thomas: Yes, it's good to see that some jobs are coming back, that's nice, but we're still losing more and this is not the kind of vehicle that's going to cause us to have jobs created in Ontario, it will lose jobs.
Mr Winninger: Mr Chair, I'll have to defer to my colleagues. We're limited as to time.
Mr Holder: If I may make another comment that adds to it, and I think this becomes as much the issue. We talk about the job loss. Mr Winninger talks about some of the job creation associated with government. Quite frankly, we think job creation should come from the private sector. That's the primary thrust where jobs should come from because those are sustainable and long-term and are not borne on the backs of taxpayers. If they can be sustainable and real jobs, those are ones that will last hopefully for years and years and years. Those are meaningful jobs, sir, and those are the directions we want you to take to allow business the environment where it can create those jobs.
The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much. We'd like to thank the London Chamber of Commerce for its views and both of you for presenting them. Your presentation and written submission will indeed become part of the record of these proceedings. Thank you both very much for taking the time to appear here today.
Mr Holder: Mr Chairman, I will give you now, if I may, those formal comments that I made in my speech for distribution. With that, the Goderich and district chamber did not have the opportunity to be a part of the program and have asked me to formally submit their presentation to you as well.
The Vice-Chair: Thank you.
Mrs Cunningham: Mr Chair, may I ask a procedure question here with regard to the last comment that was made?
The Vice-Chair: Yes.
Mrs Cunningham: We had two people, or three, here yesterday that weren't able to give their brief. When we found out that people had cancelled here in London, because this afternoon after I leave I have to hear two more that couldn't make their briefs, is there no mechanism for bringing one of those people forward? They have already physically shown up and we had a cancellation this afternoon. Is there no mechanism? I just want an answer, because if the slot is there, why not.
The Vice-Chair: The subcommittee, in developing the process we have used throughout the hearings, unanimously agreed to no walk-ons in terms of no extra presenters.
LONDON AND DISTRICT LABOUR
COUNCIL
ST THOMAS AND DISTRICT LABOUR COUNCIL
The Vice-Chair: The next presenters are the London and District Labour Council. Could you come forward. First of all, welcome, identify yourselves and proceed with your presentation. If you could leave about 15 minutes for questions and answers, the committee would appreciate it.
Mr Jim Ashton: If I might, Mr Chair, first, my name is Jim Ashton. I'm president of the Canadian Auto Workers Local 27 and, in particular, president of the London and District Labour Council. To my right, although not necessarily politically, is the president of the St Thomas and District Labour Council, Steve McMurdo, who is also a member of Local 1520 CAW.
I do not have a written presentation. I will try to keep my remarks short enough to allow some time for Steve to make his presentation and hopefully answer your questions.
I did catch a bit of the chamber's presentation today and I caught the presentations of other business groups and I think we really have to start here with a little reality. The reality is that we hear business talk about a number of concerns it has, but let's be realistic, let's look at business's record.
In the 1870s they opposed child labour legislation because they felt it was better that children be down in the mines rather than out on the streets of our cities because it was much healthier and much safer and, of course, there was the old competitive bugaboo that if in fact we legislate that type of thing, we're going to end with the situation of being less competitive.
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In the 1870s as well, the Canadian government legislated the first Canadian labour act and they opposed that. In 1914 they opposed the suffragette movement in this country and the right of women to vote, and if you quote some of them, they didn't want women filling their "pretty little heads" with politics and matters other than home and work. Again, the competitive issue comes to the fore when we talk about 1917. They opposed the Workers' Compensation Act because that was going to "turn the province into a group of hypochondriacs."
They opposed the universal old age security plan in the 1930s. As one businessman said to his workers, "You have an obligation to put away 10% of your pay every year so that you're not a drain on the betters of your society." I guess quite clearly who those betters were -- they certainly weren't the working people.
They opposed unemployment insurance. They opposed social assistance. In 1948 they opposed the introduction of the Ontario Labour Relations Act. As inoffensive as that was then, they opposed that. In the early 1960s they opposed medicare. Recently, of course, they've again gone after women because they oppose pay equity; they say it's too costly to implement. They oppose employment equity. The reason we have to deal with both of those groups, quite frankly, is because they have never done their job in the first place.
The reality is that business has never, ever fought for or stood behind any piece of socially progressive legislation that we've had in this province, or indeed in this country. They came here and they've gone around the province and said, "Now's not the time." They've had 125 years and it has never been the time, and I would suggest to you that it never will be the time as far as they're concerned.
If one listens to our friends in Ottawa and their corporate agenda and those business people who support them, they want to roll back the clock. They want to do away with medicare. They want to do away with old age pensions. They want to do away with a number of things that we now accept as part of the social fabric of this country. I don't think their hue and cry about what's right or just -- they've never been there. In 125 years, as I said, they've never been there.
One has to look at the business credibility. They come and they talk about jobs. In the mid-1980s they told us, "Hey listen, if you support the corporate agenda, if you support the federal Conservative government, we're going to have jobs, jobs, jobs," and Mulroney echoed that to no end across this country. And what do we have? We have less jobs, jobs, jobs. We have the longest unemployment lines we've had in 60 years. That wasn't because of the Ontario Labour Relations Act; that's because business convinced the population of this country to follow its agenda.
Then what happened? Then they told us nirvana on earth was going to be the free trade agreement. What did we get out of that? We have people sleeping on the streets across this country. We have the longest lines we've ever seen in front of food banks. We have the largest numbers of people waiting for social assistance that we've ever seen. And again they say: "But trust us this time. We've got it right this time."
The Canadian public and the people of Ontario cannot afford to listen to business one more time because then nobody will have a job. I believe this NDP government has put forward a rational plan that makes sense in the long term to create jobs in this country.
There are a couple of other things I'd like to deal with before I get into the economics of that. One is a statement from the leader of the Conservative opposition which appeared in our London Free Press just a couple of days ago. I doubt he wrote it, because it really looked to me like he'd gone to the citizen's coalition and signed his name to it. Having said that, he made a number of points, and one was that this legislation was a payback for the support of union bosses. I take exception to two things in that. Unlike most people in the business community, I'm elected by over 5,000 of my members by secret ballot every three years, and by 25,000 people in this London and District Labour Council, so I don't really appreciate that.
Let me be quite blunt. For any of you who bothered to read back in November the original discussion paper and followed that through in February and saw what kind of legislation we now have in front of us, if that's what a payback is, I'd be sad to see what would have happened to us had we done nothing for that party.
We talk about paybacks. I heard David Winninger mention Fleck. Let's look at paybacks. In 1978, 500 women asked for one thing: the right to have a union. What did they get from the Conservative government? Nothing. They stood and they worked on water-filled floors, working on electrical equipment, and they wanted one thing: a union. Did they get it? No, they didn't. They sat in cafeterias where rats ran across the floors and on to the main floor where they worked, and what did they get? You want to talk about paybacks? What they got were 500 riot-equipped OPP officers under the support of this provincial government, to pay back who? Certainly not the workers.
I'd also like to talk a little bit to my good friend Dianne Cunningham, who in her recent remarks in the Legislature in terms of attacking this bill made a number of points. She talks about my local union, which is really why I want, Dianne, to talk to you about this, because you point out that four years ago Form Rite employed 1,000 individuals directly in and around the city of London. You make the point that three years ago it was unionized by the CAW and that here we are in 1992 and we only have 200 people left in the whole province. Unless Form Rite is paying dues to make the union feel good, the last time I looked we had 380 dues-paying members in Local 27 as of the month of June, so I think your numbers are just a bit off.
You say the company talks about free trade in the auto industry. Well, when the hell did that ever happen? There never has been free trade in the auto industry worldwide, with the exception of the auto pact which was introduced in the mid-1960s.
The reality is that since we organized that plant in 1989 we've had two collective agreements and less than a 24-hour strike and that in fact the company closed its other operation, which was non-union, and moved that work into the unionized plant in London.
The other reality is that I have talked with company officials. We, as a union, have talked with company officials, as have municipal leaders in this city, and surprisingly enough, in neither case did they mention it was because of the union. They said it was the federal government's high-interest-rate/high-dollar policy that gave them no option but to open up another facility in Tennessee. Were they lying to us? I don't know, but that's what they told us, and at a different meeting that's what they told the leaders of this municipality, so I really have some problems with that.
The other thing I have a problem with is one of the statements in here. Business says, "You can have so much more success in Southeast Asia, Central America and Mexico." Is that what this is all about? Is that what business wants us to turn down to, a Third World economy?
Does anybody understand the reality of economics in this debate? Is that really where we're going? I would certainly hope not. Business? How can we believe they're credible? Ford Motor Co gets up and says, "This is going to cost investment," and two-thirds of its fiscal 1993 investment is in Ontario.
General Motors continues to invest and in the last year has invested one-third of a billion dollars in Quebec, a province that already has the legislation we're now talking about. Recently we had a freightliner plant open up just outside London, we have a German company going to build airplanes, and yet we're told we're going to lose thousands and thousands of jobs. Absolutely ridiculous, as far as I'm concerned, and I think the follow-up to those statements has proven quite clearly that business cannot be trusted, nor can it be credible.
Let's look at economics. I'm not an economist; I'm just a working guy who got a little bit up in the union. But I did take one year of economics in university and I learned that for every dollar you put into the economy, it generated six or seven. Now I'd just like to take you to the kind of situation we face today. We'll take an average worker who makes $12 an hour. He takes home $100, $120 in his pocket every week, so he has disposable income. He goes out to the restaurant, he goes out to the movie theatre, maybe he buys some extra clothes, maybe he looks for a new house, maybe he looks for a new car. And who benefits by that? Small and medium-sized businesses.
Yet the business agenda is to say, "Let's go to how they are in Southeast Asia; let's look at what they're doing in Mexico," places where these people can't even afford enough to buy their own food and clothes, let alone buy anything they produce. Yet this is where we're going.
Take that same worker in the province of Ontario who follows the corporate agenda, gives back benefits, gives back wages. At the end of the week he's making $8 an hour and he's got $10 in his pocket. Is he going to the restaurant that small businessman owns? No. Is he going down to the corner store to buy those shirts and pants? No. Is he going to the movie? Not likely. Is he looking at a house? Only in his dreams. Is he going to buy a car? Fat chance. I don't for the life of me understand how the chambers, which are made up of small and medium-sized business, not the big corporations, can ignore the reality that unless the middle class -- and most of the middle class is made up of working people in this country -- how they expect that they're going to survive if we don't.
I believe the government's right. If one looks across the western industrialized world, the countries that have fared best during this recession, that have shown the smallest or no increase in unemployment and that have done economically the best over the last 10 years are those countries with the largest and the strongest union movements. Why is that? Because they put money into workers' pockets. They allow the money to flow through the system. You can't do that in Mexico. You can't do it in Mexico when the government-controlled unions negotiate your next agreement, which includes free cardboard and tin for your house, no wage increase. You can't do that, and I can't understand for the life of me how business can't understand it either.
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We are not here asking that everybody who wants to join a union has the right to join a union. We're asking for that right; we're not saying they have to. That's everybody's choice. That's a democratic choice. That's the right of each and every worker. But in a democratic society that people have fought and died for -- and I would include my parents and your parents -- that ought to be the right. Why do those people who support business, and business, constantly fight against those?
I would suggest to you that we in the labour movement would like to work with business too. We have different agendas and we all recognize that, but if we're going to look to the future of this country and of this province, then unions, labour, business and government have to work together to develop an economic and an industrial strategy. By doing that, we can guarantee the long-term jobs and the long-term economic prosperity of this country. If we cannot be accepted as equal partners and we continue down the road we have with business trying to turn us at every corner, then I would suggest to all of you that the economic future of this province rests on their heads and the heads of those who support them.
I'd just like to make one more comment. The one area that seems to be getting the most play is, of course, the anti-replacement or anti-scab legislation. I look back over the last 15 years in this province, and I'd like to go back to when it was first instituted. How long do we have to see women pushed around on picket lines? How long do we have to see people run over by vehicles, either by company goons or by hired private security companies? How long do we have to see what happened in Quebec, where two workers were shot and killed? How long do we have to put up with that before the people who are properly elected by the people of this province realize that we are closing out the 20th century and that it is time for everybody to be treated with equal rights, with dignity and with the free and open choice to decide their future?
I thank you for the time you've taken to listen to my comments. At this point I would turn it over to my friend Steve McMurdo.
Mr Steve McMurdo: I'm just sorry my leg wasn't long enough to kick you, so I'm going to miss the whole preamble. I'm just going to get into a couple of examples.
The labour council that I represent is in Elgin county, and Elgin county's been the site of two bitter and costly labour disputes in the last two years.
The first: On March 22, 1990, 80 members of Local Lodge 2729, International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, commenced legal strike action against Jaeger Canada in St Thomas. Approximately four weeks into the strike the company began to hire replacement workers. They were picked up and transported across the picket lines in company vans. Every morning and at night at least two, sometimes four, police cruisers would come and escort them across the picket lines. Needless to say, when replacement workers are transported across picket lines, confrontations will follow. That's exactly what happened, and that confrontation led to charges being laid against both the corporation and the workers.
The company also sought an injunction to limit the amount of pickets on the line so it could freely transport these workers across the line. They lost the injunction. The end result was that both parties spent large amounts of money and legal fees defending various charges and the taxpayer picked up the tab for the police presence. Finally, at the conclusion of the strike on August 26, all the replacement workers were released and the regular employees returned to work.
The second example began on December 10, 1990, when 45 members of Local Lodge 1703, International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, commenced legal strike action against Walterscheid Agmaster, located in Rodney. About six weeks into the strike, the company began hiring replacement workers. At any one time during the strike there were about 22 replacement workers taking the place of the employees.
The same scenario happened here as at Jaeger. The company rented vans, picked up the replacement workers and transported them across the picket lines. The Ontario Provincial Police detachment in Dutton would come every morning and every night to escort the replacement workers across the picket line. The company also sought an injunction to limit the pickets, it cost both parties a lot of money in legal fees and again the taxpayer picked up the tab for the police presence. This strike concluded January 27, 1992, when the regular employees returned to work and the replacement workers were released.
The example that probably sticks in most people's minds, not too long ago, was the example of the post office, under federal jurisdiction, with the hiring of scabs and moving work from one location to another with buses, even helicopters, at a cost of millions of dollars to Canadian taxpayers. It's enough to make any right-thinking individual know that these draconian tactics are a throwback to another age. Therefore, we feel that strict limitation should be placed on corporations' ability to move work from one location to another, and that non-bargaining-unit employees also be excluded from doing bargaining unit work.
The existing labour laws have been used for decades to effectively deprive thousands of Ontario workers of their collective rights. These workers have been denied their democratic right to join unions by the bureaucratic use of legal technicalities. Similarly, we need reforms that will prevent employers from intimidating, coercing or otherwise interfering with workers when they choose whether or not to join a union.
It's astonishing to me that the business community is up in arms over these relatively modest changes, considering that virtually all the initiatives are based on standards in effect in other jurisdictions. As Jim mentioned, the chairman of the board of Ford Motor Co recently said: "The Ontario NDP is doing everything possible to put roadblocks in the way of economic recovery. Frankly, entrepreneurs are afraid to invest or expand in Ontario." Obviously Ford no longer considers itself an entrepreneur, as it just announced the investment of $2 billion in the Ontario economy.
Ford's made millions in Ontario with the use of unionized workers. At the St Thomas assembly plant, for example, whose employees are members of CAW Local 1520, since the plant first opened the number of employees has more than doubled but the production output has more than quadrupled. I'd like to know why the Ford Motor corporation wants to deprive other employers of the benefits of a unionized workforce.
Corporate Canada keeps calling for a level playing field, but what they mean is the ability to transfer assets from one place to another. When I talk about a level playing field, I'm talking about transferring corporate power to ordinary working people of this province. Labour reform is an act of confidence in the people of this province. It's time.
The Chair: Thank you. We have three and a half minutes per caucus.
Mrs Cunningham: First of all, to respond to the direct concern you had, Jim, with regard to whatever I read into the Legislative Assembly, maybe you and I could talk about that later. Anything I read in that speech that day was quotes from letters sent to me. I have the letter I read in, but I don't have what you said in front of me, so I can't refute what you said, but we can talk about that in the future.
One of the things I think this legislation is all about is improving the workforce for both employers and employees. I would guess that's what you're both here to talk about. I had hoped from the very beginning that that was a non-partisan issue, but I am very disappointed in your speech today, because I think you're one of the best people to represent the labour movement I've ever had the pleasure of working with. You didn't put your comments in writing. I'm not going to be particularly negative about that, but it's very hard to refute them.
But I am going to refute them in this way: You talked about child labour legislation. You talked about the suffragette movement, you talked about workmen's compensation, you talked about health care, you talked about the Labour Relations Act, you talked about pay equity.
In this province today, which in my view, in spite of the difficult times we're in, is the best province in the best country in the world to live in, we have all the things you mentioned. Women vote. We do have laws to protect our children when it comes to the workforce. We have a wonderful medicare system, however you want to put it. We have a good school system, and this is still a wonderful place to live and work. All those things have happened in this country and in this province without a socialist government. So if you want to get partisan, I can too. Don't ever forget it.
Interjection.
Mrs Cunningham: Never mind; you'll get your chance.
Today in Ontario, in the last month 23,000 more people lost their jobs. This budget was the lowest increase in spending because of the most difficult times we have. You heard me talk about some 4.9%, the lowest amount of money any government has had to spend, except for 1953, since the beginning of government in Ontario, and one third of that went to people who are unemployed and to debt.
I ran for my seat in London North because I was worried for my children. I try to deal with issues in this riding in a very non-partisan way, and I think you probably would agree with that. My office is open to anybody and you can come in and talk to me about what your concerns are. People write to me, and of the more than 380 letters I received on this law, only two of them were from what I would call the union movement. That doesn't worry me very much, because I'm concerned, as I said yesterday to the service workers, about their concerns. But I don't think --
Mr Ferguson: Mr Chair, isn't this supposed to be time for questions of the delegations?
Mrs Cunningham: You'll get your chance.
Mr Ferguson: I didn't come to London to listen to Dianne Cunningham --
Mrs Cunningham: You've only been here twice today. You're not here in London to listen to too many people, so don't moan at me.
The Chair: Ms Cunningham has three and a half minutes to do with as she --
Mrs Cunningham: It's my turn to talk. Jim took me on, and he's used to this, and I'm going to give it back to him. In the end, we both somehow agree on solutions most of the time. Is that not correct?
Mr Ashton: I know, but if you keep getting me mad like this, you're going to lose my vote.
Mrs Cunningham: Well, look, you got me mad too.
Mr Chairman, I just have to tell you that I had expected some solutions to problems that would solve everybody today, and I'm very disappointed. It was very difficult for me not to say what I just said. It's in good faith, and if Jim would come into my office so we can have a reasonable discussion about the concerns of my constituents and how he can help me solve those problems in the Legislature without reading their letters -- I don't know a better way to do it. I'd just like to say that today. As I was criticized, I'm just making my point.
Mr Ashton: Do I get to respond to any of this?
The Chair: You can respond or not respond, as you wish.
Mr Ashton: Let me just say briefly, Dianne, I think the problem I have, and the point I made in terms of the business community -- it's not to say that there aren't people in the business community, and I would hope the majority of them, who are not opposed to child labour legislation or the Canada pension or old age pension, and I'm not accusing you of being any of those things. I think we have to look at the mentality and what has happened with the business community and those who support it over the last 120 years. The reality is that they've had to be pushed and dragged, kicking and screaming, to make any kind of social change, and I think quite clearly that was my point.
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In terms of the arguments you make about whether you receive letters or not, Dianne, I'm not going to argue with you that you didn't receive those letters. I'm saying, though, that unfortunately what has been happening across this province is that much of the rhetoric has ended up being hysterical and very little of it has been based on fact. It's fine for you to sit there and say this, it's your right to do it, but my point was that whoever gave you this information, it's totally inaccurate. If we're going to have a fair and open discussion on what the impact of labour legislation is going to be, then we ought to have the right information. That was my point.
Mr Winninger: I found both of your presentations very convincing. Unlike Ms Cunningham, I found your presentation, Jim, to be no more partisan than any other presentations I have heard today, particularly the one that preceded it.
Mrs Cunningham: Bull.
Mr Ashton: I tried to make it unbiased, David.
Mrs Cunningham: Unbiased? At least recognize it.
Mr Winninger: Just for the record, Mrs Cunningham says, "Bull."
Mrs Cunningham: He mentioned the Conservative Party of Ontario. At least recognize it.
Mr Winninger: I just wanted to clarify a point with you, Mr Ashton.
Mrs Cunningham: You can kiss your seat goodbye next time, Winninger.
The Chair: What did you say?
Mrs Cunningham: I said he could kiss his seat goodbye next time, just like I said to the Liberals, and it worked.
Mr Winninger: I wanted to clarify a point that was made by Mrs Cunningham in Hansard about the outflow of jobs from Form Rite. My understanding was that the jobs in the plant that was closed down were non-union jobs and the plant that stayed open was the union plant. Can you comment on that?
Mr Ashton: At the time we went about an organizing drive -- and it goes back to the point of organizing in general -- the company used all kinds of tactics, including hiring private detectives to work as spies in the workplace. We've well documented that and we know it happened. They did everything they could to thwart it.
There were two plants in the London area. One was in Strathroy, I believe, and the other one was of course the one we organized in London. Within the first year after organizing the plant in London and after having reached a collective agreement, they closed the non-union operation down and moved the work to the London plant. We still have close to 400 unionized employees there; I can't tell you how many non-union are there.
It's very difficult when you get into a free trade agreement, when you get into all these situations. You can blame the union, but the reality is that we have two problems, and I say this honestly; that's what we were told. It was the economic high interest rates and it was the cost of the Canadian dollar which made it difficult, because most of their exports are going to the US, number one.
Number two, as one looks at General Motors -- a comment was made here by somebody from the chamber -- last year in Canada, General Motors, I believe, made $93,000 profit per worker in Canada. They lost almost triple that in the United States, if I'm not mistaken. We may lose some jobs in St Catharines, but let's get realistic. We said this would happen under the FTA. The political pressure in the United States is not going to allow Canadian workers to remain unscathed. Quite clearly, Stempel said that when he made his announcement, that Canadians, unfortunately, are going to have to share the pain.
It's not a question that our workers don't do the job. Ford Talbotville speaks for itself; Oshawa speaks for itself. It's not our workers, it's not the fact that they're unionized; it's a number of other issues that we cannot control, although you, as a provincial government, have some influence, and of course our counterparts. I'll shut up.
Mr Offer: Thank you for your presentation. I'm going to ask you a question that is actually on the bill.
Mr Ashton: You mean you actually read it?
Mr Offer: I'm glad there's not a polarity you wish to start. I'm going to ignore the demeaning comment made, but I have a concern with that -- maybe not demeaning, but surely patronizing.
In an organizing drive, we have heard a number of concerns brought forward that sometimes the activities of the employer may work to intimidate or coerce an employee to make a choice that he or she may otherwise not have made. In fairness, I'll add that we've also heard the same thing on the other side. I know it really wasn't brought forward in your presentation, but I also know that you've probably had some experience in organizing. Is there anything in an organizing drive that an employer could say, could express as his or her opinion as an employer, that in your opinion would not be viewed as something intimidating or coercive to the employees?
Mr Ashton: I think one has to start with the general premise that I don't think any employee would be surprised to hear the company say, "We really don't want the union here." When you get past that, what I've seen in organizing drives -- I would assume, in most cases, intentionally -- I've seen captive audiences in cafeterias where the riot act is read. I think most lawyers nowadays would advise their clients that that's the last thing you want to do. But it's really done through coercion, in that, "If you're one of those, you're not one of us, and your future in the plant could be jeopardized." I've heard that a hundred times. The other thing, I suppose, is that it goes around: "The plant's going to close. The plant is going to be shut down." Those are the basic types of intimidation workers get.
Most companies aren't that stupid to try captive audiences, they're not dumb enough to go up and threaten somebody, but it is the intimidation surrounding people. You've got to understand, in this province, and I think people tend to forget this, they have this idea that unions are out knocking on everybody's door, saying, "Hey, where do you work?"
Interjection.
Mr Ashton: Just let me finish my question. "Where do you work?" and then we start going around talking to everybody. We are approached by employees.
Interjection.
Mr Ashton: Then what do you want me to answer? What can an employer do? I don't think he has a right to do anything. It is a democratic choice that the workers have a right to make.
Mr Offer: You didn't answer my question.
The Chair: I say thank you to you, Mr Ashton, for speaking here on behalf of the London and District Labour Council. I also want to say thank you to Steve McMurdo, here on behalf of the St Thomas and District Labour Council. We're pleased that you had the opportunity to share the time with London and district. You've played an important role in these proceedings. You've obviously made comments which have provoked members of the committee, and far be it for me to say that's not a good thing. We're grateful for your attendance here today. Please keep in touch. Take care and have a safe trip home.
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CAW CANADA, LOCAL 1451
The Chair: The next participant is CAW Local 1451, if they'd please come forward. Have a seat. Your written submissions are going to be distributed and form part of the record by way of becoming an exhibit. Please tell us what you will. Try to save at least the last 15 minutes. You can see how valuable that time frame is for questions and exchanges. Go ahead, sir.
Mr Larry Aberle: My name is Larry Aberle and I'm with Local 1451 in the CAW. I would like to thank you for this opportunity to address the committee on the importance of progressive labour reform in Ontario. Our CAW local supports these changes and wishes they went further.
Our society and our economy are changing, and with that our workforce is changing. I want to use my local as an example of trying to reinforce this need for change, because I'm not sure people are understanding this.
CAW Local 1451 represents about 1,300 workers at Budd Canada Inc. We produce frames for the automobile industry. In the past, labour relations were very turbulent. Although Budd Canada Inc was one of the highest-paying places in the Waterloo region, the turnover was very high. For example, of 300 people hired at approximately the same time as myself, only 27 are still members of the local. In the 1970s there were large numbers of wildcat strikes and grievances. Health and safety standards were lax. There were major quality problems. The company and the union agreed on almost nothing. However, the company was very profitable.
Today there is recognition that the ways of the 1970s would kill the plant. Labour relations still have a long way to go, but they are maturing. Because of the economic conditions, turnover is low and we have members on layoff. We did have a strike the last time the collective agreement expired, but not the time before that. It has been a long time since there has been a wildcat strike. We still have grievances, but not as many.
Safety standards are now maintained by a full-time health and safety representative, and quality has become dramatically higher. The company and the union still disagree on a large number of issues, but over time we have found areas where we can work together. As a joint venture between our local and Budd Canada, along with the Waterloo county school board, we launched a very successful program for upgrading many of our employees so they could receive their grade 12 high school diploma.
During the last few years, we have run energetic United Way campaigns. The union and the company have worked on health and safety issues, employee assistance programs, specifically in drug and alcohol abuse, and together we run a number of social and recreational events. The most recent was our 25th anniversary celebration, and the company has still remained profitable. In fact actually I believe today they issued another statement indicating they're still a profitable company.
The future is unknown, but major adjustments will still occur. I believe any company that fails to actively involve employees and the union in real and meaningful ways will fail. The majority of workers and unions are willing to help but not to be manipulated and abused. The companies that recognize this and make the necessary changes will be successful, and labour law reform will encourage these changes.
There's a philosophy behind these changes that asks the companies to communicate with their employees in a significant way. Unions are an appropriate organization to provide an effective representation and a major voice on how the workplace operates, collectively working out solutions to problems and concerns. This idea of communication works both ways and should not be ignored.
Instead of billboards of Marx, Lenin and Rae, why aren't employers doing something really radical and revolutionary, like talking with and trusting their employees and their unions, instead of trying to manipulate and control them? Sit down and negotiate in an open and mature manner. This is a point that's often overlooked.
Some companies believe that not being able to use replacement workers is a major problem. They are missing an obvious solution: serious negotiations with the involved union, even in strike situations where emotions run hot. Unions and their members will maintain the viability of the operations if there are open and frank discussions. For example, it is not uncommon for union members to run powerhouses during a strike.
In our last strike I'm not sure the company believed we were serious about several issues. Without talking with our local, the company attempted to move frames across the picket line. Tempers flared and some people were charged, but the company failed to move its frames. Only when the company got desperate enough to actually talk with our bargaining committee was a deal reached to ship a specific number of frames that our customers urgently required. Once the company realized there was a very real deadline, then it was prepared to do some serious negotiations. Incidentally, had the company attempted to use replacement workers, I'm sure the strike would have erupted into violent confrontation.
I want to speak a little bit about the predictions of job losses and economic disaster. Canadian workers have suffered enormously because of the free trade agreement, the high dollar and inept federal economic policies. Unfortunately the job losses will continue, with or without labour law reform. It will require a return to economic prosperity to stem the job losses.
What about the loss of investment dollars? If labour laws were the only factor considered for investment, right-to-work states like Alabama or Arkansas would be the only places that had received any investment in the last 50 years. Yet these are the states that consistently rank low in measurement on the quality of life. Unions have been able to obtain reasonable standards of living for their members.
The reality is that investment is made for a variety of reasons. Some factors we can control, some we cannot. The factors that we have and must continue to improve are a stable, skilled, productive workforce, a well-developed infrastructure and a concerned, caring society. Although unions do provide training for their members, both unions and companies must do more training in the future.
In regard to the changes which will make it a little easier to form a union, this will have no impact on my workplace, as we are already unionized. However, we want the benefits of unions to spread across society. There are companies that have successfully used the old laws to prevent their employees from unionizing. They appear to be afraid of unions. Maybe they lack education as to how unions are organized and run. Yet numerous valid studies indicate unionized workers are more productive, perhaps because there is less fear and they have a more effective voice. I suggest what these companies really fear is the loss of control and power over their employees. There is a saying that companies get exactly the type of union they deserve. Perhaps that is what they are afraid of getting.
The changes that encourage unionization are for the future. I have two sons and a daughter, and they probably will not obtain a job like mine in the manufacturing sector. I want them to enjoy a reasonable standard of living in the future. Quite frankly, without unions my children and the children of our members will not likely obtain decent employment.
On behalf of CAW Local 1451, I encourage you to pass these changes and give serious thought to strengthening these changes.
The Chair: We have seven minutes per caucus.
Mr Hope: I was interested, looking at your brief here, in your presentation today because one emphasis you talked about was hard times to begin with -- the trust and understanding between union and management. Then it goes on to show how, after the walls break down between the two organizations, the company and the union, they start to cooperate, working on programs to help employees because the healthier the employee, the more productivity that is created.
What we've been hearing throughout these hearings, and I think you put it very clearly, is that if there is cooperation, understanding and trust built, whatever laws that are put forward will not interfere in your workplace. I guess I'm asking your viewpoint because it seems like you've been through this struggle.
Mr Aberle: I don't want to mislead you in indicating that my workplace has perfect labour relations.
Mr Hope: No, no.
Mr Aberle: When I look back to the 1970s -- I used the word "turbulent" and that was probably a drastic understatement -- it was actually even a violent place to work, in many senses of the word. That whole era did break down and I think the reality is both sides realized that kind of pattern couldn't continue. I think what you're going to see, even what exists today, is more and more there's recognition coming that what exists today can't continue either and there has to be greater cooperation.
Mr Hope: There's been another part. It seems like unions are strike-minded. By the sound of your presentation, you've been involved in collective bargaining. I'm sure that through the collective bargaining process the issue of calling a strike -- as you've indicated in here, you had to go out on strike a couple of times. Most people perceive that there's some person who doesn't work in the plant coming in and negotiating your contract.
Could you outline the actual thoughts that go through the minds of the six, 12 or how many people who are there bargaining on behalf of the employees collectively when the challenge has come to make the decision?
Mr Aberle: For anybody who isn't familiar with it, in our particular local we have a six-person bargaining committee that represents the different parts of the local. The international representative -- or national now that we've become the CAW; I'm still thinking back to the United Auto Workers -- can sit at the negotiating table, but the reality is that in our local it is our bargaining committee, elected by our members, that makes the decisions on what to present and, how do I put it, what the priorities in negotiations are. A decision to strike is carried at a general membership meeting where any member can be there and present his particular viewpoint. Is that response good enough?
Mr Hope: Yes, it's good for me.
Mr Ferguson: I just want to be clear. On behalf of your members, you've elected about six individuals?
Mr Aberle: Six individuals, yes.
Mr Ferguson: Do they represent their own views or the membership views, and how are those sought?
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Mr Aberle: They will go to the membership for the particular issues and concerns, although in most cases they know what they are, because they're elected directly by the membership. In fact we have elections coming up in about a month's time, so the politicking starts to get hot and heavy.
It's a two-way street. They will try to convince the membership what issues they feel are important, and the membership will also talk with them about what it feels is important. But recognize where the bargaining committee comes from. They're the same people. It may be somebody who works farther down the line. It may be that the tool and die maker whom you happen to work with is now on the bargaining committee. It may be the lift truck driver from the next department who is now on it. There is a mesh between the bargaining committee and the membership and in most cases they recognize very clearly what is wanted and what is desired.
Mr Ferguson: What I think would be of interest to the committee, Mr Chair, is that Budd Canada Ltd, back in the 1970s and in fact the 1980s, was a company that was subject to a number of wildcat strikes on and off. In fact the standing joke in my home town is that in the 1970s and 1980s, Budd Canada people were on the picket line more than they were working.
That has turned around, let me tell you, just dramatically up to this point in time, whereby the people who work at Budd Canada in fact don't engage in wildcat strikes. I understand there has been a cooperative effort not only on behalf of the company but the employees as well, Mr Aberle, to ensure that wildcat strikes don't happen any more and in fact don't happen in the future.
I'm just wondering if you could share with the committee the cooperative working relationship that's happened at your plant.
Mr Aberle: Some of the history is correct. Back in the 1970s we were actually called the most militant local in Ontario. We had just an astronomical number of wildcat strikes. We had one of our union presidents, I recall, referred to as "an industrialist terrorist" by one of the major business papers. It was pretty wild.
But the reality is that we had a president who came in the late 1970s and the early 1980s who was bright enough to recognize that this was not the route to go. He took probably a huge amount of political risk himself by taking kind of the first steps to try to re-establish some sort of stability and some sort of order.
There were changes on management's side too, and I don't want to mislead people to indicate that there's a perfect relationship here. By no stretch of the imagination does that exist. However, it did take initiatives in the leadership of both the company and the union together to start to get some stability and, I guess, some workplace harmony.
Mr Offer: Thank you for your presentation. I have a question in the area of organizing.
Mr Aberle: Excuse me. Before you get too far, I have done very little organizing.
Mr Offer: Okay, I'm going into another area then.
Mr Aberle: I have done very little and I can't really respond to a large degree.
Mr Offer: If you don't wish to answer the question, that's fine. The question is in the area of organizing. In any organizing drive, from your experience, would the expression of an opinion by the employer be viewed as intimidation or coercion on the part of the employee?
Mr Aberle: It's very hard to make a general statement of what might be said in some specific cases. The problem you're dealing with -- and I recognize it from a large number of the employees, and there are some fairly good polls that back it up -- is that whether it's true or not, the reality is that most employees feel their company would not want a union. They are scared and they will interpret whatever a company says as some form of intimidation. On what a company says, I think you're going to have to deal with some more specifics before I would say, "This is intimidation."
Mr Offer: I certainly appreciate your response to the question. It's a line of questioning and an area which I'm going to explore during these hearings. I think it's important to get from the deputants who have that experience an appreciation of what it means when an employer expresses an opinion during an organizing drive. I think that's important as we deal with an important aspect of this legislation.
I know Mr Brown has a question, but before that, would you support an amendment whereby the final offer between the bargaining unit and the employer is put on the table for the employees to vote yes or no to accept? Their representatives, in this case yourself, would say: "This is what we wanted, this is what has been offered in the final, final analysis. These are the issues that are outstanding, and, employees, it is now time to vote yes or no." Would you support that?
Mr Aberle: Again, I'd have to look at specifics before I could actually say yes or no. I understand what you're saying and I understand what you're driving at. The reality is that a bargaining committee has to make some hard decisions about whether a final offer really is a final offer. The reality is that each incident is different and each bargaining committee is going to deal with a so-called final offer in a different way.
If a bargaining committee feels something is a final offer, in most cases it will go to membership. Its recommendation may be to accept it or may be to turn it down; it depends on the particulars. They usually will, because it's a politically smart thing to do and bargaining committees really are political creatures.
Mr Brown: We all recognize that we're in very difficult economic times at the moment, for a variety of reasons. We know that layoffs in this province have been great, causing a great deal of hardship across this province in the last months. We know by Ministry of Labour statistics that 70% of those people who have been laid off have been union members. We know from Ministry of Labour statistics and information that in coming months, 25% of the layoffs will occur in CAW locals. I'm wondering what in this legislation is going to help CAW workers maintain their jobs. What will it do to forestall these layoffs, is what I'm trying to ask you.
Mr Aberle: I'm not sure this particular legislation was specifically designed to save jobs or to lose jobs. What it really is talking about is having some sort of fair deal between an employer and its employees, and the necessity of good collective bargaining and good relations. I think that's the philosophy there, especially if you talk to a lot of the European manufacturers. The real basis of a lot of the European success has been some pretty upfront, open and honest discussion from both the employer and the employee sides, saying what is necessary and what is not necessary. That's really what we're lacking in this province. Quite frankly, that's the route I think we're going to have to go.
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Mr Brown: The fact is of course that we've been listening to dramatically opposite points of view as this committee has been going across the province. I guess you would have heard some of those today.
Mr Aberle: I've heard some of them, yes.
Mr Brown: We know that everything government does, for whatever reason, has some impact somewhere on the economy and on jobs. The business community is quite upset. They look at these and say to us: "The score is 32 to zero. There are 32 proposals in this legislation; 32 are pro-union, zero for business. We see this as a confrontational approach." Maybe that's unfair; I don't know. I'm just saying that's what they're telling us. If we're trying to develop this better relationship, and business feels it's not a part of this at all, I'm wondering how you think that's going to happen.
Mr Aberle: You're the one who indicated that 32 changes are pro-union.
Mr Brown: That's what I've been told.
Mr Aberle: If you start looking at them, I don't think they're as pro-union as what you may have been led to believe. The reality is that it's just good business to have good employee relations. I think that's the whole thrust of the legislation. If you have some good relations, you should have a good business.
Mrs Witmer: Thank you very much, Larry, for your presentation. I just want to comment before I say something else. You mentioned in your last page that you have two sons and a daughter and you would hope they would have the same jobs and benefits that you have. I guess we all want that. Unfortunately, I saw a documentary this week which indicates that perhaps won't be the reality for your children or mine. We have maybe reached peak and they will not enjoy the same standard of living.
Having said that, I want to congratulate you. I have personally been involved with your local, 1451, in my position as chairperson of the Waterloo County Board of Education for five years. I was very proud of the fact that when I was chairperson of the board we did cooperate with your union and with management to introduce that school program. I can remember how proud the employees at Budd were when I presented the graduation certificates to them.
You are one of the unions, and there are many others, which I feel has always made a very honest attempt to communicate and put all the facts on the table and establish a good working relationship. I have always enjoyed your president, John Coleman; certainly he's one of the individuals who writes to me and shares concerns with me. I appreciate your ongoing attempts to make sure that I am fully informed as to how you perceive the issues, and if we disagree, it has always been done in a very pleasant manner. So I congratulate you, and I think the tone of your presentation today is very fair. You've put out here what's happened at Budd and some of these suggestions and what have you, so I do congratulate you. I think it's a very positive presentation.
In looking at Budd, I've had the opportunity to attend its annual meetings. As members of Parliament, I know they invite me; I'm sure they do Mr Ferguson, Mr Cooper and Mr Farnan as well. At the last annual meeting I attended, they did express some concern about Bill 40 and the replacement worker section, that perhaps if there were a strike they would not be able to continue to fulfil the contractual obligations and work might be transferred to the US. Can you comment on that at all?
Mr Aberle: If you want us to be frank, if Budd attempted to use replacement workers, there would be war. The reality is that our guys are not pussy-cats. We had three people charged and convicted in the last strike, and that was a relatively short one. I don't think it's realistic for Budd as a corporation even to consider the idea of replacement workers. When Budd talks about needing to meet orders, if you look at the documentation here, I talked about our last strike where Budd attempted to move frames through the picket line. They couldn't do it.
Then they sat down and actually negotiated. Even before we got to the collective agreement Budd said: "Our customers need these particular frames. They need them now. What can we do?" We, as a union said: "Okay, you can get these out because we recognize the urgency for your customers. We've got to meet the customer's requirements." I think Budd is playing a bit of a political game, because I don't think it's realistic to even talk about using replacement workers.
The other thing is that I think our local is responsible enough that if it was in that kind of situation, we are going to make sure the stuff gets out. The reality is that when there's a strike at a steel mill, not everybody is out. There are still workers maintaining the blast furnace, because you can't leave a blast furnace unmanned.
Mrs Witmer: I just want to clarify for the record that I don't think Budd was saying it would use replacement workers. I think they were simply indicating that the replacement workers section of Bill 40 was of some concern. But I'm pleased to hear you say that your local would be prepared to cooperate with Budd to determine how you could meet the demands of the --
Mr Aberle: Assuming there's some open and frank negotiation. The local will not say, "Just because Budd's asked" -- we're not automatically going to respond.
Mrs Witmer: Right, but you are willing to sit down at the table and talk. I think that's all we look for: a willingness to talk and find solutions to problems. I thank you, and I encourage you to continue to work together.
The Chair: We thank you, sir, for attending here.
Mr Hayes: Mr Chair, I see there's a minute or so left. If you don't mind, I'd like to ask a short question.
The Chair: Mr Hayes, I'm glad you see that. Unfortunately, my timekeeping doesn't see that. Thank you very much for mentioning that to me, but I'd suggest you adjust your watch.
Sir, we want to thank CAW Local 1451 and you for attending here and performing a valuable part of this process. You've obviously initiated some good dialogue and that's a valuable thing. Take care.
While the next participant is being seated, I want to acknowledge the delivery of a submission from the Human Resources Professionals of London and District, who were not able to provide a viva voce submission but who have been present throughout most of yesterday and today and have provided a written submission which will be filed as an exhibit and duplicated for the benefit of all of the members of the committee. On behalf of the committee, I want to thank Human Resources Professionals of London and District, in particular Tony Nother, the president of that organization, for their interest and for the work they've engaged in to prepare that submission. I'm confident that all members will find it a valuable part of the process.
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GUELPH HYDRO
The Chair: The next participant is Guelph Hydro. People, welcome. Please tell us your names and your titles, if any, and go ahead with your submissions. We've got written submissions which will form part of the record. You have very nicely highlighted the recommendations. I'm not going to tell you how to make your submission. As you know, oft-times it's more productive to spend time in exchanges and dialogue -- at the very least, it's more lively -- than it is, necessarily, to read all your submission. But you've very thoughtfully highlighted your recommendations. Go ahead.
Ms Joyce Robinson: My name is Joyce Robinson. I'm chairperson of Guelph Hydro. I'm pleased to have the opportunity to speak to you today on the amendments proposed to the Labour Relations Act under Bill 40. I am accompanied by Guelph Hydro's general manager, Mr Jim MacKenzie.
By now you will have heard and received presentations from a broad cross-section of Ontario concerned with various aspects of Bill 40. You heard from representatives of the Municipal Electric Association, the provincial association for the municipal electric utilities, on August 11 in Toronto. The MEA put forward a number of very specific ideas for this committee and the government to consider. We support the MEA position and would urge the committee to give these proposals serious consideration.
The perspective of the broad public sector has largely gone unnoticed in the discussion on the proposed amendments to the Ontario Labour Relations Act. However, we at the municipal level also have concerns with the direction and impact of this legislation.
We recognize that some adjustments were made between the discussion paper and Bill 40. However, it is our opinion that there is a need for further dialogue. Changes to the bill are still required to reflect the needs of the public sector who provide the people of this province with critical services.
Although the minister held earlier sessions regarding the discussion paper, it should be noted that the actual wording of this extensive bill has only been available since early June. Arranging for legal opinions and consideration of the bill's impact takes considerable time. This legislation is too important to rush.
I understand that we are only one of a few municipal utilities presenting a brief to this committee. Given the timing of the release of the bill and these sessions, it would have been difficult for utility commissions to meet and review the legislation in a meaningful way. I would urge the committee to consider hearing from other municipal sector groups and, if necessary, extend the hearing process to allow for more input.
It is our view that a number of the proposed reforms of the Labour Relations Act are not appropriate because of the potential impact on our industry and our ability to serve our customers. As well, one of the stated purposes of the reforms outlined in the discussion paper is to foster economic development. I should note that many of our business and commercial customers believe that introducing these changes under our current economic times will in fact have the opposite effect.
At Guelph Hydro we have a number of concerns which are outlined in our written submission which has been tabled with the clerk of the committee. As time is limited, I will focus my remarks on four specific areas: the purpose clause, replacement workers, newly hired employees and location. I would ask the committee to review our written submission, which is more detailed.
The purpose clause: Bill 40 would for the first time enshrine an extensive, new and untested purpose clause within the legislation itself. We have been advised that including the purpose clause in the legislation affects all other aspects of the legislation.
The current preamble has been referred to for guidance by the Ontario Labour Relations Board. However, its impact is tempered by its position; it expresses an intent but has not been treated as part of the law.
We recommend that the purpose clause be moved out of the legislation and placed in the preamble, as it exists in the current legislation.
Guelph Hydro proposes that the government place the purpose clause as a preamble and consider the following amended wording:
"It is in the interest of the province of Ontario to further harmonious relationships and industrial peace between employers and employees by:
"1. Ensuring that workers can freely exercise the right whether or not to organize and to be represented by a trade union of their choice and to participate in the lawful activities of the trade union.
"2. Encouraging the process of cooperative collective bargaining.
"3. Providing effective methods of joint problem-solving and dispute resolution."
It is our view that our proposed preamble will address the intent of the legislation and the risk of inadvertent impact of the proposed purpose clause within the law will be avoided. The Ontario Labour Relations Board is intended to be a neutral third party. The government proposals under section 2.1, paragraph 1, section 2.1, paragraph 2, and section 2.1, paragraph 3 of Bill 40 will seriously jeopardize the ability of the labour relations board to maintain its neutrality.
Replacement workers: As a provider of critical services, we call for the inclusion of provisions within the legislation which would permit the use of replacement workers to ensure that we are able to maintain critical services during a strike or lockout. I am sure that all members of this committee can appreciate the need to ensure that electrical services are maintained for customers during a labour dispute.
Members of the committee will be aware that the discussion paper was virtually silent on the issue of the use of replacement workers for critical services. We understand that the government intends that municipal electric utilities will be permitted to use specified replacement workers under subsection 73.2(3). This allows for the employer to use replacement workers in order to prevent:
"(a) danger to life, health or safety;
"(b) the destruction or serious deterioration of machinery, equipment or premise; or
"(c) serious environmental damage."
Guelph Hydro finds that this section is still ambiguous and is an inadequate response to the situation. All three of these situations may occur and the danger, destruction or damage is likely to happen to innocent third parties. It is the nature of the electricity distribution business that it is impossible to predict at what point these three definitions occur.
We recommend that the provision of electricity be included as an eighth item under subsection 72.2(3).
Members of the committee will appreciate the need to maintain electric services during a labour dispute. Clearly there are potentially serious consequences should extensive, frequent or lengthy power disruptions occur in the supply of Guelph's two hospitals, our water treatment plants or wells, our sewage treatment plant, elevators in high-rise buildings or even the city's traffic light system.
Although we are pleased to see a recognition of critical services with the use of specified replacement workers, we also have concerns around the use of bargaining unit employees during labour disputes. The legislation provides that the union could give consent for bargaining unit employees to be used during labour disputes. The employer is required to use bargaining unit employees; however, the employees are allowed to decline. Even if the trade union consents to the use of bargaining unit employees, there's no obligation for the bargaining unit employees to fulfil this consent.
We recommend that subsections 73.2(7), (8) and (9) be deleted.
The use of newly hired employees: Subsection 73.1(5) restricts employers from using newly hired persons who have been employed after the earlier of the dates on which notice of intent to bargain was given or the date on which bargaining begins. We view this restriction as onerous. As part of our normal business planning, we may have to add new staff or fill openings due to retirement or promotions.
Let me give you an example. In 1989, Guelph Hydro negotiated with our employees. We received the union's notice of intent to negotiate in early January. Actual negotiations started in March, and following many bargaining sessions it was late July before a conciliation officer was appointed. Unfortunately our employees decided to strike. We had to maintain service with supervisory staff. Over the seven-month period following the notice from the union we had several supervisors retire, and they had to be replaced. Under this proposed legislation we would have been unable to use these new supervisors and our ability to maintain our critical service to our community would have been severely hampered.
This subsection suggests to us that the government believes that an employer will significantly increase management staff in anticipation of a labour dispute or prior to the bargaining. I can assure you that Guelph Hydro has not done so in the past, nor will it do so in the future. It would not be possible under our budget process, nor would it be appropriate under our business plan. I am confident in saying to you that municipal electric utilities do not pad non-union staff.
We recommend that subsection 73.1(5) be deleted. If the government is intent on retaining this section, we recommend that the reference date for newly hired employees be the date conciliation begins.
Section 73 generally addresses labour disputes and replacement worker provisions. I have read where the provisions of this section of Bill 40 are intended to lead to a more peaceful labour-management environment. We have heard that this section is consistent with the direction of this legislation in promoting a harmonious relationship between the parties. I understand this piece of Bill 40 is patterned after similar legislation in Quebec.
However, I am advised that Quebec is not necessarily a more peaceful, harmonious labour-management environment. I understand that in the six-year period from 1986 to 1991 Quebec had more than double the number of workers involved in strikes than Ontario: 136,880 workers per year involved in strikes compared to 56,207 workers per year in Ontario, on average.
Over these six years Quebec averaged 224 strikes per year compared to Ontario's 193. Since Quebec introduced its anti-replacement legislation in 1976 it has accounted for 36% of Canada's striking employees, 50% more than Ontario's 24%. These statistics do not indicate to our commission that the Quebec legislation has fostered a peaceful, harmonious labour-management environment.
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The place of operation: It is unclear from this legislation what is meant by the term "place of operation." At Guelph Hydro we have a number of locations throughout the city: our combined office and service centre, several substation locations, storage yards remote from the service centre, rented warehouse space and poles and transformers on streets throughout the city. Our staff may need to work at any or all of these locations. Guelph Hydro is seeking clarification of the term "place of operation."
We suggest that the government consider the definition of "establishment" as set out in the Pay Equity Act, RSO 1990. In the case of the municipal sector, the municipality was the boundary set for "establishment."
As I indicated earlier, Guelph Hydro has a number of other concerns with Bill 40. As time is limited today, I'm not able to expand on these concerns. I would urge all the members of the committee to review our written brief.
I thank the committee for the opportunity to express our views, which I believe are shared by our colleagues in the public sector. The public sector organizations bring a different perspective to the discussions on Bill 40, and I hope we have helped you in your deliberations on this significant legislation. Since the government appears determined to proceed with Bill 40 at this time, we would encourage further consultation with our provincial association.
This completes our presentation. I'd welcome now any questions from members of the committee.
The Chair: Thank you. Bob Huget, you have five minutes, please.
Mr Huget: I'll be very brief and leave some time for Mr Ward, who has some questions for you as well.
I notice, first of all, this presentation, I think, is a lot like the Municipal Electric Association's in terms of its specific approach to dealing with problems that you see municipal utilities encountering. I have to commend you for this type of approach to this legislation in trying to discuss the issues because I think the MEA had a similar approach. It's very constructive and I'm happy to see that.
On page 6 of the presentation you mention that the definition of an establishment be the same as in the Pay Equity Act. On page 6 you say that the boundary was defined as the municipality in the Pay Equity Act. Is that correct?
Mr Jim MacKenzie: That's correct.
Mr Huget: What you're saying, then, is that for definition purposes you want the same definition in the act. Is that correct?
Mr MacKenzie: That's correct.
Mr Huget: Okay. The second brief question I have is on page 7. You raise the issue that "`with respect to premises to which the public normally has access' requires better definition." I'd like from you what your view would be of how to approach that. Do you have a suggestion how that should be approached?
Mr MacKenzie: We don't have a specific suggestion as to how you describe that, but we think more attention has to be paid to the definition. I think we referred to it in the MEA presentation earlier this month as the Eaton Centre clause. I suppose it was driven by activities around organizing in that particular centre some years ago.
What we're concerned about, and it doesn't apply to Guelph Hydro, because we have a single building with all our operation in one building, but we know of other utilities that have shared premises with city hall, either at a public works yard or the utility head office is within a city hall.
You could have situations where city hall inside employees are on strike, the utility is still working and you've got access to the utility offices through picket lines, those sorts of things. We're not quite sure, and it's not clear within the legislation as it's written, just where people can picket and what right of access means. I think the committee should look at that. We don't have a specific word for you, I'm sorry.
Mr Huget: No magic solution.
Mr MacKenzie: I don't think there's a magic solution to much of this.
Mr Huget: Thank you very much. I'll defer to Mr Ward.
Mr Ward: You made some comment about the Quebec legislation as it pertains to the anti-replacement worker restrictions. I'm not sure if you're aware of it or not, but the person-days lost as a percentage of estimated working time in Quebec declined from 0.45 during the period of 1966 to 1976 to 0.31 from 1978 to 1990. That's a 30% decrease. Don't you think that's a good thing?
Mr MacKenzie: I won't argue with your figures; I'm not familiar with your statistics. All I can say is, we were provided with some statistics which we felt were useful to bring to the committee's attention.
What I think I'm hearing from people is, "We've had this legislation in Quebec for a long time, so why are we concerned about it in Ontario?" But I don't know, and I think it's worthwhile exploring, that the legislation the government is proposing to bring to Ontario is exactly the same as the legislation that is in Quebec. Whether it's patterned after the Quebec legislation word for word, I don't know.
We're suggesting to you that to say that Quebec legislation, as it's set by itself, will create a more harmonious environment isn't necessarily the case. I won't argue with your statistics, but I think our statistics are valid too.
Mr Ward: So you agree that it is a good thing. The second question I have is of the five labour disputes --
Mrs Cunningham: I don't think he meant to say that.
Mr Ward: You heard something and I heard something, Dianne. I'm asking the questions here. Of the five major labour disputes that took place in Ontario that involved major violence, involved the use of replacement workers in one fashion or another, don't you think it's a good thing that, if we can remove that threat of violence, in essence we will be improving the labour relations climate in Ontario?
Mr MacKenzie: I will tell you from my own personal experience that there can be harassment and potentially violent activity in picket lines without replacement workers. So it can happen in both situations. I don't think it's necessary for us to comment on the activities that surround perhaps the private sector. We're here to advise you of our concerns about critical services in the public sector and I think that has to be the focus of our attention.
The Chair: Thank you. Mr Offer, five minutes, please.
Mr Offer: I'd like to talk about the area of replacement workers. I think in the legislation there is a gaping, massive hole and that comes about where a strike takes place and somebody asks -- I don't want to use Guelph Hydro as this example -- for an exemption so they could use either specified workers or other workers, I guess, on a contract-out basis.
There's no process in here as to how the request is made, when the request is made, the amount of time required by the union to respond, what happens if there is a disagreement. In my mind, as this hole exists, I'm thinking about the stoplight isn't being repaired. I'm wondering if you can comment on how you view the process. I know your position is as stated, that you would rather just be exempt, but if that isn't the case, what is it that can happen, the way the bill is worded now?
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Mr MacKenzie: The way we understand the current bill -- the trade union in our case at Guelph Hydro is our International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers local -- we would sit down with the IBEW during negotiations and discuss the issue of making unionized employees available in the event that we have a strike.
The union could agree to that, but there is absolutely nothing in the legislation that says the people whom it represents will be available when the time comes. So it's possible that when you have an emergency, which is when we want to respond and respond quickly, the people who originally said they'd make themselves available under an emergency aren't available. That could be for any number of reasons. They're just not available. We then have to respond in some other way. In the meantime, our response time to whatever emergency we're faced with is lengthened. The legislation is very open-ended. The union could consent, but there's no obligation on the part of employees.
My other concern with that part of the legislation is that, in the area in which we work, we need to ensure that the people we have working have their minds on their jobs, particularly linepersons and electrical substation maintainers. We're dealing with situations where people can fairly easily get hurt, and we need to have people who have their minds on their jobs. I'm afraid, in terms of using bargaining unit employees during the course of a strike, their minds are not always going to be on their jobs, because, after all, they're on strike. They're not going to be very happy with the employer at this point in time. I want to see that our workers are focused on what they're doing and I don't know that they would be in the event of a strike. So I'd be concerned about that.
Mr Offer: I think you've answered the question very clearly and succinctly.
There is another concern you've brought forward and that is the area of location. I think it was brought forward earlier. I'm thinking of the Hydro in my municipality, Mississauga Hydro. It has its own place. There are inside and outside workers -- obviously they're different units -- and they have the substations throughout. Where is that location establishment problem by the wording of the legislation?
Mr MacKenzie: I think the legislation isn't clear. That's the issue: It's not very clear. We have substations throughout Guelph, as Mississauga Hydro does in Mississauga. Does the location mean just our service centre? Does it mean our remote storage yards? What about the warehousing facilities we have outside our service centre? We have one head office and service centre combined, but we have other locations throughout the city. At the same time, we have distribution facilities throughout.
Mr Offer: If there are different locations, how does that affect --
Mr MacKenzie: The legislation isn't very clear on that and I'm not sure how it would impact us.
We were concerned too about utilities. We're not specifically one of them, but, for example, I had mentioned on a previous occasion to this committee the concern with the city's water system, where the engineering staff who manage the water system may be located in city hall but the water treatment plant is some miles away. If you take the definition of location literally, then its location is city hall. Under the legislation, the way we read it, they would not be able to work out of another location, which is the water treatment plant some miles away. So we suggest the establishment criteria cover the whole municipality.
Mrs Witmer: Thank you very much for your presentation. You certainly do bring a different and much-needed perspective to the discussion on the Labour Relations Act. I'm sure by the comments that have been made all the participants today are going to very seriously consider some of the unique concerns you people do have, and the other electrical associations.
I'd like you to comment a little further on the replacement worker section. I'm not sure -- where you say, "Prohibition re Replacement Work," you want the term "person" to be changed to "employee." It's on page 7. Would you please explain why it is you want that change made?
Mr MacKenzie: I think we state in the text, above the recommendation, 73.1(1) defines "`person' as including one `who exercise managerial functions' and is thus excluded from the bargaining unit." Within the legislation, if you include person, then that person has the right to refuse work, so we could have the right of refusal to not only the union staff but our management staff as well. Obviously that is of concern to us in our ability to maintain our service.
Mrs Witmer: So you're looking then for that change and some clarification, as well as to the interpretation.
Mr MacKenzie: I think if the word was changed to "employee," then that's clear enough and someone who exercises managerial or supervisory function is not then included.
Mrs Witmer: Can you clarify somewhat for us as well, you have expressed your concern about the right to access picketing and organizing. How do you see this being detrimental as far as your being able to provide the essential services is concerned? That's on page 7 as well.
Mr MacKenzie: The access is of concern where you've got multi-use buildings. It doesn't affect Guelph directly, but it does affect other utilities where they are in multi-use buildings. It not only affects perhaps the right of access for employees to get to their work through some other picket line for some other union that may be having a labour dispute with their particular employer; it also could affect the right of access for customers.
For example, if you had a joint city hall and city hall staff were on strike and you had customers who wanted access to the utility and they have to access that through picket lines, it could be, where is the picket line? Is it out on the street or is it within the public foyer of the building? The legislation talks about public access. The public is normally able to go into city hall, come and go. That's what city hall's all about. So where is the picket line there? That's not very clear and we really think it needs to be addressed.
The Chair: I want to say thank you to the people from Guelph Hydro for being here this afternoon, for travelling, as they did, to attend at this committee hearing. You've made an important contribution and we appreciate it. We're grateful to you.
Were there any matters committee members want to raise?
Mr Ferguson: Is this the position of the hydro commission?
Ms Robinson: Yes.
Mr Ferguson: This submission has been endorsed by the hydro commission.
Ms Robinson: Yes.
The Chair: Are there any matters committee members want to raise? In view of that, I want to say thank you to the committee members. Thank you to Ms Cunningham and Mr Winninger, and would they please convey to their community our thanks for the community's hospitality while we've been here in London. Thank you to the committee members for their cooperation. We are adjourning until Monday 1:30 pm, Sudbury, Ontario. Thank you, people.
The committee adjourned at 1629.