Despite intensifying lobby efforts from opponents, a House Commons committee has approved Canada Labor Code amendments that would exempt west coast grain movement from being grounded by third-party labor disputes.
But as the legislation goes back to the Commons for two more stages of debate before heading to the Senate, opponents are vowing the fight is far from over.
“We have been doing our best to slow it down,” said Reform party labor critic Dale Johnston. “When it is back on the floor, I will be moving some amendments.”
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And if it gets to the less-government-directed Senate, British Columbia employers say they will do again what they successfully did in the last Parliament – lobby pro-business senators to delay it in hopes of forcing a change or killing it.
“We’ll do everything we can to make our point,” Bob Wilds of the British Columbia Maritime Employers’ Association, said May 1 from Vancouver.
Meanwhile, Prairie Pools Inc., operated jointly by Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba Wheat Pools, has been urging labor minister Lawrence MacAulay to stand firm. They say changes to the Canada Labor Code are needed to stop non-grain employers or unions on the West Coast from holding up grain movement in order to force the government to intervene with back-to-work legislation.
No outside interference
“Removing grain from the equation will not only result in effective collective bargaining,” PPI president John Pearson of Alberta Wheat Pool said last week.
“It will put grain on a level playing field with other industries so we can focus on and commit to our own industrial relations and not be threatened by the failure of other bargaining processes.”
In a letter-writing and lobbying campaign, the B.C. employers and other business groups have told the government that giving grain “special status” will make west coast labor relations worse.
By forcing longshoremen to move grain even if they have been locked out or are on strike, it will give them income at the expense of other commodity shippers.
“Grain will become the ‘ace in the hole’ by subsidizing workers who are on legal strike,” Wilds said in an April 27 letter to MacAulay. “This in turn will unnecessarily prolong strike periods.”
Port workers agree
Longshoremen have supported the proposal to exempt grain from third-party disruption.
However, the business lobby has been having an effect. British Columbia cabinet ministers have asked the labor minister to strike the grain clause.
“We also understand it has been raised in (Liberal) caucus,” said Wilds.
Reform MPs on the Commons committee studying the legislation dragged the debate out for days but the Liberal majority on the committee pushed it through and sent to back to the House of Commons with the grain exemption intact.
Reform is pushing the government to end the threat of strike by putting a mandatory “final offer arbitration” process into labor relations. Rather than having the right to strike or lock out, employees and unions would break deadlocks by submitting their final positions to an arbitrator who would pick one or the other.
“We did not move our amendments at committee,” said Johnston. “We will do that in the House. It looks like the government is making this a priority.”
If the labor code amendments are to make it into law before Parliament adjourns for the summer in mid-to-late June, they must receive clause-by-clause debate and approval in the Commons, third reading debate and then debate and committee hearings in the Senate.
During the last Parliament, similar legislation was held up in Senate committee and died when the election was called and Parliament was dissolved.
