PACC Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC ACCOUNTS

COMITÉ PERMANENT DES COMPTES PUBLICS

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, October 25, 2001

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[English]

The Chair (Mr. John Williams (St. Albert, Canadian Alliance): Good afternoon.

[Translation]

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

[English]

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

Today, pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(e), we have consideration of the final report of the Advisory Committee on Labour-Management Relations in the Federal Public Service, Working Together in the Public Interest.

Our witnesses today are Mr. John Fryer, former chairman of the advisory committee on labour-management relations in the federal public service. I understand, Mr. Fryer, you would like to invite someone else to come forward.

Mr. John L. Fryer (Individual presentation): Mr. Chairman, I thought it might be helpful if the executive director of our task force could join me here. Penny Driscoll is with us.

The Chair: Ask her to come forward, please.

Ms. Driscoll, again, what is your position?

Mr. John Fryer: Penny's previous position was executive director of our task force.

The Chair: Okay.

Mr. John Fryer: Do you need her current position?

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The Chair: No.

Thank you very much. Welcome.

Normally, we have an adversarial role here, Mr. Fryer. We usually have the Auditor General and department witnesses here. We have a little tête-à-tête between the two as to whose point of view is going to carry the day. You're here by yourself. We look forward to having a discussion with you this afternoon.

Before we start, we'll turn it over to you for your opening statement.

Mr. John Fryer: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee. Thank you for inviting us.

I think you received a copy of our report. We're not going to ask whether you've all read it or not. I would mention to you, however, that my nine-member committee refused to have an executive summary. In our first report, we had an executive summary. In the second report, they felt the content was sufficiently important that senior officials shouldn't be let off the hook by just reading two or three pages.

Instead, we wrote an opening statement and then listed our recommendations. I'm going to do the same thing, if I may, with a brief opening statement. I'll reference our recommendations, I think, rather than bore you with reading right through them.

In May 2000, our committee issued its first report. It's not this one but an earlier one, called “Identifying the Issues”. We had sought to catalogue the current state of labour-management relations in the federal public service and to identify as many problems and deficiencies as we could.

The reason for the strategy was I wanted to see if we could get labour and management to agree on what the problems were. I didn't care whether they would agree on who caused the problem. At least if we could identify some of the problems and there was agreement on them, then maybe we could get them to work together to find solutions.

Our second report was issued in June 2001. It recommends many changes to the labour-management relationships in the federal public service that, in our view, will make the relationship sustainable into the 21st century.

When we examined the history of labour-management relations in the federal public service, while a regime of collective bargaining was grafted onto the federal public service by the Public Service Staff Relations Act back in 1967, we found it did not, at the same time, include the adoption of a labour-management regime. If anything, we found human resource management became divided between human resources and staff relations. The recommendations in this report urge both the government and the unions to complete the task of building a trustful and respectful regime for labour-management relations throughout the public service.

In 1967, when the federal government of the day decided collective bargaining was an appropriate mechanism for determining wages and working conditions in the federal public service and passed the Public Service Staff Relations Act, they forgot to follow through to turn the federal public service into a unionized workplace, rather than a non-unionized workplace onto which a collective regime had been grafted.

To achieve this goal, we propose a new framework based on a collaborative approach to solving workplace problems. Our framework is based on the fundamental principle that joint efforts by employees, unions, and management will improve the quality of government services. Consultation, co-development, and collective bargaining, we think, are all appropriate mechanisms for the creation of a win-win environment in the workplace.

Frankly, we think there has to be a basic change from an adversarial relationship to a more joint problem-solving approach. In order to achieve it, we believe we have to rebuild trust between the parties. Both sides, and I emphasize both sides, have to be willing to explore new and different ways of solving problems and dealing with each other. I think the popular term is we need a culture change. I hate popular terms like paradigms and all those terrible things, but we do need to change people's attitudes.

We believe such a change, while difficult, is nevertheless possible. We further believe the change can be encouraged by revising and modernizing the Public Service Staff Relations Act. It, after all, has not substantially been amended since 1967 and is now a very old-fashioned statute. For example, it doesn't have a preamble, whereas all the labour statutes I'm familiar with, such as the Canada Labour Code, have preambles that say what they're all about. But the Public Service Staff Relations Act does not.

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I've been told by lawyers who know that it's a very complex statute. My own view of labour-management relationships is that if the employees can't understand the law that governs the relationships with their employer, and they can't understand the collective agreement that spells out their wages and their working conditions, they are not good relations; it's not a good environment.

As I say, we think the change, while difficult, is possible, and in changing the Public Service Staff Relations Act, there should be a single redress system.

I teach labour relations at the University of Victoria. In labour relations 101, there are two kinds of disputes in labour relations. One is what we call rights disputes, which are commonly referred to as grievances, where an individual employee has a beef because they didn't get their overtime last weekend or somebody else got the job they should have had.

There are currently, in the federal public service, 22 different mechanisms for resolving rights issues employees have in the workplace. So if you didn't get the job you wanted and somebody else got it, that's one procedure. If the boss gave you an unfavourable performance evaluation and you're worried about whether you're going to get the next promotion, that's another procedure. If they asked you to work overtime last weekend and they didn't give you the money for working overtime, that's another procedure.

There are 22 separate and distinct procedures currently in place for the resolution of issues that arise in the workplace. Our recommendation is to have one for dealing with rights disputes.

The other kind of dispute that arises in the workplace is what we call an interest dispute, where the interest of the whole group is involved. Those are the disputes that lead to strikes. Everybody wants 10% and we're only offering them 2%. We also have some recommendations for those disputes. They tend to be the higher-profile ones and the ones that get the public attention. We're suggesting the establishment of a new mechanism to deal with those.

Finally, a good, stable, and productive labour-management regime should be the foundation of good human resources management in a unionized environment. I emphasise that because in our investigations there were people who suggested to us that the federal public service might work a lot better if there weren't any unions in it. For all I know, they may be right. But I didn't find it terribly relevant because I was clearly given information, from senior government officials, that this was not an issue of public policy. They were even prepared to consider the notion of a non-unionized public service.

My report is written within the context of the fact that there is a unionized public service, and presumably there will continue to be.

We say the employees in Canada's public service and broader public sector are almost completely represented by certified bargaining agents—a situation that we do not expect to change. Finding a way to build effective working relationships between unions and management thus becomes a key public policy issue.

In this report, our committee believes it has developed a new framework that, if implemented, will assist in building a solid labour-management relationship in the federal public service. We make these recommendations because it is our considered conclusion that the industrial or adversarial model that has been in place for nearly four decades is ill-suited, indeed inappropriate, for the federal public service of the future.

That's my introductory statement, and I've listed the 33 recommendations. I wasn't going to go through all of them, but I will, just briefly, tell you we think there should be a new institutional framework, which means significant change to the Public Service Staff Relations Act. We've made quite a few recommendations in that regard.

We think the way we resolve disputes in the federal public service should be changed. I've mentioned already the notion of rights disputes. We think there should be a single system for dealing with them, which should have a final place where a dispute can go for a third-party judgment.

We are suggesting that with interest disputes consideration be given to the establishment of what we call a public interest dispute resolution commission. That is because the unions—management to a lesser extent because it's become a bit of a narcotic for them—go apoplectic when politicians put on their political hats and enforce on the unions the will of the employer. It drives them crazy, and they feel it's completely unfair.

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It only exists in the federal and provincial arenas, where a member of the legislature or a member of Parliament can enact a law that is stacked in favour of one side or the other in a dispute. It really drives them nuts.

Some of the management representatives indicated to me that it had become almost a narcotic. So when there's a dispute now, instead of really looking for a solution, people say, “Dust off that bill”. I think there's a subcommittee of cabinet that meets at that time and the deputy prime minister chairs it. You know, “We get these devils back to work; unanimous consent, and off we go.”

We don't think that's the best way to deal with labour-management situations because the legacy drags on and the bitterness drags on. So we want to save both the unions and the parliamentarians by having a... We think we'd be better served by having a public interest dispute resolution commission that would essentially jawbone these characters into reaching settlements.

Obviously, Parliament would never give up its right to act if it needed to. But we think they need a little bit more friendly persuasion along the way, because it becomes too easy for them to not reach a settlement. They know you will meet and impose a settlement on them at any rate, and then they don't have to go back to their members and say, “Sorry, we couldn't get everything for you.” They can say, “Those nasty people on Parliament Hill have sided with the boss, and this is what we're stuck with.” That's not conducive to good labour-management relations, where people are forced to take the responsibility for reaching their own settlements.

So we think this public-interest dispute commission could be helpful. It's not a new idea. The idea was first mooted in 1967, the centennial year. There was a task force on labour-management relations chaired by a man called Buzz Woods, who was then an academic at the University of Manitoba, in Winnipeg; L'Abbé Dion, from Laval; and Crispo, from Toronto—reputable people. They proposed such a commission back then, but it never went anywhere. So we dusted it off because we think it's still a good idea.

We see a new role as well for the National Joint Council, where the 16 different bargaining agents get together and deal with the government on a variety of issues. There's a real role for that council. It's one of the more positive labour-management relationships in the federal public service.

Then we have something to say about some consistency with the separate employers we've been spinning off—the revenue agency, Nav Can, food inspection, and parks. There should be some consistency with the new regime being applied to new employers. That was very much requested by them. A lot of the new employers are not totally happy with this “neither fish nor fowl” stature they find themselves in. They have some independence, but they don't have complete independence.

As I understand it, their complaint to us was that they have the independence to reach an agreement with their own union, but they don't control their budget. So if they spend one more cent than Treasury Board told them they could give to their employees, the money isn't there to deliver on the settlement. So there's quite a bit of frustration out there, we've found, with the separate employers.

That's it. It's time for a change. We believe the timing is right. The current system isn't working as well as it could or should. We all know about the demographic changes that are happening in the public service. We all know that we want to rejuvenate and rebuild what is a very good public service.

Frankly, we believe the employees we'll be looking for in the 21st century would much rather be working in an environment where they looked forward to the alarm clock going off in the morning than one in which they didn't.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Dr. Fryer. We appreciate that opening statement very much.

[Translation]

Mr. Perron, please.

Mr. Gilles-A. Perron (Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, BQ): Thank you for coming, Dr. Fryer. I shall ask you a question to start our discussion.

Your report has surely been submitted to management, I mean the employer or the government, as well as to the unions and both parties have read it formally or informally.

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What were the reactions from the government and the unions to that document?

[English]

Mr. John Fryer: Thank you.

You're absolutely correct that both sides received the report at the same time, because my advisory committee was comprised of nine people—three from the unions, three from management, and three academics from outside. I insisted on a tripartite review.

I have not seen the government's reaction. I don't mean they're keeping it secret from me. My understanding is they are preparing a reaction to the report and its recommendations, and they will be submitting that. I haven't seen it, so I don't know what that is.

The union reactions differ somewhat—different unions have different reactions. I'll start with the one that's been the most positive, the Professional Institute of the Public Service. They have submitted a formal brief to the human resources task force that Madam Robillard set up and is continuing. They're very supportive of the report and its recommendations. Many of the smaller unions in the federal public service are supportive of many of the recommendations.

The Public Service Alliance... I hate to characterize the reaction of the alliance, but what they wanted is to have the Public Service Staff Relations Act abolished. They wanted federal public service workers to be covered by the Canada Labour Code. We did not agree with that, because we believe there are some special characteristics of the public service that make it a little different from private industry. So their response is not totally favourable.

From talking to Madam Turmel and other officials at the Public Service Alliance of Canada, I can say they support many of the changes we're recommending. Now, this is a package, right, so they're more supportive of the ones that look good for them and less supportive of the ones that... you know. But it's presented as a package obviously because I had a tripartite committee. I'm presenting to union and management, so I have to have some balance.

[Translation]

Mr. Gilles Perron: Let us suppose that both parties would agree and implement the financial aspects of your report. How much would it cost?

[English]

Mr. John Fryer: The truth is, I did not do that number crunching. However, I said to members of my committee that if they felt any of our recommendations were high-cost items—and I had assistant deputy ministers on my committee representing management—they should flag them to us, because I didn't want to make a recommendation that is very expensive and then be embarrassed.

As far as I know, there are no recommendations in here that have really significant costs. Changing the Public Service Staff Relations Act, for example, will obviously take the time of lawyers and hearings and things like that, but we're suggesting that part of the Public Service Staff Relations Board be abolished, and that their task, their job, be transferred to the Canada Labour Relations Board. I didn't sit down with a pencil and work that out.

I don't think there is anything... and with this public-interest dispute commission, we made it clear it should not be a full-time institution. It should be quite small, three to seven people. We think it would need to meet only if there were a dispute. We don't want people sitting around in an office in Ottawa waiting for trouble to break out, right? We don't envisage that costing much more than the plane ticket to come to Ottawa and spend the time necessary if a dispute breaks out to make recommendations.

In all our recommendations, I don't think there are any high-cost items. However, if I were the employer, I might say, yes, there are no high-cost institutional items here, but if we give more rights to the employees, for example, if we agree to co-develop staffing, it could result in costs. But none of the institutional changes that I and my team recommended involve significant expenditures.

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[Translation]

Mr. Gilles Perron: Mr. Chairman, if you would allow me, I shall share my time with my learned colleague from Laurentides, Mrs. Guay. I give her my eight minutes.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Perron.

Ms. Guay, please.

Ms. Monique Guay (Laurentides, BQ): Good afternoon. I am pleased to welcome you. As the spokesperson of my party on labour issues, I work on my union files. All issues relating to strikes and what is happening at that level are under my responsibility.

Obviously, we are very interested in the work you did. You said that there are 22 different processes. I find it totally ludicrous. It is a loss of time and energy. There should be one single process. I think things would happen much faster if we didn't have to find people dispersed everywhere.

You should also know that the BQ has always been opposed to back-to-work laws. We always prefer negotiation. In the province of Quebec we have several unions that have adopted a more modern approach and given preference to negotiation between workers and management. We know that workers become much more efficient when agreements can be reached. There even have been cases of workers who accepted a pay reduction to save their place of work. There are many such agreements in Quebec.

I would like to know if you have compared what is happening at the federal level with the situation elsewhere. Did you conduct that study, maybe not in this report but in another context? As you are an expert, maybe you could tell us what you think of it.

[English]

Mr. John Fryer: First of all, I'll comment on the problem of too many procedures and link it back to my response to your colleague. Maybe one procedure would be a lot cheaper than 22. I didn't do that costing either, but something tells me if you meld 22 bureaucracies into one, it has to save you some money.

The basic problem, we believe, that has developed between the federal government and its employees is that there's been a breakdown in trust that they're capable of settling the problems—and they're tough issues. So the unions, we think, have tended to say “We have very little power; we're not going to negotiate. We're going to say this is what our members want. Then you force it on us, and we'll blame you.” You know, it's the big, bad government.

My own view is that a mature labour-management relationship should be able to withstand making difficult decisions. Nobody likes accepting wage reductions or benefit reductions in order to keep a plant open, but sometimes that's the decision that's in the best interests of the membership. My experience is you don't make those decisions without consulting the membership about whether they agree with you or not.

Our own view is that the tough part of labour-management relations is making the difficult tradeoffs and going back to the membership and saying we couldn't get everything you wanted us to get, but we think we've done pretty well, or whatever. Then you take your lumps. The membership may say they'll get new leadership. And we deal with that in our report. Our own view is that kind of tough decision-making, which is key to good labour-management relationship, has disappeared in the federal public service. They don't do that very often, because both sides know in the back of their minds that if we get into too much of a problem here, the people on the Hill will solve it for them.

The Chair: Thank you, Madam Guay.

Mr. Shepherd, please, for eight minutes.

Mr. Alex Shepherd (Durham, Lib.): First of all, maybe you can clear up one thing. When this report first came out, you made a comment in the press—and maybe it's a silly issue and you can clear it up—that members should be able to attend union meetings at the expense of the employer, during employer—

Mr. John Fryer: Absolutely.

Mr. Alex Shepherd: Why is that?

Mr. John Fryer: Absolutely, I'll tell you. Thank you very much for raising that.

Within the federal public service there are two groups of people. If you speak to management, they are “my employees”. If you speak to the union officials, they are “my members”. They're the same folks, yet they are treated as two solitudes. Many managers within the federal public service do not believe the unions speak for their employees. They believe they know what their employees are thinking; they have the relationship with their employees. They choose not to listen to what the union says their members think.

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Well, that's the system turned upside down, because the law says these folks are represented by a union. Whether or not you like what the union tells you about what the members think or not, you're legally obligated to deal with that institution.

We found great dissension in the federal public service about whether or not the unions speak for the members. So we have to find a solution to that. Again, this is not a new solution. It is something that I advocate, and have advocated for 25 years, to all employers and employees in the country, or anywhere else for that matter. Workers do not come to union meetings when they're held in a downtown hotel after work. That's not the way life is any more. So what happens is it's very easy for a small group of dedicated folk to get hold of the organization—to have a meeting of six of them and say we represent... For example, I have a daughter who was for five years the president of the clerical workers union at the B.C. telephone company. One thousand five hundred members worked in the headquarters building. The quorum for union meetings to do business was 35 people. In five years she never had 35 people show up to a meeting after work.

Mr. Alex Shepherd: But what does that tell you?

Mr. John Fryer: That tells me that the employees aren't so interested in the arcane day-to-day administration of the union. I don't know how many union meetings you've been to, and I don't say this disrespectfully, but they are the most god-awful boring things I've ever been to, and I've had to go to lots of them.

What needs to happen is the unions need to become more democratic and more reflective of the membership. There's only one way to do that and that's to have everybody go to the meeting. And there's only one way to have everybody go to the meeting and that's to have them at the workplace during working hours.

Now, I don't mean that the union officials down tools anytime they want to have a confab. I mean that grown-up, mature people sit down and say that one hour or two hours a month can be assigned, if necessary, for discussing union meetings at the workplace.

I've been around workplaces and this is what happens. There's a union meeting. It's held off the working premises. The first thing that happens after the meeting is a stool pigeon calls the boss and tells him what has happened at the meeting. Somebody finks; you can guarantee it. So then the union leader goes to meet the boss the next day and says we had a meeting last night and we decided A, B, and C. Well, first, the employer has already been told a somewhat different version, and second, he doesn't believe that the six people who met really reflect the views of the thousand he's in charge of.

So we've got a system right now where management doesn't really trust that the union is representing the interests and the views of the workers. My own view and the view of my committee is that we have to fix this. We have to make sure these unions are democratic and are truly representative of the views of the employees.

Mr. Alex Shepherd: Just to be the devil's advocate for a minute, you touched on the whole issue of whether in fact having unions in the first place is an appropriate model of management relations. Obviously, if we look at the private sector—maybe you don't want to look at that—

Mr. John Fryer: No, no.

Mr. Alex Shepherd: —I know my own children are all engaged in fairly high-paying industries that aren't unionized and they're very happy with that relationship. I think we are skewing our thought process if we don't consider some of those management models.

Mr. John Fryer: Well, yes and no. From my point of view, this is a fairly complex subject matter. Rightly or wrongly, the public sector in Canada is totally unionized—the whole public sector. I don't care whether it's the provincial government, hospitals, schools. It doesn't matter. It's unionized. And it's unionized almost 100% in juxtaposition to a nation where there virtually are no unions, namely the United States of America. The United States of America is a non-union society. Their penetration levels are less than 10%. Any student of the subject will tell you that's a non-union society.

So here we are with a virtually 100% unionized public sector in a rather unusual economic environment. Our private sector union penetration rates have been declining. There are less members in the private sector, but in the public sector, as I say, it's 100%.

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Now, it's a public policy decision whether you want to open that up or not. I consulted with people in government about whether they wanted to open that up in this report, and they told me no, under no circumstances would today's government ever advocate getting rid of unions.

Mr. Alex Shepherd: It wasn't part of your study.

Mr. John Fryer: It wasn't part of my study. But I've had all this feedback, because we're talking about bringing in high-tech people and computer folks and all this, and, of course, people say to me—correctly—we're getting them from all these non-union places. Listen, I have six kids myself. They're not all rabid unionists, believe me. One of the issues that I believe my former union colleagues are going to have to deal with is the issue of performance pay, because today's young people will not accept that we all get the same pay regardless of the effort. They just won't accept it.

So that means if you're going to be a representative union, you have to be prepared to be imaginative and thoughtful about how you do differentiate some of these rewards, so that you are representing the views of your membership. What I'd like to see is the system opened up so that we can begin to do that in government.

Mr. Alex Shepherd: I have one last question that bothers me. You talked about separate employers being able to negotiate separately. Within the framework of government financing and budgets and staying within your budgets, how do you allow this kind of discretion?

Mr. John Fryer: I'm very happy to be here, because these public policy issues are issues I've been worried about and thought about for most of my adult life.

I don't think people thought through the human resources implications of an alternative service delivery privatization model. The decision was made to cut down the size of the core public service and spread things around. The human resources implications came later. I agree with you. How do you let some of these big agencies get out ahead of, let's say, benefits and conditions and wages in the core public service? If I were a public service union leader, I'd be using that like crazy to try to whipsaw these different agencies.

So I assume the poor old Treasury Board's role is to try to keep it as consistent as possible. I know, because I negotiated the first agreement for the Canadian air traffic controllers when they moved to Nav Canada. There were some outrageous promises made to employees that if they supported the move away from the public service to this new agency what nice things they'd be able to get once they were free of all those terrible Treasury Board regulations. When they got to be independent, they expected the delivery. I was sitting in a set of negotiations where they said to me, we want a minimum of a 50% raise and don't even talk to us if you bring back anything less than 50%. That had all come out of the promise that once they were taken away from the Department of Transport, they'd be paid what air traffic controllers in Switzerland and Germany and all these places get. So they'd had a survey done, and it's a 50% raise, thank you very much. I used to go to meetings where they held up signs saying, “Where's the money?”

I don't really think that the labour relations implications of the establishment of separate agencies was thought through as carefully as it might have been.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Shepherd.

Mr. Martin, eight minutes, please.

Mr. Pat Martin (Winnipeg Centre, NDP): Thank you very much, Dr. Fryer, and welcome Ms. Driscoll.

I want to start by complimenting both you and your whole team on what is a very thorough and comprehensive overview of an incredibly complex issue. I don't think there are many people in the country who could have waded through the quagmire of public service labour relations as ably as your committee has done so. Although I'm well aware of the mixed reviews from the public sector unions, I think everybody welcomes the tone—if not the content—and the preamble where it says we seek to move towards a less adversarial relationship and towards a more cooperative one.

Having said that, though, and having come from a career representing a private sector union, I can sympathize with why some of the public sector unions are suspect. Red lights and alarms go off as soon as you hear that sentiment expressed, because it really is a call to lay down our arms or lay down our traditional tool chest that we used to use to elevate the standards of wages and working conditions of the people we represented. It is a call to extend the olive branch. What I'm saying is that a lot of us have gone through the TQM—the total quality management—the work circles, quality of work life, blah, blah, blah, and we're so sick of it that it's just enough to...

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We found that when we did lay down our guard and enter into that, we got stomped all over. We had to put our guard back up, stronger than ever, to even maintain where we were.

I guess my question is, you've got a completely demoralized public sector—60,000 jobs cut and hacked and slashed, a $30 billion pension surplus ripped off from them by the last minister of the Treasury Board, privatization, cost recovery, and alternative service delivery. How are we going to introduce this in a non-threatening way?

I`ll let you elaborate on that a bit, and then I'd like to ask you about back-to-work legislation as well.

Mr. John Fryer: I thought we'd be totally open with you. What I've told the unions is, you need change because you can't win. Under the present system, you cannot possibly win a dispute with the government that has all the power. All it has to do is call you guys into session and say, “That's it. The boss's will is imposed on you.” You can't win.

The Chair: You have to draw the line there, Mr. Fryer.

Mr. John Fryer: Was I being too harsh?

The Chair: They still have to have the vote in the House of Commons, and not everybody always votes in favour. There sometimes is a division.

Mr. John Fryer: I know. Okay.

I'm not trying to characterize it improperly. I do know how difficult it is, certainly, for some parties to be supporting back-to-work legislation when their instincts tell them they should be saying the hell with it. I understand that.

The problem in the federal public service, at this point in time, is that I don't believe the unions can win any fight. That, to me, isn't a place where you can have good morale and people lining up six deep to come to work—which is what we say we want, right? We want to recruit the brightest and the best. Recruit them into a completely one-sided operation where the boss always wins and the workers always lose? I can't understand that.

I understand the hesitancy that some of the public sector unions may have, or any other unions. I've been around the labour movement, and I've negotiated with governments, but I've negotiated with governments in an environment where there was a win, lose, and draw. The legislative situation in the federal public service, in my view, is stacked in such a way that there are no wins. So why not try a different way?

Mr. Pat Martin: Having said that, do I have a minute or two left?

The Chair: You have four minutes.

Mr. Pat Martin: A luxury of time, my word!

Having said that, I'm with you that back-to-work legislation is an absolute bastardization of the collective bargaining process as it takes away the stressor that may in fact resolve the impasse.

What about the public interest resolution commission.

Mr. John Fryer: Yes.

Mr. Pat Martin: How is it going to work?

Mr. John Fryer: I'll tell you what we envisage. We envisage that negotiations today are too much like this: You sit down across a table and the Treasury Board says, “Here it is, take it or leave it.” So you either take whatever it is or you leave it. If you decide to leave it, have a strike vote, and walk around with picket signs, the moment you have any impact upon the delivery of services, the bells ring. Right? That, to me, doesn't make a lot of sense. So we tried to find out where the problem was.

We think there's a problem with the power relationship, but we also think there's a problem with there being this easy out. It becomes—and we were told by government officials—easier every time it's used; it starts to become automatic. The first time it's used, people worry about it, but the 10th and the 11th time...

I recall how unhappy I was personally when the postal bill went through and included in the bill were specifics for inclusion in the collective agreement. That was the first time that had ever been done in the history of this country. But if you've done it once, you'll do it again.

We've said that the power relationship is wrong and the bargaining relationship is wrong. What these folks need, all sides, is some help in how to construct win-win deals. We see the commission as helping them do that.

The commission would have the power to make a public report on the negotiations. The reason we think that is important is sometimes unions get out of line—so do bosses for that matter—and try to push unreasonable positions. We felt with the right of publication, a public interest dispute commission could say to the people of Canada, for example, “We've looked at the issues. Here's what they seem to be. We feel that in this instance, the union's position is more reasonable; in this instance, the employer's.” Then, if it did come to the point where you had to legislate, you would have a bit of a model that would have been designed in part by experts, the people whose business this is. We thought that would take some of the sting out of what happens now. We also felt that if it works well, we shouldn't have too many disputes that go all the way, that we could get more settlements than we do now.

• 1615

My own sense of it is—and I've had a lot of dealings with the people since I've been spending a lot of time in Ottawa—there's lots of goodwill on both sides of the table. I don't think Treasury Board negotiators like the situation they're put in. I think they would rather negotiate more meaningfully. I know the unions feel that way, almost without exception.

So our view is, let's open the process up a bit and let's do some new things. For example, we talk about co-development. All right. Management was very nervous about agreeing to change the legislation to give the unions the right to negotiate—that is, with the right to strike—either classification or staffing. But both staffing and classification are the lifeblood of the public service. Your wage is determined in large measure by what your job classification is, not whether you get another 2%. Yet under the current system, you have no right whatsoever, nor does your elected representative, to have any say whatsoever in what your classification is. It's all designed unilaterally by the boss. So we said we thought we needed to change that a little bit.

Management was uncomfortable—I'm talking about my management representatives—with going all the way to negotiation because they didn't feel they would like to see strikes over it. But we did agree to the notion of a concept of what we call co-development, where these issues in future would be jointly determined—things like classification and staffing—rather than unilaterally determined.

If these recommendations get accepted and these things start to happen, the scope of issues on the bargaining table, the co-development table, or the discussion table broaden. We believe the relationship between the parties will get better. They'll have to learn to do more of this trading off. You see, what's happened in the federal public service is that we don't let them bargain lots of things. So where's the room for trade-off? I mean, all you do is go to the table and you try to negotiate a wage increase. Well, have you got some give and take? No, you don't have any give and take because you're straightjacketed into a very narrow set of issues that you can bargain under the Public Service Staff Relations Act.

So we think we need to treat everybody like grown-ups, broaden the scope of issues that are bargainable or jointly settleable or discussible, and put in place an agency to help them if they get stuck. This is with the view to the long-run picture, or medium- to long-run picture, being a different environment.

And yes, the point Mr. Shepherd asked about is critical. We absolutely believe that the unions have to be opened up. There has to be more participation and we have to look for new leadership coming up through the ranks and new ideas. Management has to be comfortable that when the union speaks, they in fact are speaking on behalf of the membership. All these things need to change simultaneously. We think we've got a package that, if implemented, could, if it worked—well, it might not work, but the current system is grinding down.

The Chair: Thank you Dr. Fryer. Thank you, Mr. Martin.

Mr. Jaffer, please, eight minutes.

Mr. Rahim Jaffer (Edmonton—Strathcona, Canadian Alliance): I have only one quick question as I'm becoming more familiar with the report.

Coming from a private sector background myself, one of the things I find are obviously important are incentives. Obviously there may be incentives that you may propose to keep public service employees motivated. Obviously pay is a natural one. But outside of that, I know one of the recent changes was that the air miles plan—the one public service employees could never collect—was changed. Is there anything else in this direction that your report or your study has found might need to be built in?

Mr. John Fryer: Very good question, and I'm not shirking it when I say I don't have any glib answers. I believe, to the very root of my soul, having spent 42 years in labour-management relations, that the best solutions are the ones that are worked out together.

I mentioned my views about performance pay. Unions are going to have to deal with performance pay. You can't just put your head in the sand and say, “Sorry, one rate for the job; that's it.” It's not going to survive into this century. And all these other programs... Some unions I've met hate rewards programs, when the boss recognizes people and gives them certificates and things like that. Some unions don't like it; other unions do like it. I'd be interested in finding out what the employees think, and if the employees are okay with it, go for it.

• 1620

I feel that about any other incentive, or any kind of incentive. Let them be jointly determined. In order to get it right, it's critical that you have the employee participation, and that is a real problem right now in the federal public service.

Right now there's a vote going on out there and people complaining about who's getting the vote and who isn't. There is dissension, and I would like to see an end to that. But I would say the most problematic incentive issue that faces unions and management, period, is this whole notion of performance pay, because it is now so well entrenched in the private sector. I think it started at the executive level.

All the committees they put me on have long titles, but I'm on a committee that has something to do with executive compensation and retention, or something. We've completely redesigned the performance-based system that existed in the federal public service for the executive category, because when we found it, just about everybody was getting it, and we thought that wasn't the purpose of performance pay. So that has changed.

So in the management ranks they have these things, and there are other things. For example, another thing I suggested at this executive level meeting was the notion of what we call “cafeteria benefits”, where you have a value on your benefit package, and depending on your personal circumstances, you can select different things. If you're a young person and you want to take more vacation and less life insurance or health insurance, or you get older and you want more of this... You know what I mean.

There's a finite value to the fringe benefit package, and within the finite value, you can tailor-make a package. All these kinds of things should be talked about at the federal public service level. I don't advocate that they have to be introduced, but they should be on the table for discussion.

I believe the federal public service should be, and should be seen as, a good employer. There are all kinds of things I could beef about. I don't see much day care in the federal public service when I go across this country, in terms of being a leading employer.

I was absolutely horrified when I read a story in the Citizen last year, where we can't get our act together to subsidize bus passes because some bloody computer can't be programmed to deduct for a bus pass. It sounded nonsensical. I didn't like being associated with a feeble answer like that when we should be encouraging public transit. So there's no end to the kinds of things we could be doing to be a good employer.

All I say and my committee says is do it together with the elected representatives of your employees. Don't do it unilaterally as a boss and then get annoyed when not everybody applauds.

Mr. Rahim Jaffer: All I really wanted to know was that this sort of innovation exists there, at least.

Mr. John Fryer: Somebody said something earlier about collective bargaining. I happen to believe collective bargaining is the most imaginative, flexible arrangement for dealing between employers and employees in a unionized environment. It's like democracy. Nobody has thought of a better system yet.

If you accept that this is going to be a unionized environment, then my view is we have to make collective bargaining work. If it's going to be a non-unionized environment, it's a whole different ball of wax, a whole set of different issues that have to be confronted. But if it's going to be a unionized environment, my own view is that you treat the people you're dealing with as grown-ups and give them as much participation as possible in determining their own wages and working conditions.

The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Fryer.

We're going to move on to the second round. It's a four-minute round.

Mr. Bryden.

Mr. John Bryden (Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Aldershot, Lib.): Can you have collective bargaining without the right to strike?

Mr. John Fryer: Yes, you can.

Mr. John Bryden: Is that not a direction that one should be looking in?

Mr. John Fryer: No, largely because of employer resistance.

There was a time when employers were quite supportive of collective bargaining with no strikes and having arbitration. I'm going back 30 or 40 years. When the Public Service Staff Relations Act came in, in 1967, the first drafts and the report of Jacob Finkleman that made it come to pass all recommended against the right to strike. Jake Finkleman was rabidly against the right to strike, but there was an election, and the postal workers were a nuisance in the Toronto area, and so, all of a sudden, the right to strike got hooked onto the bill. Fair enough.

Now the employer wants nothing to do with arbitration. In today's environment, the employer says, there is no way I'm going to have some third party come in here and tell me what I'm going to do and how much I can afford to spend, end of discussion.

• 1625

So, if anything, over time, employers have moved away from wanting the non-strike model, and I know the unions are divided. Many of the unions that appeared before me said they would just like to get back to third-party arbitration so that there was a third-party that could overrule the government. Others did not, and frankly, the biggest union in the federal public service, by far, which is the Public Service Alliance of Canada, believes workers should have the right to strike.

Mr. John Bryden: I was struck that your proposal basically centres on the idea of cooperation between the union and management—

Mr. John Fryer: Yes.

Mr. John Bryden: —provided that the union is democratic.

You also made the observation that strikes mean nothing any more anyway, because the legislators just legislate them back to work. There's a fundamental rightness to that right in the sense that Parliament represents more people than the union does.

Mr. John Fryer: Yes, absolutely.

Mr. John Bryden: So it would seem to me that certainly this committee should be considering this whole question, that maybe we should be examining whether eliminating the right to strike is a way to make your proposals work.

Mr. John Fryer: Okay, and here's my concern.

Mr. John Bryden: Please.

Mr. John Fryer: We're talking about the right to legally strike. Nothing can take away the right of a worker to walk off the job if he's sufficiently upset. This is part of the problem we're facing in federal public service labour relations. The next time you pass back-to-work legislation, I believe you can expect defiance.

Mr. John Bryden: That's why we have to eliminate the right to strike.

Mr. John Fryer: No, that's why we have to change the system, where the right to strike is retained but not used.

Mr. John Bryden: Yes, but I'm not quite—

Mr. John Fryer: That's the whole purpose of this report, not to take away that right but to create an environment where it's virtually never needed.

Mr. John Bryden: I would love that, but I'm just not sure how we're going to achieve that practically.

Let me try another tack, then. You talked about performance pay, and I agree it's an absolutely essential issue. You're not going to invite bright young people to the public service if they can't be awarded on merit. You're proposing that this should be in some kind of consultation with the union leadership, but what if the union leadership is adamantly against it? Is this not something that I, as a legislator, am going to have to legislate, then, because I know we have no choice?

Mr. John Fryer: Your logic is fine. I would agree with you that you could legislate it. I guess the only difference we might have is that I have a lot of faith in union leaders. If this sounds impolite, it's not meant to be, but they're elected. I've run both ways, and I promise you, union elections are a little easier than parliamentary elections. I was successful in one and not in the other, so one has to be better than the other.

But seriously, though, they are elected, and I think they're responsible folks. My own view is that they will move into the area of discussing this stuff, that we're not just talking about people who say absolutely no. But by the same token, I have said, and our committee has said, let's open up the organizations.

I personally believe the recommendation for union meetings during working hours is probably the most important recommendation in the report, because the distrust that exists in the system now and the low morale revolves very much around this two solitudes issue: my employees, my members. If people feel the process is fair, I believe they will use it to resolve issues, even as recalcitrant an issue as performance pay, and if they don't, you do retain the right, at any rate.

I had people appear before me and say they wanted me to write in the report that Parliament can never again legislate them back to work. But I said, if I wrote that, what would be the point, since it would have no meaning whatsoever and they would think it was silly? But there are people out there in reasonably important positions of authority who think you can just do that; you can just say to Parliament, you can't do that any more.

• 1630

The Chair: We're glad you advised them otherwise.

Mr. John Fryer: I did.

[Translation]

The Chair: Ms. Guay, four minutes, please.

Ms. Monique Guay: You are right to say that a government should be a good employer. I would even say that it should set an example. We can see that other unions and private sector businesses negotiate with their employees much more interesting working conditions than we do here. You just need to take a look at the pay equity issue. After how many years did it take to finally win that fight? At the present time, there are negotiations on all kind of issues that are going nowhere. There are certainly many improvements to be made.

You also referred to daycare services, As you know, in the province of Quebec, we have a wonderful system of daycare at 5 $ a day. The National Welfare Council said in a recent report that the Quebec 5 $ daycare system was probably one of the best means to take people out of poverty. This is a model that should be considered, even at the government level. There has been an evolution. You talked about incentives. All those things should be carefully studied. I think we should open our eyes to those solutions.

I did not have the time yet to read all your report, but I will bring a copy to my office and study it carefully. What will be the next step for you? You know how long it takes to get things moving here. I have reviewed Part II of the Canada Labour Code. It was supposed to be done ten years ago. We just finished that work and it was implemented just now. What is the next step and what can we do to help you get further?

[English]

Mr. John Fryer: Thank you for the question. One of the things I always tell my students is that some of the most progressive things that go on in Canada go on in Quebec. But they go on in French, so, unfortunately, out there in Victoria we don't even know they're going on.

This is very true in the area of labour-management relations, because the Province of Quebec has a very mature labour-management relationship. Unions are accepted as part of the civil society in Quebec in a way that they certainly aren't accepted in Ontario, and I wouldn't even want to think about going to Alberta. There are three provinces in this country in which unions are accepted as part of civil society, and they are Newfoundland, Quebec, and British Columbia. Maybe Manitoba, but those are the three.

Where do we go next? We've prepared this report for the Treasury Board. I was asked to do so by the Secretary of the Treasury Board. While we were still working on our report, Madame Robillard, who is the President of the Treasury Board and who also comes from Quebec, announced a whole human resources initiative in the federal public service that goes way beyond just labour-management relations. What I understand has happened now is that our report and the union and management responses to it are going to that task force and that part of that task force's report, when Madame Robillard brings it forward, will have to do with the labour-management relations, and our recommendations will be involved in that process.

Ms. Monique Guay: How long will it take?

[Translation]

How long will it take?

[English]

Ms. Penny Driscoll (Individual Presentation): Madame Robillard has made a commitment, I believe, to table the package in June 2002.

[Translation]

Ms. Monique Guay: What can we do to help you?

[English]

Mr. John Fryer: I don't know. That's a loaded question. What can you do? I don't know what you can do, and I don't mean this in an adverse way. I think people have the right when the alarm clock goes off in the morning to look forward to what they're going to do. It worries me that we live in a society where there are far too many people who don't feel like that when the alarm clock goes off in the morning.

Apropos of being a good employer, I could get into a discussion with you about whether the government should lead in salaries or follow the private sector. We can have all of those discussions. But I think unions and management working together in the federal public service can create a place that is a good place to work and where people do want to go to work, including new people and young people. The more we can start getting that message through, the more we can start moving away from this sort of command-and-control, old-fashioned way of managing human resources in the federal public service, the better.

• 1635

Our report took the bull by the horns, and I'm hoping Mr. Quail and his human resources task force will build on it.

I was very pleased to be invited here. I know you folks will be preparing a report, and, as they say, every little bit is appreciated.

Anyhow, that's my answer.

I don't have any specifics about what needs to be done here, but I do know that ten people spent two years of their lives really giving to this project and wanting to try to improve things, and I think we've come up with a pretty good package. I find it a defensible package. It's not without criticism, and if somebody can come up with a better package, that's fine with me. I'd be the first to stand on the sidelines and applaud. But one thing I do know is that there needs to be change in the labour-management relationship between the federal government and its employees.

The Chair: Merci beaucoup, Madame Guay. Ms. Phinney, four minutes, please.

Ms. Beth Phinney (Hamilton Mountain, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for coming. It has been very interesting.

You have suggested giving separate employers the authority to conduct collective bargaining on their own behalf. There are two parts to my question: first of all, who are these separate players? Do you mean the CEOs of crown corporations or the deputy ministers? I don't understand. You explain that part.

Then explain this to me. Say that whoever is doing the negotiations for Fisheries decides they really like this particular job description and that it is worth $75,000 a year. But over in Agriculture they decide that job description is worth $50,000 a year. Is there going to be a competition between the departments?

Mr. John Fryer: We have what we call the core public service. These are the departments. They have been declining in number. I'm talking about the total number of employees working for these departments in the core public service. If you had a chart, it would be shown as going downwards. These people have not been disappearing off the face of the earth. The services they're providing for Canadians are still being done, but they're being done under a different heading now. For example, instead of there being a Department of National Revenue that sends us our income tax, we have the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency.

Ms. Beth Phinney: It's still the same people.

Mr. John Fryer: It's the same 50,000 people but a separate employer. The boss there, the commissioner, has, I think, the rank of a deputy minister. But the law that set his organization up doesn't cover him by part 2 of the Public Service Staff Relations Act. He's not obligated to use the Public Service Commission when he wants to hire anybody, etc. So he has a degree of autonomy. We're talking about the Parks Canada Agency, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and Nav Canada, for instance.

Ms. Beth Phinney: I understand those parts.

Who's the boss in the department?

Mr. John Fryer: The boss in the department, technically—

Ms. Beth Phinney: Or the employer.

Mr. John Fryer: —would be the deputy minister. It's like the revenue agency or the parks agency saying, “We want the right to negotiate with our employees to come up with a settlement without having to follow what is going on in the core public service.”

Ms. Beth Phinney: So they're going to put the deputy ministers in the same category.

Mr. John Fryer: Now we move to the core public service. What we are recommending for the core public service is what we call two-tier collective bargaining. By that we mean that the Treasury Board and the unions can set the parameters at a central big table, but the practical day-to-day application of how that's going to work could be worked out between the union and the department at the local level. You used the example of Fisheries and Agriculture.

Let me give you my example. Twenty-five years ago in the province of British Columbia I negotiated a collective agreement to reduce the work week. We had two kinds of workers: blue collar workers who were working 40 hours and white collar workers who were working 36/40. We reduced the work week to 37.5 hours. I thought I'd done a great job, but the white collar workers were mad as hell. They said to me, “You got us nothing. You got this 2.5 hour reduction for these blue collar people.” I said, “I could have got your work week increased to 37.5.” So in the second round of negotiations we reduced the work week for everybody to 35 hours. The government wouldn't agree to reduce it to 35 hours. The government believed 35 hours a week to be the equivalent of 1,827 straight-time hours. In other words, to this day, any person who works for the government of B.C. has to put in 1,827 hours of straight time in order to earn an annual paycheque.

• 1640

The application of it was left to the departments and workplaces, as to how they put it in and whether they put in eight-hour shifts, twelve-hour shifts, or ten-hour shifts. Throughout the B.C. government, you will find hundreds of different work patterns and shift arrangements in place.

Ms. Beth Phinney: It's not salaries.

Mr. John Fryer: It isn't the salary. I personally think salary is the toughest issue. We think a lot of things could be tailor-made at the departmental level, under the aegis of broad parameters agreed upon at the Treasury Board. It's for the core public service. The separate employers could each do their own thing.

Ms. Beth Phinney: He's not answering my question.

Mr. John Fryer: Do you feel I'm not answering?

Ms. Beth Phinney: Yes.

Mr. John Fryer: I'm sorry.

Ms. Beth Phinney: Go ahead.

The Chair: Repeat your question again, Beth.

Ms. Beth Phinney: I just don't understand. You said you would give the CEOs the power to decide how much they'll be paid.

Mr. John Fryer: Correct.

Ms. Beth Phinney: You're not going to do it with the departments.

Mr. John Fryer: No. Right.

Ms. Beth Phinney: You say, within parameters, including the amount of money you have to spend, it's still the Treasury Board deciding on how much the salaries are going to be.

Mr. John Fryer: Yes, precisely.

The question you ask is a very good one and a fundamental one. If you move to allowing departments to set different salary levels for ostensibly similar jobs, then the notion of a merit-based public service, where you can join one department, move to another department, and build a career, I think, gets really damaged.

Ms. Beth Phinney: Yes.

Mr. John Fryer: We weren't ready to take that one on.

Ms. Beth Phinney: Okay, thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. Phinney.

Mr. Martin, four minutes, please.

Mr. Pat Martin: Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is such a treat for me. As an MP, it's not often I get to talk about something I actually know something about. It's a real pleasure.

Did I say that? Don't quote me.

A voice: I think they put this on the record.

Mr. Pat Martin: Yes, unfortunately.

There are a number of things I wanted to raise. I'm starting to learn the tricks of this chair. If I spend my whole four minutes asking questions, then you can answer for quite a while and he won't cut you off. Maybe I'll ask a few questions.

A voice: Watch out.

Mr. Pat Martin: I'll ask a couple of things.

When they did create the CCRA and Nav Canada, etc., at least the workers got out from under the Public Service Staff Relations Act and were covered by the Canada Labour Code. It was the one thing they didn't regret about the move.

Why did your report stop short of giving the rest of the public sector what they really dearly want? They want to get out from under the PSSRA.

You were talking about mature bargaining relationships. I agree. In the sector I come from, we've been negotiating with the same employers for 120 years in some cases. Every clause in the agreement has been tested a number of times through arbitration. I negotiated 30 or 40 collective agreements when I was a head of the carpenter's union. We never had a strike. The relationship does mature. We never took a roll-back. Your point is well taken there.

Is there a way we can bypass the painful maturation process and simplify the current collective agreement to strive to achieve a collective agreement that isn't as problematic? It doesn't have to be as thick as a Manhattan phone book.

Did you contemplate, or did you have recommended to you, some form of final-offer selection, as we had in Manitoba for a number of years?

The Chair: You can answer the questions all at once, Mr. Fryer.

Mr. John Fryer: I can answer some of them very quickly.

We didn't look at FOS a lot longer than we looked at whether we should have a union-free public service. Final-offer selection is the Russian roulette of arbitration, where the union files its final position and the management files its final position. Then the selector chooses one or the other completely. It's used quite a bit in the United States in police negotiations, firefighter negotiations, and places where you don't usually want to have a strike.

I don't want to give you the lecture I give on final-offer selection. It's something a lot of professionals in the labour relations system are not very keen on. The only time it's been tried was in Manitoba, and even there it created dissension, if I recall.

• 1645

Concerning this notion of the separate agencies, there is a real dog's breakfast out there. When Nav Canada was split off from Transport Canada—or whatever you want to call it, because they set it up as this separate agency and funded it—it went under the Canada Labour Code.

But the revenue agency did not. All they did with the revenue agency and the parks agency and the food inspection agency was relieve them from the obligations of part 2 of the Public Service Employment Act, which is to use the Public Service Commission to hire, in everything. But they were left under part 1, so the rights that employees of the separate agencies have are the same rights as federal government employees have. They're covered statutorily not by the Canada Labour Code but by this Public Service Staff Relations Act.

Then there are the ones that are covered by the code.

So not everybody that became a separate agency—in fact, the majority of people who have been made separate employers did not get out from under the Public Service Staff Relations Act. They got out from part 2, which is the hiring part.

A voice: You mean the Public Service Employment Act.

Mr. John Fryer: Yes, I meant the Public Service Employment Act. Sorry.

Apropos of mature relationships, there is a saying in labour relations that employers get the unions they deserve. I think there's some truth to that. It may be vice versa, but certainly I think there's some truth to that. And to the extent there is some truth, there is some fragility beginning to happen in the federal public service.

I'm sure you're aware of the fact that the Confederation of National Trade Unions has successfully raided Corrections Canada. This is the first time, in my knowledge, in the history of the CSN that they have sought certification and succeeded in getting certified in nationwide bargaining. The only exception I know involves a mine in Newfoundland, but apart from that, the CSN has been a Quebec-based labour federation.

There are other unions out there busily seeking membership in the federal public service. For the Professional Institute of the Public Service, when the Food Inspection Agency was set up, there had to be new certification.

At the federal Food Inspection Agency, the professional veterinarians took a vote on changing their union affiliation from the Professional Institute of the Public Service to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The results of the secret ballot were that the Professional Institute held on by four votes. The Canadian Auto Workers are anxious to organize the auditors at Revenue Canada.

I don't know, as a matter of public policy, whether you want to open up the federal public service to all these private sector unions or not. You're that far away, right now. If we don't change the power relationship, if public sector unions can't go to their membership and say, “We got you something”, in contrast with the 10 years where they got nothing, why would people want to pay union dues? Why would I want union dues coming off my pay cheque when I'm getting nothing?

We've created a difficult situation, and it's unstable. We didn't want, in this report, to go waving all these worries about pieces falling off here and there, but we saw some very disturbing signs.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

You're glad you got your questions out front, Mr. Martin. You were absolutely right; you got the chair's policy down pat.

Mr. Bryden, you have some questions.

Mr. John Bryden: Just a couple of questions.

I know you were required not to consider the possibility of not having a union, but are there any polls to indicate how the public service membership feels about whether they should remain unionized or not?

Mr. John Fryer: Yes... No. Would you let me just give you a short anecdote?

When former Prime Minister Trudeau died, my family and I lined up to go to see the casket. A woman recognized one of my sons and her group came into the line. They were three women who worked at the National Gallery—this was October. I talked to them—because you talk, you know, to your waitress or taxi driver—and they were non-active, didn't go to union meetings, didn't really care much about the union. I said to them, if we took a vote, would you vote yes or no? They said “Oh, we'd vote yes, because you have to have something.”

• 1650

Less than six months later there was the strike at the National Gallery. I drove by there to go to work every day, and two of these people went from being totally uninterested—“I never went to meetings”; “Maybe we need a union”—to become some of the most active people: carrying signs, yelling and shouting, and defending the strike.

My own view is I would rather not see the proposition tested.

Mr. John Bryden: What does that mean?

Mr. John Fryer: It means until we get the process improved and changed, I think there is considerable alienation in the workforce.

Mr. John Bryden: Do you mean against the idea of the union?

Mr. John Fryer: I mean against the current way things operate—against paying dues and then getting nothing.

Mr. John Bryden: I will tell you that, with the strike pending, I had union members come to my constituency office, and while there was support for the strike in the sense that they thought their wages were inadequate, they didn't want to belong to the union because they felt they were being forced down to the lowest common denominator and not recognized for the professionalism they wanted to demonstrate. This brings me to another point, which was touched on by my colleague across the way as he talked about unions improving working conditions.

Isn't it really the case that the problem you're facing in the modern age isn't working conditions at all? It's developing professionalism. Professionalism doesn't mean you have to have a degree; it doesn't mean you have to have gone to some school to become a professional. Professionalism is about pride.

Everything I've heard you say has been about pride and instilling pride. I appreciate what you're trying to do by your report, but I'm not sure we're going to succeed in changing attitudes from the idea that unions exist to improve working conditions to the idea that unions exist to develop professionalism among their people—which bears on performance bonuses and everything else.

Mr. John Fryer: Well, I think I could have an argument with you about that—not a serious one, but a bit of an argument.

My own view is we need to increase the recognition and respect management show the employees. I see the union as being one of the vehicles through which that improvement can come. I don't agree with you totally that unions are not involved in professionalism. I don't know the detail and I stand therefore to be corrected, but many of the unions in the federal public service that I've had dealings with have a very comprehensive side to their operation to improve the professional skills of their workers and that kind of thing. You know what I mean. I don't accept that they're not involved in that side of things.

I think we need to prepare for a different world of work from the old one. That's why I don't like the command-and-control system that existed in the past. Maybe it was needed. I'm not even going to argue that case. But I do know—as I said, I've got six kids—that today's young people don't want this control. They want to be given some autonomy. They want recognition when they do well. I guess they have to accept some disapprobation when they don't. But I think we need a different kind of working environment. I believe the management and the union can work together to create it.

Mr. John Bryden: Can I ask just one technical question?

The Chair: You may if it's a very short technical question.

Mr. John Bryden: Yes, it's a very short one.

You were talking about co-development under the National Joint Council. What if there's no agreement?

Mr. John Fryer: What used to happen when there was no agreement—and again, I said it would be great... I think the National Joint Council has existed for 60 or 70 years, and for 60 or 70 years, when there was no joint agreement, the boss's will was imposed.

A couple of years ago, under the jurisdiction of a new chief human resources officer at the Treasury Board, they made what I consider to be a big breakthrough. They made a breakthrough for a dispute resolution mechanism at the National Joint Council. Now, it's a fairly gentle one—it calls for mediation—but it does mean that if they now reach disagreement and it's serious enough, they can get an independent third-party adjudicator. I think that's an improvement. In our report, I didn't go to spell that out; I just said we would use the resolution mechanism that exists at the National Joint Council.

It's new, but I think it changed qualitatively the nature of the NJC.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Bryden.

Mr. Finlay, did you have some questions?

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Mr. John Finlay (Oxford, Lib.): I'm not sure Mr. Chair. It's been very interesting and I thank Mr. Fryer.

I worked for three years for a professional organization. At least that's what I thought of it as. It was the OSSTF, which was probably for years the most effective professional organization in the country as far as benefits for its members were concerned. I worked for them just at the start of the new wave. We got a president, Norm Orman, who came from a union background. He was following Al Shanker in New York—you remember those big strikes, and that didn't endear me to them.

Anyway, I did leave the union job and went back to school teaching in my home where I'd started, and I think that union or professional organization attitude gradually leaked away. We had the first teachers' strike and so on, and today in Ontario, unfortunately, partly through the present government, I'm afraid, the unions have gotten more militant in many respects—they've gone on strike. But the government has control of the situation very firmly.

I think they're coming out of it a bit now because they still want to teach children and they don't have anywhere to go, so they have to accept the status quo and do the best they can. I don't say you studied that in this organization of yours, but there must be groups in the public service that I think might have mirrored this sort of attitude. Would that be correct?

Mr. John Fryer: Yes, absolutely. Right now in British Columbia, which is my home province—I'm back there now—the government has just made public education “an essential service”. The union has just taken a strike vote that was 91% in favour of a strike, so we're heading into a massive confrontation.

As a professor of labour relations—not as chair of this task force but as a professor of labour relations—I believe the public medical system is in serious jeopardy because of the fighting that goes on between nurses and doctors and the hospital administrators and government. Public education is under threat because of the fight that goes on between the teachers and the governments. Frankly, the kind of approach we're suggesting here, to move away from the adversarial approach to a more collaborative, problem-solving approach, I would have no trouble recommending to both the education industry and the medical industry, because my own view is that if keep letting people fight with each other about a finite pie, then both of those institutions are in jeopardy.

I don't like the idea of achieving the result by taking people's rights away from them. I like to achieve the result by assuming that people are grown-up and mature and can work these things out for themselves, and they damn well ought to be able to. So my route is to give more responsibility to the employees and their representatives, and expect the best from them; don't expect the worst.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Finlay.

Mr. Martin, did you have any more questions?

Dr. Fryer, you talked about a new attitude and model in labour relations, collaborative versus adversarial. How would you envisage that transition from this adversarial relationship we have today to achieving what you would like to see us achieve?

Mr. John Fryer: Let me give a vignette. We talked about the National Gallery. It was a very bitter dispute. I think it went on for six or seven weeks. It was settled, and part of the settlement was a new attitude. The management and union—

The Chair: You can't legislate a new attitude.

Mr. John Fryer: No, but management and union both agree that this is what they need as part of the settlement. It wasn't just the wages; it was a different attitude at the workplace.

They have been off to seminars organized by the federal Department of Labour, where both union leaders and management meet. I'm told by people who work there that the working environment has changed and that people feel good about the place, rather than what they felt before, which led to the blow-up.

• 1700

What we're saying here is let's rebalance the power relationship. Let's let the unions know that we are going to give them some more rights, or some more responsibilities, or a broader set of issues, on which we're prepared to listen to them. Let us be prepared to put our judgments to the test and have a third party adjudicate if we get it wrong, because in most of those 22 dispute mechanisms I mentioned to you the decision is made by the deputy minister. It doesn't go to any third party; the boss just says, “I said it, so that's it.”

Let's reshift that balance, let's increase the responsibilities, and I believe it will grow from this. Let's open up the unions to membership participation. Let people have an opportunity at the workplace to get up and say, “Forty dollars a month is coming off my paycheque; what the heck am I getting for it?” It's that kind of thing. I believe, my committee believes, that taken together the package of proposals we have recommended could bring the change of balance, or start the change.

The Chair: So you're prepared to recommend that you give them responsibility as well as authority, and then, because they're mature adults, they'll act maturely and responsibly—

Mr. John Fryer: That's it.

The Chair: —and for the good of the greater collective, rather than become selfish and immature in their attitude because they don't have that authority today.

Mr. John Fryer: I've been around a few years, but I do believe that. I believe we have a very fine public service. Most of the folks who come to work for the public service don't come to work for the public service to get rich. So there is a sense of giving to the community. And, yes, they want to be paid fairly. Who wouldn't? Then we can have a hell of an argument about what fair is, but I think we have a quality public service.

In the dreadful events of recently, the public service was front and centre in the United States, which has not been known for its support for the public sector. That was a pretty important role. I have huge faith in human beings, I really do, at the workplace, because I believe most people want to go to work in the morning and be okay and have a nice time. I do not think most of us want to go to work in the morning and fight with the boss or vice versa.

The Chair: Did you have a point on this particular issue, Mr. Bryden?

Mr. John Bryden: When you're done, Mr. Chairman, I just have a little observation, that's all.

The Chair: On performance pay, you mentioned the fact that in this 21st century, people want to have control over their own environment.

Mr. John Fryer: Yes.

The Chair: One of the things, of course, is we want to give people recognition for doing a good job, or a better job, and so on. This means not just one salary fits everybody, but a differential according to people's ability, motivation, and so on. How could that be implemented? Am I correct that this would be an innovative thing in a normal labour relations environment?

Mr. John Fryer: I have one idea that I'm not totally wedded to—and I'm a great believer in other people having better ideas than I do—but I've thought about it, and one of the things I feel that people don't mind is working in teams. You could have a situation where people worked in teams and there was an incentive amount for the team. I would then have the team members decide how that worked out. I'd rather have the peer group decide who was cutting the mustard and making the effort, rather than some supervisor who wasn't there making the decision. I don't think it's as good a decision.

So there's one way: team work with incentive pay could work. But I don't pretend to have the answer.

These are tough ones. There are no easy answers, but I know one thing for certain, we won't get any answers if we're not sitting down talking about it, and you won't get any answers if the parties to the discussion feel they're not there as equals. If one party feels they're there as a supplicant and the other has all the power, then you're never going to get the right answers. But I think we'll find the answers if we get a little bit more equal.

The Chair: In the private sector, employers of course always have the backstop of “If we give too much, we don't make a profit, then everybody loses in the final analysis.” That system does not apply to the federal government or to the public sector because they are not in it for profit, and the backstop of course is Parliament or the legislature, which, as you pointed out, has been, as you called it, “a narcotic”, rather than an accountability mechanism.

Mr. John Fryer: Yes.

The Chair: If we are going to try to get this new paradigm—you've said you didn't like that word—

Mr. John Fryer: That's okay.

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The Chair: —or to this new conceptual thinking, and the government, the employer, doesn't have the backstop of lack of profit, as it would have in the private sector, how would the employer have the backstop of “I can't go any more, because that's as far as I can possibly go without having to resort back to the legislature”, which is the accountability model the public service has?

Mr. John Fryer: Some years ago there was something called the Pay Research Bureau. When the Conservative government was cutting and slashing during program review, they got rid of the bureau. The Pay Research Bureau was an agency that provided data to both sides prior to bargaining to try to minimize the extent of argument that took place between the two.

We're now recommending the re-establishment of what we call a compensation research bureau. We're suggesting that it be jointly managed, by which I mean a joint board of directors. The union wouldn't be involved in day-to-day management. What would be surveyed, how it would be surveyed, what the priorities would be for the survey—they all would be determined jointly. We see that compensation research bureau as providing the data to facilitate amicable negotiations.

That said, if the data say that everybody else and their Aunt Mary received a 10% raise, and the federal government says, sorry, all we have is 2%, there's nothing in the world that can make them give the 10%. I understand that. But if the numbers are based on pretty reliable data that is agreed to by both sides, then it seems to me that this in turn will be a bit of a guide to government in terms of its budgetary considerations. If it rejects the results of the compensation research bureau, then at least it'll know and understand, when it makes the decision, that there are consequences—a scrap, maybe.

The Chair: A sensitive or contentious issue, of course, is benefits. In the last 30 years there's been a major shift from families with single breadwinners to two-income families. In fact, I think the two-income family now is perhaps more the norm than the single. Therefore, the notion of benefits for our dependants is becoming a difficult issue. I mean, why should people pay double when you have two employees getting covered by the same benefits?

Perhaps more in your role as professor of labour relations, do you have any words of wisdom on the issue of benefits in this modern, evolving world?

Mr. John Fryer: Not really. It's such a complex issue. You're right in describing family units, but it's accompanied by the fact that there are lots of double-income family units. There's also quite a predilection for these units to break up from time to time. So if you come with an easy solution that says only one person carries the benefits, then you have to face what happens when things don't work out.

I think we could be a lot more imaginative as a society and as a labour-management group in the whole area of benefits. We spend a lot of money on benefits. In the public service, benefits are not bad. It's not as though people are on the terribly short end when it comes to them. However, I have to tell you, it does bother me that the federal government is always dragging up the rear.

For instance, I was on a conciliation board in the 1980s, and the federal government became the last major employer to have a dental plan. I couldn't understand why the federal government had to be the last major employer in the nation to have a dental plan. I just observe that because it bothered me at the time.

So there is room for all kinds of improvement in the way in which we design and develop benefits. Education, for example; one of the problems people have today is the cost of education. I'm not aware of very many collective bargaining environments where that's even been tackled or dealt with.

At any rate, that's enough.

The Chair: Mr. Bryden, you have a short question.

Mr. John Bryden: It's more an observation than a question.

I was very much in agreement with the optimistic outlook of the witness in terms of people of good will working together. I certainly think, as he does—as we all do—that we have a very fine public service, and we all wish this good will would prevail. However, I have to say to the witness, I do not know, and cannot conceive, how you're ever going to have a system that's not adversarial in its basic thrust as long as you have the right to strike.

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That's the only thing in the witness' testimony that I just can't quite manage.

Mr. John Fryer: And I'm very respectful of your observation, because these aren't black and white issues. My problem is, for a working person, the right under certain circumstances to withdraw their labour is a pretty basic one, and I don't want a system where we play with that.

That's a moral judgment I'm making, I guess, a moral evaluation, but your point is well taken. Even in what we're recommending there will be adversarialism. They will have some arguments about the numbers, there's no question, but my hope is that with the assistance of people who are mature and knowledgeable in the area, we might be able to minimize it, that's all. That's my hope, that we minimize the breakouts.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Bryden.

Mr. Martin.

Mr. Pat Martin: Just to add to that a little bit, I've always felt that a legal strike is the least violent and most civilized way to deal with an impasse. It's certainly better than what used to happen, when a wildcat strike would be a horrible, ugly thing. Pinkerton guards would come in and heads would get split open. Really, it seems like economic violence, but it's actually quite an orderly and peaceful thing in 99% of the situations.

Speaking about benefits, I think you made the point, which you might want to restate, that one way to deal with the problem of two people working in the same family and both paying into benefit plans is the cafeteria-style shopping list you outlined. I thought that made eminent good sense. If you are going to have to pay $40 a month into this plan, at least let's not be buying two dental plans. Let's buy one dental plan and one extra week's holiday or something along those lines. I like that.

Mr. John Fryer: The point's well taken.

Mr. Pat Martin: One thing I did want to intervene on, though, is the incentive pay question. I'm not in agreement with you there. I think it's a dangerous road to go down. As skilled tradespeople, we fought for years to have this standardized so that it didn't become a dangerous race with one another as to who would carry the biggest load and who would work the fastest to get more production done at the end of the day.

It reminds me, on your recommendation that the team would maybe decide, as a team, who would enjoy the benefits, I would point out one of the predictable things in the whole team concept studies. If it was a six-person team that had a fixed pie to divide, the first thing that six-person team usually did was shit-can one of their friends and make it a five-person team so they could divide that a little further. That's a real problem from a worker's point of view, and that's a caution I would raise.

Mr. John Fryer: Listen, there are no easy answers here. I think it was Mr. Bryden who talked about professionalism. It's true that the nature of the people we're employing nowadays is somewhat different.

For instance, I have my journeyman's papers. I've served my apprenticeship and it says I'm a qualified carpenter. If the rate for carpenters is $20 an hour, you're bloody well going to give me $20 an hour or hear from somebody. I understand that. I think the workforce is changing, and I think the kinds of responsibilities and duties we're expecting public service workers to accommodate are more complex. I just can't avoid the fact that the rest of the world is moving towards performance pay, and I don't know how we can make the federal public service an island that avoids it. You know, I'm from Missouri; let's grab hold of it. It's a tough one, but we're going to have to deal with it.

One way of dealing with it is to say no. I acknowledge that. And saying no leads you to the strike point. But here's the problem with strikes in the federal public service, Mr. Martin, or in any public service: They won't let you shut the place down. When you have a strike in the private sector, it's one out, all out, right? The place is shut down. In some provinces you can't even bring in replacement workers.

• 1715

It's not the same in the public service because in the public service we say we're going to have a strike but we're going to keep delivering all the services to the public. We have a process called “essential designation”, so all these people are told they have to go to work. They ask, “Well, what do you mean? I'm on strike, but I go to work?” Then you see these lineups where some of them have a piece of paper that says they have to go to work, and other people have a...

The moment you pull people out and it has a real impact on the service, that's when Parliament meets and ends nothing. The legal strike in the federal public service is not really anything that's used in the way we're accustomed to within the private sector, where it's one out, all out. With the federal public service, it doesn't happen that somebody walks along Wellington Street and says the government is out of business until further notice.

My own solution to that is to create a system where you give greater rights to the employees and their representatives and you add professional assistance so the chances of getting into disputes are minimal. That's the best answer I can think of without taking what I would consider to be a draconian step, namely taking away the people's right to strike.

I'm not suggesting this is perfect, but that's the model it tries to follow. As to the benefits thing, your answer is much better than mine. I'm referring to the notion of cafeteria benefits: when you have a couple, they can choose one means of access to the cafeteria, and then they can change it if the relationship breaks up. I think that's a better answer.

Thanks for giving me a chance.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Martin.

Mr. Fryer, we have to thank you for coming here this afternoon.

We know you have come a long way, and I think you said your journey here was not the most pleasant, given our current airline situation—

Mr. John Fryer: Indeed.

The Chair: —but we thank you very much for being candid with us. We thank you very much for being open, for discussing your report, and for informing members of Parliament through your obvious vast knowledge of the issue.

As a number of members of Parliament have said, we have a wonderful public service. We want them to want to go to work in the morning—and stay in the evening if they have to—so the job may be done.

Normally, when we have our Auditor General here, we ask the Auditor General to have the last word. Do you have any closing comments you would like to make?

Mr. John Fryer: No, not really, other than to say thank you for inviting me here, and thank you, members, first for attending and second for the interest you've shown.

I remember interviewing one of the deputy ministers—I won't even name him—and there's a lot of this attitude out there of, wouldn't this work better without unions? I've known this man for many years and we're good friends. He said to me at one point, “Our product is service in the federal public; that's what the government is here for: to give people service.” Then he went on to say that our resource is our people. I can't say any more than that; that's all we have. All we have are these people who provide the service to the citizens of Canada, to carry out the directives that you, their elected representatives, give them.

I just believe that as a nation we have a moral duty to make that environment as pleasant as we can without being silly about it. That's what we, this committee of mine, set out to do. That's why we started out in a non-combative fashion and said, let's see if we can find out what the problems are. I had no interest in blaming people for why things have worked out the way they have. Once we identified the issues, we tried consistently and carefully to build a new way of doing things.

We don't pretend it's the only way of doing things, but we do feel very strongly that it is a time for change. We feel very strongly that faith should essentially be put in those employees.

The Chair: Thank you again, Mr. Fryer. We appreciate very much your coming before the committee this afternoon.

The committee stands adjourned until Tuesday, October 31, when we will consider chapter 24, health and safety regulatory programs, of the 2000 report of the Auditor General of Canada.