NDP Leader Jack Layton says Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government is putting unfair pressure on postal workers, by including a wage hike in its back-to-work legislation that is lower than what Canada Post proposed in its offer.
The bill calls for Canada Post and the union representing its locked-out employees to each submit their best, final offer. A federally appointed arbitrator would then have 90 days to choose either one or the other, without compromise. In the meantime, Canada Post would have to end its lockout and employees would have to get back to the business of moving mail.
However, the legislation also imposes a 1.75 per cent wage hike this year, followed by a 1.5 per cent hike next year and two per cent hikes in each of the following years. That falls short of not only the union's demands, but Canada Post's latest offer too.
Union negotiators have asked for a 3.3 per cent wage hike in the first year, followed by 2.75 per cent increases in the last three years of a four-year contract.
"Here the managers of Canada Post are ready to offer a certain kind of wage settlement and there's the government saying, ‘No, no, we're going to make it even less than that,'" Layton told CTV's Power Play on Tuesday.
Urban postal workers began staging a series of rotating strikes on June 3. Canada Post suspended its operations 12 days later, citing an estimated $100 million in lost revenue for the decision to lock out its 50,000 employees nationwide.
Layton said if it was up to him he'd unlock the doors and let both sides get back to bargaining. The NDP vows to debate the back-to-work legislation for as long they can, but the House is expected to rest for the summer this Friday.
"It's Stephen Harper who's shut the post office down. I thought he was supposed to be a good manager," he said. "I don't see how that's good management, especially if what he's saying is true that the postal service is important to our economy."
Layton also said it feels like Canada is facing a summer of labour warfare with the government's confrontational approach to labour disputes.
"I don't think it's a one-off," he said. "We saw a similar approach with the Air Canada situation. Fortunately they resolved it before the bill having to be adopted here in the house."
Labour Minister Lisa Raitt has made it clear she wants the legislation passed in the next few days.
Government House leader Peter Van Loan said Monday that the House will remain in session for as long as it takes to get the bill through.
Considering the Conservative majority, however, it's not the vote that may prove a challenge, but the NDP's veiled promise to employ whatever parliamentary delay tactics they can.
When Raitt was asked whether the government would be prepared to force closure of the debate so the bill could be put to a vote before the end of the week, she suggested that's exactly how other back-to-work legislation has been handled in the past.
"I see no reason why we wouldn't be doing the same thing again," she said Monday.
If lawmakers can agree on an expedited process for passing the bill into law, a vote on Thursday could mean the resumption of mail service on Friday.
But even as she tabled the legislation, Raitt said there would still be time before it becomes law for the two sides to hammer out a deal.
Both the union and the Crown corporation have expressed their preference for a negotiated agreement over final offer arbitration, but face-to-face talks on Monday yielded no results.
More talks were scheduled for Tuesday morning.
