Losers: the down and out

By Michael Friscolanti - Monday, December 5, 2011 at 11:10 AM - 0 Comments

David J. Phillip/AP

Backbenchers

After losing ground ever so slowly in the previous three elections, the federal Liberals were slaughtered this time around, relegated to just 34 seats. The once-unbeatable party of Wilfrid Laurier, Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chrétien is on the brink of political irrelevance, and some long-time Liberals are not convinced that their fortunes can recover. As one senior official said: “It’s do something or die.”

Nickelback-lash

Despite album sales topping 50 million, Nickelback could be the most despised band in the history of musical instruments. Critics have long panned the Canadian rockers as dull, predictable and formulaic, but the venom reached a new level this year when the group was chosen to perform the halftime show at the annual Thanksgiving football game between the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers. The announcement triggered such rage that 52,000 people signed a petition, demanding a replacement.

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Harper versus the unions

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 21, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 55 Comments

Adrian Wyld/CP

In the midst of June’s 47-hour filibuster over back-to-work legislation for Canada Post, New Democrat MP Wayne Marston was moved to recall the events of 1946, when “workers and veterans fought side by side in the streets” of Hamilton for better working conditions, thus launching the modern labour movement and paving the way for what would become the NDP. When it was her turn to speak, Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner apparently felt compelled to respond. “Mr. Speaker, I have been listening to many nostalgic comments across the way about the old labour movement and the unions back in 1946. I am wondering if the members opposite recognize that we are in 2011 and that we have just come through a great recession that has damaged so many countries and from which we are just recovering,” she said. “When will they realize that we are not in the old socialist days of the good old union? We are in 2011.”

Here the differences between the new Opposition and the new majority government seemed in stark relief. But that filibuster may have only been the beginning. Months later, the issue of organized labour is a source of conflict—or the potential thereof—on numerous fronts.

Last month, for instance, after party strategist Brian Topp—an official with ACTRA, the union that represents 22,000 members of the performing arts—confirmed his bid for the NDP leadership, Conservatives deemed him a “union boss” with “deep union ties.” “How,” they asked, “could Brian Topp speak on behalf of all Canadians when he is so tied to big union special interests?” Conservative MPs have compelled committee hearings into union sponsorships of events at the NDP convention in Vancouver this past spring, while Conservative backbencher Russ Hiebert, who won the draw to table the first private member’s bill, is proposing legislation that would require unions to release public financial statements. And last week, Labour Minister Lisa Raitt both moved to refer a dispute between Air Canada and the company’s flight attendants to the Canada Industrial Relations Board—thus blocking a potential strike—and mused vaguely of perhaps amending the Canadian Labour Code.

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Postal workers to challenge back-to-work legislation

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 at 3:09 PM - 8 Comments

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers says it will launch a legal challenge to the federal government’s decision to use back-to-work legislation to end the recent labour dispute at Canada Post. According to CUPW, the legislation violated Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees the right to belong to a union and to collective bargaining. The case will notably focus on the federal government’s imposition of a 1.57 per cent wage increase, which was lower than the corporation’s offer of 1.9 per cent.

Calgary Herald

‘Artist, street organizer, Member of Parliament and mystic’

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 9, 2011 at 1:04 PM - 0 Comments

Simon de Jong, the former NDP MP who passed away last month, is remembered.

As Heritage critic he once railed against Canada Post for issuing a stamp to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Disneyland.  “We are losing our identity,” he argued. “We as a country are promoting a foreign, privately owned institution, a privately owned theme park, and we are promoting it on our stamps.” Among his most satisfying moments as an MP, he said, was getting Parliament to send a message of condolence to Yoko Ono when John Lennon was assassinated in 1980 and delivering a speech on disarmament to the United Nations in 1982…

After he left Parliament he moved to California, spent time in Brazil, then returned to live in British Columbia. Shortly before he died, he was asked what he would do if he was in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s shoes. “It’s a bit facetious, but take LSD,” he said. “See some bigger pictures.”

‘Jack wouldn’t let us not carry on’

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 6, 2011 at 9:15 AM - 8 Comments

Ryan Remiorz/CP

After Jack Layton had departed Parliament Hill for the final time last week, his flag-draped casket loaded into a waiting hearse and driven away as a large crowd applauded, those NDP MPs who had gathered to see him off fanned out to greet and thank the well-wishers and mourners. “What I kept on saying to people over and over again,” says Libby Davies, one of Layton’s two deputy leaders, “without even thinking, it was just instinct, was, ‘Don’t worry, we’re going to keep working.’ ”

While they mourned their leader, New Democrats could hardly ignore the many questions left in his absence: about their viability, direction and meaning as a party without the man who seemed to define them. But if, in the wake of Layton’s passing, there was a certain fear for the future of the NDP—raised by any number of pundits who now deem the party doomed—New Democrats themselves claim only resolve.

“There isn’t any fear of the future in the caucus—from the new members through the experienced ones,” says Joe Comartin, the veteran MP from Windsor. “And in fact, I’ll say there is some resentment to the pundits and commentators who are tending to write us off. I think there’s a bit of a level of resentment because of that determination, because Jack wouldn’t let us not carry on. So we’re going to carry on.”

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We’ll call you

By Kate Lunau - Friday, August 26, 2011 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Andrew Tolson

Everybody knows what it’s like to dial a company’s customer service line and get stuck on hold, waiting for a human representative to come on while tinny music plays through the phone. For those who can’t face another interminable wait, there’s some good news: an app can now do the waiting for you.

FastCustomer (available for iPhones and Android phones) offers a list of over 2,500 companies, including customer service lines for Amazon, WestJet, and Canada Post. Those who’ve downloaded the app select which company they’d like to contact; FastCustomer then puts in an automated call, contacting the user when a real-life representative becomes available. This app, which claims it’s already saved people from spending over 280,000 minutes on hold, “keeps me from being subjected to creative versions of Lady Gaga songs in muzak format,” one enthusiastic user wrote on the FastCustomer blog. For some, that’s priceless, even if the app is now available for free.

Monopolistically, my dear Watson

By Colby Cosh - Thursday, August 18, 2011 at 7:26 AM - 54 Comments

Today’s front page of the National Post features an amusing column by William Watson about an “access problem” that Canada Post has very suddenly discovered at the Montreal domicile he has occupied for two decades. Watson’s entryway has a few wide, shallow steps with no railing. It’s a situation that would not challenge an infant above the age of twenty months, and no particular carrier has filed a complaint, but a safety officer doing a “preventative” check of Watson’s premises has decided that he must either renovate or cease receiving his mail at home.

One is mindful, reading of Watson’s experience, that the Canadian Union of Postal Workers is still bitter about being sent back to work by statute with a poorer-than-expected wage deal. His tale sounds like the outcome of a work-to-rule effort, and that is certainly what one would anticipate after a strike lockout that had been ended by fiat. Canada Post’s customers want to put a Conservative government in Ottawa?—Very well! Let’s see how they like the results! How happy for CUPW, really, that one of the suckers to whom it’s applying random abuse turns out to be a loathsome, venomous right-wing pundit of the sort that’s forever agitating for privatizations and competitiveness and the rest of the gore-grimed apparatus of capitalism. Continue…

The lawsuit is in the mail

By Michael Friscolanti - Monday, August 15, 2011 at 9:44 AM - 1 Comment

Andrew Vaughan/CP

Next to soldiers, few on the federal payroll suffer more wounds at work than mail carriers. According to the latest stats, nearly 2,300 Canada Post employees trip and fall on the job every year, twisting ankles and breaking legs and triggering millions of dollars’ worth of compensation claims. On Valentine’s Day 2007, Beverly Collins joined that long list of casualties, slipping on a snow-covered walkway and shattering her wrist. “I knew there was something seriously wrong,” she later testified. “You could see the bone sticking out of my hand.”

Collins applied for, and received, undisclosed benefits under the Government Employees Compensation Act. Later that summer, a federal bureaucrat mailed a letter to the owners of that icy Ottawa property—demanding reimbursement. “I’ve been doing this for 11 years, and I’d never seen any case like this,” says Jaye Hooper, the owners’ lawyer. “My clients were a little taken aback.”

For most Canadians, the reaction would be something closer to “going postal.” Yet as surprising as it may sound, the federal government quietly targets thousands of homeowners a year in an attempt to recoup the hefty costs of mailman mishaps. “From a public policy perspective, it is a balancing act,” says John Norton, an insurance lawyer in London, Ont. “Certainly it does appear like the big, bad government is going after this little homeowner. But if the homeowners did do something wrong—and it was a significant injury that cost the government a lot of money—taxpayers might expect the government to go after the at-fault party because if they don’t, it’s taxpayers who foot the bill.”
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Canada Post struggling to catch up on deliveries

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 7, 2011 at 12:58 PM - 40 Comments

Canada Post is still trying to get some 40 million pieces of mail that were held up by a labour dispute out the door. The company has offered overtime shifts to its employees in order to clear the backlog. Canada Post spokeswoman Anick Losier told reporters on Wednesday that 70 per cent of letter carriers have agreed to add an extra hour to their shifts. The labour dispute—roving strikes that morphed into a full-blow lockout—lasted 12 days before back-to-work legislation forced union members to return to their job.

Ottawa Citizen

At least the Canada Post filibuster was exciting for the kids

By Paul Wells - Monday, July 4, 2011 at 9:45 AM - 2 Comments

Sean Kilpatrick/CPSean Kilpatrick/CP

It didn’t take long for this new Parliament’s odd character to assert itself. The NDP launched a filibuster to stall back-to-work legislation aimed at Canada Post employees. One NDP MP after another got up to hurl thunderbolts at the government and chew up time. Under Hansard’s rules, the clock accompanying the House of Commons’s workday stopped. The fourth Thursday in June lasted until Saturday night. The Prime Minister played host at a late-night hospitality suite for his MPs. The little dog laughed to see such sport, and the dish ran away with the spoon.

Let’s unpack all of this and see what we can learn from it. As soon as Jack Layton dropped his stalling tactics the NDP lost, which means postal-union employees lost too. Stephen Harper’s government legislated a smaller pay increase than Canada Post had proposed in its final offer. Jean Chrétien took his pound of flesh in precisely the same way when he legislated posties back to work, at a discount, in 1997.

So the NDP learned it’s unable to shout back the tide. In a way this reinforces Ottawa’s latest conventional wisdom. Layton, it is fashionable to say, has less influence with 103 MPs against a majority government than he used to have with 37. He can’t force an election. He can’t block legislation. What good is he?

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Let’s not make a deal

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, June 30, 2011 at 10:43 AM - 67 Comments

Before and during last week’s filibuster, it seems there was nearly a deal.

Last Friday, talks involving a federal mediator appear to have brought Canada Post and the union close to a settlement. The union wanted final offer selection replaced by mediation-arbitration which attempts to find middle ground in contract disputes.

Comartin and Godin met with Raitt. There was agreement that if the company and the union could agree on this, the back-to-work legislation would be withdrawn. By Friday evening, both Canada Post and the union had a tentative settlement that outlined agreement on some key issues such as wage rate, according to a source. Other outstanding issues would be sent to arbitration.

But after midnight came word that Raitt’s office had apparently turned down the deal, a source said. As the filibuster continued in the Commons, Harper crossed the aisle to speak with NDP Leader Jack Layton. During their conversation, Layton questioned whether there had been “political interference.” Harper denied it.

Postal workers are now preparing to challenge the back-to-work legislation in court.

Postal workers will fight back-to-work bill

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 29, 2011 at 1:01 PM - 18 Comments

After meeting in Ottawa on Tuesday, the union representing Canada Post workers decided to take legal action against the back-to-work bill. CUPW Montreal representative Alain Duguay argues the legislation would force them to resume their jobs at even lower wages than the ones offered in Canada Post’s previous offer. The union may also file a complaint with the Human Rights Commission, arguing that the bill’s revised pension plans are discriminatory because new employees are refused the same benefits as older ones. Duguay says the workers will not break the law, and mail delivery will resume while the union fights the bill.

The Globe and Mail

‘This proved otherwise, if only temporarily’

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, June 28, 2011 at 4:56 PM - 10 Comments

Nick Taylor-Vaisey considers last week’s filibuster as a counterpoint to my previous lamenting for the state of the House of Commons.

When I left, there were more than 250 MPs sitting in the chamber. C-6 had just passed second reading, so most of the MPs – with some absences, including a big chunk of Liberals – voted, and then stuck around for the next stage of debate. That was early evening on a Saturday in June, and there they were. Throughout much of the filibuster, each party sent a skeleton crew to monitor events. But after second reading, when MPs debated each clause of the bill in the Committee of the Whole (which comprises every MP), they all stuck around in case they needed to vote on any of them. So there they sat, as a group, debating every line of the legislation in front of them.

And people watched. When I was in the gallery on the south side of the Commons, it was at least two-thirds full – and even fuller, at times. While there were a few pro-union folks in the crowd, there were also families, complete with at least one crying baby, sitting there, watching intently. And there were no doubt other people like me, who’d made the short walk from their downtown dwellings to watch some history in the making.

Canada Post says it will be fully operational by Tuesday

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 27, 2011 at 11:45 AM - 0 Comments

Canada Post says the country’s mail will start moving again on Tuesday after the federal government legislated locked out workers back on the job over the weekend. The agency will unseal its red mailboxes on Monday, with mail sorters reporting for duty the same day. Mail delivery will be back to normal on Tuesday, though Canada Post says a backlog could mean delays in the processing of letters and parcels.

Globe and Mail

Charlie Angus wins at filibustering

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, June 27, 2011 at 11:44 AM - 0 Comments

Glen McGregor tallies the word counts from last week’s all-hours debate.

Charlie Angus proved himself the Filibuster Filler. He spoke more than 11,000 words, more than any other MP. To put that in context, Angus spoke for 41 times the length of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address … Angus’s words in the House were also, cumulatively, seven times longer than Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech on the Washington Mall.

The official transcript of the 68-hour day is now here.

What parliamentary democracy looks like

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, June 27, 2011 at 9:05 AM - 0 Comments

Brian Topp considers the meaning of last week’s filibuster.

A majority government is in place, and it can ultimately get what it wants. But a real opposition, fighting on a real issue, can make things go very slowly indeed – so that Canadians can judge the issues, and see what Mr. Harper’s government is doing in the bright light of day … In a panel discussion about this matter a couple of days ago, a Conservative friend suggested that the current debate in Parliament shows the New Democrats have some “growing up to do.” In fact it is the Conservatives who have some growing up to do. They need to learn that having power is not a license to abuse it. And that the people of Canada elected 308 MPs, including a muscular Official Opposition that will work, within the rules of our democracy and long into the night, to shine a light on misjudgments and misgovernment.

This is the week that was

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, June 26, 2011 at 4:18 PM - 0 Comments

The Conservatives were bashful. And mysterious. And succinct.

The House talked and talked and talked and talked and talked about sending Canada Post employees back to work. And then it stopped.

The government tabled the Afghan detainee documents. Which you can read more about here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. Continue…

Filibusted

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, June 25, 2011 at 11:17 PM - 0 Comments

Earlier this evening, with the defeat of several proposed amendments, the House of Commons officially passed Bill C-6. In brief comments to reporters, the Prime Minister pronounced victory.

After a completely unnecessary delay, I’m nevertheless pleased that very soon Canadians will again have access to the postal services, particularly small business and charities, and of course, this is the only thing that Canadians ever really wanted. So congratulations to the Minister for her leadership in this … We know what side the public was on and I think today members of Parliament on the other side finally started to get that message.

The New Democrats are nonetheless claiming a certain kind of success.

Towards a resolution?

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, June 25, 2011 at 4:48 PM - 0 Comments

A new round of negotiations between Canada Post management and employees failed to result in a deal, but Bill C-6 is now about to pass second reading in the House.

The Liberals have come forward with proposed amendments and the NDP will follow suit when the House moves into committee of the whole to continue debate. Government House leader Peter Van Loan met with NDP House leader Thomas Mulcair a short time ago to, I am told, discuss amendments and process.

The Commons: In a state of “suspended animation”

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, June 25, 2011 at 1:07 PM - 0 Comments

Shortly after the clock passed midnight, a dozen Conservatives sang happy birthday to their colleague, David Sweet. His birthday had actually just passed—he was born on June 24, 1957—so the gesture was a bit belated. But perhaps owing to the pizza party the Prime Minister had apparently been hosting, the government side seemed a jovial bunch, eager to find fun wherever it could be found.

As luck would have it, they had all been summoned to the House of Commons at this late hour for a vote—specifically on an NDP-authored motion to delay moving forward with Bill C-6 for another six months. The official filibustering of this particular piece of particularly contentious legislation had commenced some 27 hours earlier. What began on Thursday was now moving into Saturday. Except that, so far as the reality within these four walls is measured, with the House having not yet adjourned for the day, this was still Thursday. Indeed, there in the middle of the room sat the four-sided calendar, reminding all who could see it that here they remained trapped in June 23. Continue…

The short version

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, June 24, 2011 at 5:56 PM - 0 Comments

Talks between the Conservatives and New Democrats apparently resumed this afternoon, but there’s no report as yet of progress. Meanwhile, iPolitics has a delightfully abridged version of last night’s House debate.

Using advanced algebra, Meg Wilcox has figured out that this filibuster could go until next Saturday. Or into eternity.

Labour Minister: We will sit until back-to-work legislation passes

By macleans.ca - Friday, June 24, 2011 at 3:42 PM - 0 Comments

The Conservatives are ready to sit through the NDP’s filibuster of the back-to-work bill that would end the Canada Post strike “until the legislation passes,” Labour Minister Lisa Raitt told reporters today. The bill is still far from being approved in the House, she said, but the government won’t back down. Raitt also said the Conservatives would consider changes to the bill, though she added that her party had only engaged in “general discussions about principles” with the NDP, and hasn’t yet received specific amendment proposals from the opposition. New Democrat lawmakers oppose a clause in the back-to-work bill that sets annual wage raises at between 1.5 percent and 2 percent until 2014. All 103 NDP lawmakers have unlimited time to speak at every stage of debate on the bill, potentially delaying its adoption for days.

Bloomberg

Giving CUPW less than they bargained for: an Ottawa tradition

By John Geddes - Friday, June 24, 2011 at 2:13 PM - 0 Comments

Looking back at the Maclean’s story about the back-to-work legislation Jean Chretien’s Liberals imposed to end the 1997 postal strike, I think we might be able to guess at where Stephen Harper’s Tories got the idea of giving the postal workers less than Canada Post had last offered at the bargaining table:

Union officers were particularly irked by the wage settlement the government chose to impose as part of the back-to-work legislation (it breezed through the House of Commons in a single day last week, endorsed by a final vote of 198 to 56 with only Bloc Québécois and New Democratic Party MPs opposed). Under the terms of the package, postal workers, whose base pay is now $17.41 an hour, will receive a 1.5-per-cent salary hike this coming February, another 1.75 per cent the following February and a final 1.9 per cent in February, 2000.

The imposed settlement is not only far distant from the 8.6-per-cent increase over two years CUPW was seeking, but is even marginally less than the offer Canada Post had on the bargaining table when talks finally collapsed. That called for annual increases over the next three years of 1.5, 1.75 and two per cent. What is more, management’s offer would have commenced last August. “It amounts to an average loss per worker of $991 over three years,” complained CUPW director of research Geoff Bickerton. “I can think of only one reason the government acted as it did – pure vindictiveness, payback time for the workers.”

For the record, the government denies the charge. Both Labor Minister Lawrence MacAulay and Public Works Minister Alfonso Gagliano, under repeated questioning in the Commons, continually described the settlement as “fair.” 

Still talking

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, June 24, 2011 at 1:28 PM - 0 Comments

Debate on Canada Post began yesterday around 10:30am, paused for QP and then resumed just after 3pm.

Labour Minister Lisa Raitt emerged a short time ago to update everyone on the state of negotiations.

Hansard is officially updated through 8:30pm last night, but here is a transcript of Jack Layton’s epic speech (about 50 minutes from start to finish and coming in around 6,500 words). Continue…