The decision of the federal Minister of Labor, Steven MacKinnon, to impose binding arbitration to force a return to work at the port of Montreal, is strongly denounced by the former Quebec director of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Marc Ranger.
• Also read: Ottawa orders the resumption of work at the Port of Montreal and Quebec
According to Mr. Ranger, the constitutional rights of the parties are being violated.
“What makes no sense in this decision, as for the railway sector, is that a single person, a Minister of Labor, can allow the interruption of rights which have been recognized by the Supreme Court », he castigates, in an interview with Mario Dumont.
“We should at least bring the debate to the House of Commons to have a parliamentary and democratic debate because it changes the Labor Code,” he adds. Article 107 has never been used for that. The former Conservative Minister of Labor said that if it existed, we would have used it well before.”
The Minister of Labor used a similar procedure during this summer’s labor dispute at Canadian National (CN) and Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC).
The former union director believes that these are dangerous precedents.
“These are two consecutive precedents which are major, and which ensure that employers on the federal side will understand that they only have to lock out for a Minister of Labor to intervene and suspend rights and orders arbitration, he laments. I find it dangerous.”
“An arbitrator tries to be as fair as possible in the decision he will make, but the right to free negotiation is a right that is recognized,” he adds. Compulsory arbitration takes away this right.”
Mr. Ranger would have preferred a resolution similar to that of the FIQ in Quebec.
“I would have expected the federal minister to go with a special mediator with special powers, as we saw with the FIQ in Quebec.”
Such a mediator could have asked both parties to suspend their pressure tactics so that he could hear them, make a recommendation and force them to decide on it.
“We will now have to see if the dock workers at the port of Montreal will comply with the directive,” says In Ontario, Minister Ford had passed a special law in the education sector and the unions stood to say that they did not want it and the minister was forced to back down.”
“I’m not saying that’s what’s going to happen, but we’ll have to see. In the railway sector, they complied. We will have to see at the port of Montreal.”
Watch the full interview in the video above
