Publié dans TheGazette, le 25 juillet 2016.
The labour dispute at Canada Post offers a telling example
of how boomers are shifting the burden of their financial woes to the young.
In the current round of bargaining with the Canadian Union
of Postal Workers, Canada Post Corporation (CPC) is proposing that future postal
workers ‑ those to be hired from day one of the next collective bargaining
agreement ‑ get an inferior, defined contribution pension plan, whereas current
workers would keep their defined benefit plan.
As usual, management is asking for concessions while the
union is trying to make some gains. This is normal. What is striking is that
compensation rollbacks, should they occur, would be borne not by all CPC workers,
but primarily by new hires.
You might think, if concessions have to be made, their cost should
be borne by the existing workforce. If compensation for posties is greater than
what is observed in the job market for positions requiring comparable skills, you
might think that current employees, who actually benefit from this premium,
might legitimately also be those called upon to shoulder the burden of
adjusting to market realities. You might think that a new hire, typically a
young man or woman in their twenties or thirties, with a fresh mortgage or a burgeoning
family, might need the money more than a fifty-something empty-nester with a
paid-off mortgage. Not so. Nowadays, according to some twisted interpretation
of intergenerational solidarity, it appears that it is the young, not the old,
who are asked to bear the brunt.
Humans and animals are biologically programmed to protect
their young ‑ the future of the species ‑ before
saving their elders. But in our ageing society, elders are offloading to the
young the burden of adjusting to market conditions. In the context of
collective bargaining, this practice has been termed “orphan clause”, because younger
workers cannot rely on the protection of their elder colleagues.
Orphan clauses establish two tiers of workers, performing
the same work, with the same skill sets, at the same levels of experience. But
the bottom tier, usually Millennials, get less wages or benefits than the top
tier only because they were hired after, rather than before the moment the
orphan clause was established.
Do you believe in equal pay for equal work? Labour
standards, as well as the Charter of rights, already prohibit wage
discrimination based on gender, race and age. What about date of hire? Barring
the unlikely event that new hires are not generally younger than the existing
workforce, discrimination according to date of hire is a systemic form of discrimination
based on age.
How do orphan clauses occur?
In collective bargaining, management and unions each defend
the interests of their constituency: shareholders and workers. Future hires are
outside union membership during bargaining, and so cannot be heard at the
bargaining table. Some employers look for expedient ways to cut costs, irrespective
of ethics. They push for two-tier systems, in wages or benefits, understanding
this is the line of least resistance by unions.
Usually, unions initially resist such proposals. But at the
end of the day, they often prefer to sacrifice new hires than give ground on something
that impacts their existing base.
The labour code is a device designed to balance the strengths
of management and unions, and thereby achieve fairly bargained outcomes. The
device fails when both parties agree to shift the burden of cost cutting to a
third party ‑ future hires – that is absent from the bargaining table. Legislative
action is therefore warranted to correct this failure.
Orphan clauses on wages are already prohibited in Quebec’s labour
standards law. CPC could argue that federal law contains no such provision, neither
for wages nor benefits. It could also argue that orphan clauses are not new. Still,
the Government of Canada has a fiduciary duty to younger workers unable to fend
for themselves within the framework of collective bargaining, as established by
federal law. CPC reports to Public Services Minister Judy Foote. Pursuant to its
fiduciary duty, the government could instruct CPC to pursue cost-cutting by
other means than by shifting its burden to youth.
Politicians of all stripes love to speak of their commitment
to youth, hand on heart. But talk is cheap. If the Trudeau Government allows
its largest Crown Corporation to balance its books by soaking the young, Millennials
might take note.
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