Conference Proceedings

Contract Labor, Contracting Out:
The Implications of New Forms of Work
For Industrial Relations

Toronto, Ontario
December 7 and 8, 1998

United States
National Administrative Office
Bureau of International Labor Affairs
U.S. Department of Labor
200 Constitution Avenue, NW
Room C-4327
Washington, D.C. 20210
(202) 501-6653
(202) 501-6615 fax

Canada
Inter-American Labour Cooperation
Labour Branch
Human Resources Development Canada
Phase II, 8th Floor
165 Hôtel de Ville
Hull, Quebec K1A 0J2
(819) 953-8860
(819) 953-8494 fax

Mexico
Oficina Administrativa Nacional de México
Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social
Av. Periférico Sur 4271
Edificio A Planta Baja
Col. Fuentes del Pedregal, Deleg. Tlalpan
14149 México, D.F.
(525) 645-4218
(525) 645-4471 fax

Secretariat
Commission for Labor Cooperation
One Dallas Centre
350 N. St. Paul, Suite 2424
Dallas, Texas 75201-4240
USA
(214) 754-1100
(214) 754-1199 fax

CONTRACT LABOUR, CONTRACTING OUT:
THE IMPLICATIONS OF NEW FORMS OF WORK
FOR INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS

SUBCONTRATACIÓN Y CONTRATACIÓN EXTERNA:
CONSECUENCIAS DE LAS NUEVAS FORMAS
DE TRABAJO SOBRE LAS RELACIONES LABORALES

ASAP Reporting Services Inc.
275 Slater Street, Suite 900
Ottawa, Ontario K1P 5H9
(613) 564-2727

1 Yonge Street, Suite 1801
Toronto, Ontario M5E 1W7
(416) 861-8720

This volume contains a transcription of presentations from the Conference on Contract Labour, Contracting Out: The Implications of New Forms of Work for Industrial Relations. It is neither a translation nor an edited version of the papers presented.

Ce volume est une transcription des présentations de la conférence sur la sous-traitance, l'impartition : les relations industrielles face aux nouvelles formes de travail. Il ne s'agit ni d'une traduction ni d'une version révisée des communications.

Este volumen es una transcripción de las presentaciónes de la conferencia sobre subcontratación y contratación externa: consecuencias de las nuevas formas de trabajo sobre las relaciones laborales. No es ni una traducción ni una versión editada de las ponencias.

Agenda

Opening Remarks - Day 1

Session 1: Seeking Solutions in an Increasingly Competitive World

International and Domestic Contexts

Legislative Frameworks

What Are the Options?

Question Period

Session 2: Contract Labour / Contracting Out: Assessing the Results to Date

Question Period

Contract Labour / Contracting Out: Assessing the Results to Date (continued)

Question Period

Opening Remarks - Day 2

Session 2: Contract Labour/Contracting Out: Assessing the Results to Date (continued)

Question Period

Business and Labour Panel Discussion

Question Period

Session 3: Contract Labour and Contracting Out in North America

How Does It Work?

Where Is It Headed?

Question Period

Concluding Remarks

Ordre du jour

Mot d'ouverture - première journée

Première séance : La recherche de solutions dans un univers de plus en plus concurrentiel

Contextes nationaux et contexte international

Cadres législatifs

Quelles sont les options?

Période de questions

Deuxième séance : La sous-traitance et l'impartition : évaluation des résultats jusqu'à présent

Période de questions

La sous-traitance et l'impartition : évaluation des résultats jusqu'à présent (suite)

Période de questions

Mot d'ouverture - deuxième journée

Deuxième séance : La sous-traitance et l'impartition : évaluation des résultats jusqu'à présent (suite)

Période de questions

Table ronde des représentants patronaux et syndicaux

Période de questions

Troisième séance : La sous-traitance et l'impartition en Amérique du Nord

Modalités

Et l'avenir?

Période de questions

Clôture

Orden del día

Bienvenida - Primer día

Primera sesión: La búsqueda de soluciones en un mundo cada vez más competitivo

Contexto internacional y nacional

Marco legal

¿Cuáles son las opciones?

Período de preguntas

Segunda sesión: Trabajo en régimen de subcontratación / contratación externa: un análisis de los resultados obtenidos

Período de preguntas

Trabajo en régimen de subcontratación / contratación externa: un análisis de los resultados obtenidos (sigue)

Período de preguntas

Bienvenida - Segundo día

Segunda sesión: Trabajo en régimen de subcontratación / contratación externa: un análisis de los resultados obtenidos (sigue)

Período de preguntas

Comentarios del panel laboral y empresarial

Período de preguntas

Tercera sesión: Trabajo en régimen de subcontratación y contratación externa en América del Norte

¿Cómo funciona?

¿Hacia dónde se dirige?

Período de preguntas

Clausura

Monday, December 7, 1998

9:00 - Opening Remarks

Heads of National Administrative Offices:
Canada - May Morpaw
United States - Irasema Garza
Mexico - Rafael Aranda Vollmer

9:30 - Session 1: Seeking Solutions in an Increasingly Competitive World

Moderator: Serge Brault, Adjudex Inc. (Canada)

International and Domestic Contexts

Canada - Anthony Giles, Université Laval

Legislative Frameworks

United States - Terence J. Hoopes, U.S. Department of Labor
Mexico - Yuri Cinta Dominguez, Advisor to Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social
Canada - Jean Bernier, Université Laval

What are the options?

United States - Sharon Cohany, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Brent Garren, Union of Needle Trades, Industrial and Textile Employees

12:00 - Lunch

1:30 - Session 2: Contract Labour / Contracting Out: Assessing the Results to Date

Moderator: Frank Roque, Hewitt Associates (United States)

Canada - Rod Hiebert, Telecommunication Workers Union
Canada - Caroll Carle, Noranda
Mexico - Octavio Carvajal Trillo, Carvajal, Bustamante y Trillo Asesores

4:00 - Canada - Jean Gervais, City of Gatineau (Québec)

5:00 - Wrap-up of Day 1

Tuesday, December 8, 1998

9:00 - Session 2: Contract Labour/Contracting Out: Assessing the Results to Date (continued)

Moderator: Caroline Weber, Queen's University (Canada)

United States - Dale Hogg, Iridium World Communications Ltd.
Canada - Rick Blacow, Sensor Technology
Mexico - Roberto Flores Lima, Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social
Canada - Normand Cadieux, Hydro-Québec

11:00 - Business and Labour Panel Discussion

Moderator: Alessandro Rubio Magaña, Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social (Mexico)

Mexico - Octavio Carvajal Trillo, Carvajal, Bustamante y Trillo Asesores
Ramón Gilberto Ramírez Alarcón, Confederación de Trabajadores Mexicanos
Canada - Andrew Finlay, Bank of Nova Scotia
Susan Spratt, Canadian Auto Workers
United States - Don Dowling, Hewitt Associates
Brent Garren, Union of Needle Trades, Industrial and Textile Employees

12:15 - Lunch Hosted by Canada

2:00 - Session 3: Contract Labour and Contracting Out in North America

Moderator: Roberto Flores Lima, Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social (Mexico)

How does it work?

United States - Susan Houseman, The Upjohn Institute
Canada - Rick MacDowell, Ontario Labour Relations Board
Mexico - Jaime Guerrero Romero, Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social

Where is it headed?

United States - Françoise Carré, The Radcliffe Public Policy Institute
Canada - Jean-Yves Brière, Brière Caron
Mexico - Ramón Gilberto Ramírez Alarcón, Confederación de Trabajadores Mexicanos

3:45 - Concluding Remarks
Heads of National Administrative Offices

4:00 - Conference Ends

ORDRE DU JOUR

Le lundi 7 décembre 1998

9 h 00 - Mot d'ouverture

Responsables des Bureaux administratifs nationaux:
Canada - May Morpaw
États-Unis - Irasema Garza
Mexique - Rafael Aranda Vollmer

9 h 30 - Première séance : La recherche de solutions dans un univers de plus en plus concurrentiel

Animateur: Serge Brault, Adjudex Inc. (Canada)

Contextes nationaux et contexte international

Canada - Anthony Giles, Université Laval

Cadres législatifs

États-Unis - Terence J. Hoopes, U.S. Department of Labor
Mexique - Yuri Cinta Dominguez, Conseiller de la Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social
Canada - Jean Bernier, Université Laval

Quelles sont les options?

États-Unis - Sharon Cohany, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Brent Garren, Union of Needle Trades, Industrial and Textile Employees

12 h 00 - Déjeuner

13 h 30 - Deuxième séance : La sous-traitance et l'impartition: évaluation des résultats jusqu'à présent

Animateur: Frank Roque, Hewitt Associates ( États-Unis )

Canada - Rod Hiebert, Telecommunication Workers Union
Canada - Caroll Carle, Noranda
Mexique - Octavio Carvajal Trillo, Carvajal, Bustamante y Trillo Asesores

16 h 00 - Canada - Jean Gervais, Ville de Gatineau (Québec)

17 h 00 - Fin de la première journée

Le mardi 8 décembre 1998

9 h 00 - Deuxième séance : La sous-traitance et l'impartition : évaluation des résultats jusqu'à présent (suite)

Animatrice: Caroline Weber, Queen's University ( Canada )

États-Unis - Dale Hogg, Iridium World Communications Ltd.
Canada - Rick Blacow, Sensor Techonology
Mexique - Roberto Flores Lima, Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social
Canada - Normand Cadieux, Hydro-Québec

11 h 00 - Table ronde des représentants patronaux et syndicaux

Animateur: Alessandro Rubio Magaña, Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social ( Mexique )

Mexique - Octavio Carvajal Trillo, Carvajal, Bustamante y Trillo Asesores
Ramón Gilberto Ramírez Alarcón,Confederación de Trabajadores Mexicanos
Canada - Andrew Finlay, Banque de la Nouvelle-Écosse
Susan Spratt, Travailleurs canadiens de l'automobile
États-Unis - Don Dowling, Hewitt Associates
Brent Garren, Union of Needle Trades, Industrial and Textile Employees

12 h 15 - Déjeuner offert par le Canada

14 h 00 - Troisième séance : La sous-traitance et l'impartition en Amérique du Nord

Animateur: Roberto Flores Lima, Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social ( Mexique )

Modalités

États-Unis - Susan Houseman, Upjohn Institute
Canada - Rick MacDowell, Ontario Labour Relations Board
Mexique - Jaime Guerrero Romero, Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social

Et l'avenir?

États-Unis - Françoise Carré, The Radcliffe Public Policy Institute
Canada - Jean-Yves Brière, Brière Caron
Mexique - Ramón Gilberto Ramírez Alarcón,Confederación de Trabajadores Mexicanos

15 h 45 - Clôture
Responsables des Bureaux administratifs nationaux

16 h 00 - Fin de la conférence

ORDEN DEL DÍA

Lunes 7 de diciembre de 1998

9 h 00 - Bienvenida

Secretarios de las Oficinas Administrativas Nacionales
Canadá - May Morpaw
Estados Unidos - Irasema Garza
México - Rafael Aranda Vollmer

9 h 30 - Primera sesión: La búsqueda de soluciones en un mundo cada vez más competitivo

Moderador: Serge Brault, Adjudex Inc. (Canadá)

Contexto internacional y nacional

Canadá - Anthony Giles, Université Laval

Marco legal

Estados Unidos - Terence J. Hoopes, U.S. Department of Labor
México - Yuri Cinta Dominguez, Asesora de la Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social
Canadá - Jean Bernier, Université Laval

¿Cuáles son las opciones?

Estados Unidos - Sharon Cohany, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Brent Garren, Union of Needle Trades, Industrial and Textile Employees

12 h 00 - Almuerzo

13 h 00 - Segunda sesión: Trabajo en régimen de subcontratación / contratación externa: un análisis de los resultados obtenidos

Moderador: Frank Roque, Hewit Associates (Estados Unidos)

Canadá - Rod Hiebert, Telecommunication Workers' Union
Canadá - Caroll Carle, Noranda
México - Octavio Carvajal Trillo, Carvajal, Bustamante y Trillo Asesores

16 h 00 - Canadá - Jean Gervais, Ciudad de Gatineau (Québec)

17 h 00 - Clausura de trabajos

Martes 8 de diciembre de 1998

9 h 00 - Segunda sesión: Trabajo en régimen de subcontratación / contratación externa: un análisis de los resultados obtenidos (sigue)

Moderadora: Caroline Weber, Queen's University (Canadá)

Estados Unidos - Dale Hogg, Iridium World Communications Ltd.
Canadá - Rick Blacow, Sensor Technology
México - Roberto Flores Lima, Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social
Canadá - Normand Cadieux, Hydro-Québec

11 h 00 - Comentarios del panel laboral y empresarial:

Moderador: Alessandro Rubio Magaña, Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social (México)

México - Octavio Carvajal Trillo, Carvajal, Bustamante y Trillo Asesores
Ramón Gilberto Ramírez Alarcón, Confederación de Trabajadores Mexicanos
Canadá - Andrew Finlay, Bank of Nova Scotia
Susan Spratt, Canadian Auto Workers
Estados Unidos - Don Dowling, Hewitt Associates
Brent Garren, Union of Needle Trades, Industrial and Textile Employees

12 h 15 - Almuerzo ofrecido por Canadá

14 h 00 - Tercera sesión: Trabajo en régimen de subcontratación y contratación externa en América del Norte

Moderador: Roberto Flores Lima, Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social (México)

¿Cómo funciona?

Estados Unidos - Susan Houseman, The Upjohn Institute
Canadá - Rick MacDowell, Ontario Labour Relations Board
México - Jaime Guerrero Romero, Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social

¿Hacia dónde se dirige?

Estados Unidos - Françoise Carré, The Radcliffe Public Policy Institute
Canadá - Jean-Yves Brière, Brière Caron
México - Ramón Gilberto Ramírez Alarcón, Confederación de Trabajadores Mexicanos

15 h 45 - Conclusiones
Secretarios de las Oficinas Administrativas Nacionales

16 h 00 - Clausura de la conferencia

--- Upon commencing at 9:05 a.m.

OPENING REMARKS

THE CHAIRPERSON (May Morpaw): Good morning. Bonjour. Buenos días. Bienvenidos a Toronto.

My name is May Morpaw. I will give you a moment to make sure you have interpretation devices and that you have adjusted them. English today is on channel 1, le français sur le canal 2, Español sobre el canal 3. If you have not picked up an interpretation device, they are outside.

Welcome to this conference on contracting out and contract labour in the context of industrial relations.

First let me point out that this is the first time we are holding an event in Toronto since the North American Agreement on Labour Cooperation came into effect in January of 1994. I am delighted to see so many people who have responded to our invitation to this cooperative activity.

Some of us, my team in particular, spent 12 hours getting here yesterday, due to weather conditions in Ottawa and some problems we had along the way. So if things are not as perfectly organized as you would like, that is the reason why and we are doing our best, so please be gentle with us and we will try to make sure everything goes smoothly from now on.

Je suis très heureuse de vous voir participer en si grand nombre à cette activité de coopération organisée ici à Toronto dans le cadre de l'Accord nord-américain de coopération dans le domaine du travail, et pour discuter avec nous, entre trois pays amis, d'un sujet d'actualité en milieu de travail.

I would like to welcome my counterparts, Irasema Garza and Rafael Aranda who will both speak to you in a moment.

I would also like to acknowledge the presence of a number of members of our National Advisory Committee, including Wally Fox-Decent, the Chair of the Canadian Committee.

It is important to note that under the Agreement we have had a continuing program of cooperative activities since 1994. A number of you have participated in some of those. We have been aiming at creating a network of experts across North America on labour matters.

Cette conférence fait partie du programme des activités de coopération pour 1998. Ce programme de coopération est un des piliers de l'Accord. Il vise à faire mieux comprendre les lois, les politiques et les pratiques de chaque pays, ainsi qu'à encourager l'innovation et le partage d'information concernant les questions liées au travail. Évidemment cela comprend l'échange et le dialogue que nous tenons à favoriser ici, aujourd'hui et demain.

This year there has been a conference in each country. We met in April in Mexico to discuss labour market trends, in Washington in October to discuss collective bargaining by multinationals across North America. Today's conference is the fifth one dealing with industrial relation issues since 1994, and the third conference in Canada. We have had one previously in Edmonton, organized with Wendy Hassen from Alberta Labour who is here in the room. We have had one in Montreal, where we worked with the Quebec government in 1996.

Let me take a moment to add that labour ministers of the three countries met for their annual meeting in October. This year, the agenda was devoted to the four-year review of the implementation of the Agreement. You will find Ministers' conclusions in a document outside the room. I encourage you to pick it up and the other documents that you might not have seen before, at the registration desk, including the latest annual report of the Commission for Labour Cooperation.

The point I want to make about the four-year review is that it indicated strong support for this kind of cooperative activity in all three countries and by all respondents to the invitation for public comments. This support for cooperative activities was echoed by ministers who also issued a challenge to participants in our activities. That challenge is to find ways to make cooperative activities and the cooperative work program more relevant, more strategic and more results oriented. We have to count on you to help us do that.

The review highlighted the importance of continuing and building on our current work program, but also to focus our cooperative activities on the emerging workplace issues which we think this particular theme is. New forms of work is certainly an important issue for all of us and one that Canada in particular has been studying for some time, including through a task force that published a report called "The Collective Reflection on the Changing Nature of Work".

Contract work in its various shapes and forms poses some fundamental questions about the social fabric, about workplaces and how they are changing, and specifically, it seems to me, in terms of the balance between individual and collective approaches to employment. Each of our countries may have a different approach to that, and in Canada we may even have different views from region to region of the country, on seeking this balance between individual and collective responsibilities, roles and legislation.

I hope we can use this conference as a springboard for future and more in-depth exploration of complex issues such as this one.

I also want to mention that the interest in the issue, of course, is not limited to our three countries in North America. In October, Labour Ministers of the Americas met in Chile. Minister Lawrence MacAulay from Canada was there, the first time that Canada participated in that Inter-American conference, and this subject was among the topics raised, particularly by the international institutions providing information and reports to ministers.

While in Chile we also met with our Chilean counterparts under the Canada-Chile Agreement on Labour Cooperation to discuss the implications for governments of the evolving workplace. I saw Tony Dean from the Ontario Ministry of Labour come in; he was with us on that delegation to Chile and he may have things to add to the discussion in question period as we go along.

Revenant à notre thème, aujourd'hui et demain nous allons réfléchir sur la question d'une forme particulière de travail, soit la sous-traitance et l'impartition, et ses manifestations dans nos trois pays.

Les différentes perspectives se révèlent dès que l'on tente de définir la question et se poursuivent dans les analyses de la réalité et des répercussions en milieu de travail.

You will be hearing about these various perspectives in what we hope will be a very stimulating two days. Our goal is to increase our shared understanding and to examine the views of business and labour and consider possible public policy directions in response to this reality.

In closing let me say that the new Canadian Minister of Labour, the Honourable Claudette Bradshaw, and our Assistant Deputy Minister and Head of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, Warren Edmondson, extend their very best wishes for a successful conference. Many of you may not have realized, but two weeks ago the Minister of Labour was changed and it is now Madame Bradshaw from Moncton, New Brunswick.

A final word for everyone who is going to be speaking today. These proceedings are being taped and there will be a transcript of the proceedings produced.

J'invite Madame Irasema Garza, Secrétaire du Bureau administratif national des États-Unis, à prononcer quelques mots.

MS IRASEMA GARZA (Secretary, National Administrative Office, United States of America): It is a pleasure to be here with you today in this beautiful City of Toronto, with our friends from Canada and Mexico.

On behalf of the U.S. delegation and Secretary of Labour Alexis Herman, I bring greetings to all of you and best wishes for a successful conference.

I look forward to exploring the topics that we have included in our conference agenda. Contracting out is an issue of growing concern internationally and particularly in the United States where the number of contingent workers continues to grow. This issue generates new opportunities and new challenges for employers, workers and unions. This conference is designed to engage us in a dialogue about these issues and to help us foster solutions that benefit both workers and employers.

The globalization of our economies and the expansion of international trade, facilitated by agreements such as the NAFTA, have created changes that make engaging in international dialogue essential to understand how to best address these issues.

This conference promises to give our three countries that opportunity and I look forward to participating and learning from that exchange over the next two days.

Thank you to my Canadian colleagues for hosting this very important conference. I look forward to chatting with you throughout the next two days. Thank you.

Rafael Aranda Vollmer (Secretary, National Administrative Office, Mexico): En nombre del Secretario del Trabajo de México, José Antoñio González Fernández, tambien les quiero dar la bienvenida y darles las gracias a la oficina de Canadá por este esfuerzo y su hospitalidad para organizar este evento.

La subcontratación está siendo un tema que está adquiriendo cada vez mayor importancia en varios sectores de la economía. Es un tema emergente de la agenda de México. No es un concepto nuevo, sin embargo, es difícil definir con precisión. De ahí la importancia de estos eventos, donde los gobiernos y los sectores sindical y empresarial pueden intercambiar opiniones y dialogar sobre este tema y otros similares. A cada país le espera la tarea de optar conforme a sus instituciones y a su contexto económico, social y jurídico, los instrumentos que le permitan abordar con mayor éxito los retos que estos nuevos esquemas implican.

Muchas gracias.

THE CHAIRPERSON (May Morpaw): Thank you, Rafael.

You have heard a few brief words of welcome from my Mexican and American counterparts, Rafael Aranda and Irasema Garza.

We will step down from the podium and as we formally inaugurate the conference, I will invite the first panel to come forward. It will be moderated by Serge Brault. We will take a few moments to reorganize ourselves.

--- A Short Pause

THE CHAIRPERSON (May Morpaw): We have assembled the panel. Before I introduce the panel moderator, I will take care of a few housekeeping details for you.

Let me begin by saying that what happens at the breaks and in your discussions with each other and in the question period after the presentations is just as important, probably, as what happens here at the front of the room. I encourage you to try to meet everyone and to mingle and to join us at 5:15 p.m. just down the hall, in Confederation Room 3, where Baker and McKenzie will be hosting a cocktail reception. Please join us then and meet our hosts from Baker and McKenzie and meet each other and have a better chance to exchange with new friends.

There are a few errors in the Program. They are minor, so please ignore them and we will correct them as we go along.

The biographies are in the package you received. You can read them as well as I, so we will not spend time looking at them and reading them out from the podium. We will just proceed with the substance of the discussion, with a few words about each speaker where helpful.

Let me remind moderators that their key responsibility is to be ruthless in keeping to the agenda timetables. I would also remind all the participants that you know how long you are speaking, the moderator will remind you of that, but please pace yourself accordingly to allow everyone else the time to speak as well.

Finally in terms of housekeeping, this is an event with simultaneous interpretation. When you are running out of time, please don't speed up. That doesn't help, because it makes it much more difficult to capture the flavour of what you are saying and to ensure it is interpreted. So, make sure we understand everything you are saying.

C'est pour moi un plaisir de vous présenter Monsieur Serge Brault du cabinet Adjudex qui va modérer la première session qui est prévue de 9 h 30 à 10 h 50 quand il y aura une pause.

Mr. Brault was a member of the federal minister of labour's "Collective Reflection on the Changing Workplace", a report that appeared about two years ago. This report was published in 1997, the work was undertaken in the year and a half before that.

In 1997 and 1998, Mr. Brault acted as technical advisor to the Canadian government delegation at the International Labour Organization Conference on Contract Labour in Geneva.

I know that Andrew Finlay, who is also in the room and on the program, was at that conference. I am sure we will hear more about the discussion from there.

Monsieur Brault.

SESSION 1: SEEKING SOLUTIONS IN AN INCREASINGLY COMPETITIVE WORLD

M. SERGE BRAULT (Adjudex Inc., Canada, Modérateur): Merci.

Bonjour, tout le monde, et bienvenue à cette première session ce matin. Étant donné mon rôle de modérateur et pour un peu intimider mes amis qui sont ici avec moi en avant, j'ai décidé de les présenter debout, de manière à ce que lorsque j'interviendrai pour les rappeler à l'ordre ils soient plus dociles et se prêtent plus résolument à mes directives.

Comme vous savez, nous avons un temps qui nous est imparti. Puisque nous parlons d'impartition, nous avons un temps qui nous est imparti ce matin pour traiter d'un sujet qui est fort complexe et varié, suivant comment on le regarde et suivant nos origines et notre histoire à la fois politique et législative.

Nous avons quatre orateurs qui nous feront une présentation à la fois des cadres législatifs qui régissent ou ne régissent pas la question de la sous-traitance et de l'impartition. Nous verrons en même temps les contextes nationaux et internationaux qui encadrent cette notion ou cette réalité qui, en fait, est en progression.

Nous avons à peu près 90 minutes à notre disposition pour traiter de cette question et on essayera de distribuer le temps à peu près également entre chacun des orateurs. On va prévoir une période de questions d'environ 15 minutes où les interventions seront les bienvenues.

As May Morpaw mentioned, I was part of the Canadian delegation at the ILO conference last summer, dealing with contract labour. One of the ironies during that conference is that it actually reached a point of impasse where we could not agree on the notion of contract labour as it was defined in French by the word "sous-traitance". Today we are together to try and address this notion of "sous-traitance" in French, and contracting out or sub-contracting. We are faced with the difficulty of trying to see whether or not we are addressing a common notion or reality when we talk about "sous-traitance" or outsourcing or contracting out or sub-contracting, which is not an easy task.

It is also a notion that is in constant evolution in the sense that new types, new arrangements of work, tend to appear and modify the traditional definition we were used to working with. So one of the challenges facing our panel is to try to see whether or not there is a need for a common notion, if there is a reality, indeed, that is common, under the notion of contracting out, to our different countries and to see whether or not we also have common problems under this general notion.

Let me introduce our panel. With us this morning, first at my far left is Mr. Yuri Cinta Dominguez from Mexico. Mr. Cinta, whom I had the pleasure to work with in Geneva last summer, is an advisor to the Department of Labour in Mexico. Prior to that he was at the University of Mexico where he studied law.

As mentioned in the written notes you have before you, Mr. Cinta, being involved with the ILO Conference on Contract Labour, was able to experience the difficulty facing nations trying to come up with joint definitions or definitions that will indeed suit different countries with different law background, law history.

Our second guest on the panel is Mr. Terence Hoopes from the Department of Labour of the United States. Mr. Hoopes has been with the department for 12 years, mainly involved in employee benefits policies. He is a senior policy analyst at the department, where he specializes in legislative issues, including classification of workers, a topic he will touch on this morning.

Next to him is Professeur Jean Bernier. Le Professeur Bernier enseigne à l'Université Laval depuis 1968 et il est l'auteur de nombreuses publications et communications, dont l'une remarquée qui concerne la grève et les services essentiels, qui a été publiée aux presses de l'Université Laval.

Le Professeur Bernier a participé à un Groupe de travail du Gouvernement du Québec, en 1996, qui s'est penché sur les Articles 45 et 46 du Code du travail du Québec qui sont les dispositions qui régissent la question du transfert d'entreprises, de la vente d'entreprises, de la transmission des droits et obligations en matière de rapports collectifs de travail.

Finalement, sur ma gauche, immédiatement à côté de moi, Tony Giles. Le Professeur Anthony Giles appartient au Département de relations industrielles de l'Université Laval à Québec depuis six ans. Il est originaire de Montréal et avant de venir à Laval il avait enseigné à la Faculté d'administration de l'Université du Nouveau-Brunswick pendant un bon nombre d'années. Il se spécialise dans les études comparatives et internationales. Les recherches et les publications récentes de Monsieur Giles portent sur la mondialisation et son impact sur le travail et l'emploi.

Nul doute qu'avec un panel comme celui-ci nous aurons une discussion animée. En cours de route nous allons improviser un peu. Nous verrons, si vous le voulez bien, à quel moment il est opportun de situer les questions. Je rappelle à mes collègues que je n'ai volé en fait que cinq minutes de leur temps, puisque j'avais profité de la générosité de Madame Morpaw qui m'avait donné quelques minutes du sien.

Si vous le voulez bien, on va commencer tout de suite par la présentation du Professeur Giles. Merci.

PROF. ANTHONY GILES (Laval University, Quebec): Good morning. Bonjour. Buenos días.

For those of you who hate fiddling with the simultaneous translation devices, I am afraid I have some bad news. I am going to be speaking in French for the first part of my presentation and, then, switching to English about halfway through. So now is a good time to get your earphones on if you will need them.

Ma tâche ce matin consiste à situer les pratiques de sous-traitance et d'impartition dans leur contexte plus large. L'argument que je vais avancer est simple.

Dans un premier temps, la sous-traitance et l'impartition sont des stratégies de flexibilisation du travail. Mais elles ne sont pas les seules. Il importe donc de les situer par rapport à la recherche plus générale, par les entreprises, de la flexibilité organisationelle et, plus particulièrement, de la flexibilité du travail.

Dans un deuxième temps, cette quête de la flexibilité s'explique par une restructuration encore plus vaste de la production du travail et de l'emploi. Restructuration qui est liée à la globalisation, la mutation des marchés des produits, les nouvelles technologies, les nouveaux modes d'organisation, la transformation de l'environnement politique et l'affaiblissement du syndicalisme.

Pour développer cet argument je vais commencer par une analyse de la flexibilité du travail. Ensuite je vais examiner les facteurs qui ont poussé, et qui poussent toujours, les organisations à tenter d'assouplir l'organisation du travail. En guise de conclusion, je vais discuter de quelques limites à la flexibilité ainsi qu'à la concurrence elle-même.

Afin de situer la sous-traitance et l'impartition dans le contexte d'une nouvelle forme du travail, c'est utile, et voire incontournable ces jours-ci, de les voir comme les pratiques visant une plus grande flexibilité en milieu de travail. De façon générale, la flexibilité se définit comme la capacité de s'adapter rapidement et efficacement aux changements qui influent sur l'entreprise, que ce soit les changements économiques, technologiques, et cetera. L'intérêt croissant pour la flexibilité touche plusieurs aspects de la gestion des entreprises, mais vu l'objet de ce colloque je vais me limiter à la flexibilité du travail.

La flexibilité du travail se divise en trois types de flexibité plus spécifiques.

D'abord, la flexibilité salariale. C'est la capacité d'ajuster la masse salariale ou les salaires des individus.

Deuxièmement, la flexibilité numérique. C'est la capacité de varier le volume du travail, c'est-à-dire le nombre total des heures de travail.

Et enfin, la flexibilité fonctionnelle qui est la capacité de modifier l'organisation et la localisation du travail.

Pour chacun de ces trois types de flexibilité, il existe ce qu'on appelle une stratégie interne, c'est-à-dire une stratégie qui met l'accent sur la modification des règles et des normes à l'intérieur de l'entreprise en misant surtout sur les employés en place, et une stratégie externe, c'est-à-dire une stratégie qui mise sur les ressources et les marchés à l'extérieur de l'entreprise.

Par exemple, pour une entreprise qui cherche à rendre les salaires plus flexibles, une stratégie externe serait de négocier un système de salaires à double palier, tandis qu'une stratégie interne serait de lier les salaires à la performance de l'entreprise ou des groupes à l'intérieur de l'entreprise, ou même des individus.

Sur le plan de la flexibilité numérique, la stratégie interne consiste à varier les heures de travail des salariés déjà en place par l'horaire flexible, le temps supplémentaire, le travail partagé, par exemple, tandis que la stratégie externe consiste à faire fluctuer le nombre de salariés en utilisant, par exemple, les mises à pied, les rappels, ou encore le travail à contrat, le travail temporaire ou le travail occasionnel.

Enfin, pour ce qui est de la flexibilité fonctionnelle, les mêmes choix s'offrent. D'une part on pourrait chercher plus de flexibilité par la voie de l'externalisation, c'est-à-dire en confiant une partie du travail soit à des sous-traitants, soit à des travailleurs autonomes; ou, d'autre part, on pourrait mettre l'emphase sur la réorganisation interne du travail, notamment par la polyvalence, le travail en équipe, l'élargissement des tâches, et cetera.

Il est donc clair que la sous-traitance et l'impartition sont des pratiques qui cherchent à rendre le travail plus flexible, sur les plans fonctionnel et numérique, par une stratégie axée surtout sur le recours à des ressources extérieures à l'entreprise. De plus, il est évident que ces pratiques, tout comme la grande majorité des pratiques de flexibilité, sont des pratiques « managériales ». Bien sûr, certaines d'entre elles prennent en compte les préoccupations des employés, comme l'horaire flexible, par exemple, ou les avantages sociaux à la carte, mais l'intérêt pour les pratiques flexibles en milieu de travail est essentiellement une préoccupation « managériale ».

La question qui se pose est donc la suivante: qu'est-ce qui explique cette quête de la flexibilité du travail? Avant de vous proposer une réponse, une précision s'impose.

Ce qui me frappe le plus dans le débat sur la flexibilité, c'est le fait que la plupart des pratiques flexibles, et surtout les pratiques associées à la stratégie externe, sont loin d'être nouvelles. Bien que la sous-traitance et l'impartition se présentent souvent commes des innovations, elles reflètent plutôt un revirement, un retour dans le passé, une tentative de démanteler un système de régulation qui a été construit pendant la période de l'après-guerre, du moins dans les pays développés.

Donc, plutôt que de nous satisfaire d'essayer d'expliquer la nouveauté de la chose, il m'apparaît plus pertinent de nous demander pourquoi on fait ainsi marche arrière, du moins pour certaines pratiques flexibles.

I will try to answer this question by looking at six broad sets of factors that have led many firms to seek a competitive advantage to flexibility: globalization, changes in product markets, new technologies, changes in the organization of firms and production systems, changes in the political environment, and the weakening of unions.

How has globalization spurred the search for flexibility? The most obvious reason is heightened international competition resulting from reduced barriers to trade, which has put a premium on finding ways to lower costs, increase productivity and eliminate inefficiencies. Flexibility in its different forms has often been a key part of that response.

But globalization has also meant reducing barriers to foreign investment, which, combined with declining transportation and communication costs over the last 10 years, has made international production systems and, what is particularly important for this conference, international subcontracting networks, much more viable and attractive than they used to be. More generally, the increased international flow of ideas and information that is part of globalization has propagated ideas concerning flexibility. Think, for example, about the spread of quality circles or lean production models. And although each individual country faces its own particular flexibility challenge, the more general global discourse about flexibility is a very powerful factor, particularly within multinational corporations.

Product markets are not just becoming more global, they are also changing in other important ways that have heightened the importance of flexibility.

To begin with, competition has increased not just on international markets, but also on national and local markets. A case in point is the efforts of the Canadian federal and provincial governments to reduce interprovincial trade barriers.

Second, product markets have become characterized by more volatility and uncertainty, leading firms to focus on their capacity to shorten their response to market changes, to position themselves to adapt more quickly.

Third, there has been an increase in demand for quality, both from consumers and also from intermediate users.

Lastly, markets have become more specialized, which has required firms to produce shorter production runs of a wider variety of products for distinct market niches, which also requires them to increase their flexibility.

The third set of factors relate to new technology. Here it is worth mentioning three effects.

First, more rapid technological changes required firms to increase their capacity to adopt and integrate new techniques and processes, to be able to quickly retrain or replace employees with outmoded skills, and to reconfigure the organization of work.

Second, as new technologies increasingly take over standardized and routinized tasks, the nature of work is shifting toward tasks that have a higher intellectual content, that are based more on problem solving and relational skills, which also demands more flexibility.

Third, not only do new technologies require more flexible capacity, they also permit the development of certain forms of flexibility. One example of this is how the combination of computing and communications technologies have allowed the expansion of telework, a form of work that, when it is combined with contract labour, is really just the modern face of the 18th and 19th century "putting out" system.

In addition to new technologies, and in fact perhaps more important than new technologies, are broader trends in the way that firms have sought to reorganize their organizational structures and internal processes. On a general level, downsizing, delayering, re-engineering or thinning the ranks of middle managers and supervisors, forcing responsibility downward, requiring workers and work groups to take on a wider range of tasks.

In the realm of production methods, the introduction of innovations like just-in-time supply systems, the switch from push to pull models of production planning, widespread use of statistical quality control on the shop floor, have all increased the need for greater flexibility.

And lastly, at the level of work organization, team working in its various guises, along with related trends like cellular manufacturing, total quality management, continuous improvement and so on, all create the need and the pre-conditions for more flexible ways of organizing work.

I think the fifth important factor is political and it is the rise of neo-liberalism in the political sphere, a trend that has gone hand in hand, obviously, with the trend toward globalization.

Neo-liberalism, with its emphasis on the superiority of markets and the values of individualism, has played a crucial role in legitimating the pursuit of flexibility, especially in terms of the externally oriented strategy of flexibility.

More tangibly, many governments have taken, or are being pressured to take, steps to deregulate markets to create the conditions for fiercer competition. Moreover, many governments have followed the neo-liberal prescription of making labour markets more flexible, providing yet another important ingredient in the search for flexibility.

And in the public sector, neo-liberalism has played a more direct role, where it has fuelled an obsession with deficit reduction that has translated into financial constraints on public sector managers, forcing them to resort to a variety of flexibility strategies, a case in point obviously being the increased use of contract employees.

Lastly, we should not overlook the general weakening of unions that has occurred over the last two decades, a weakening that is evident in their waning political influence, diminished bargaining power and declining ability to organize new members. All this has made it easier for management to remove what are seen as obstacles to flexibility in collective agreements, like detailed job classifications and other factors that limit the internal mobility of labour. As well, the decline in organizing ability has meant that in the growing sectors of employment, particularly the services, there is an especially pronounced growth of flexible forms of employment that, in turn, makes it even more difficult to organize, a sort of vicious circle for which the only real solution is legislative.

However, given the general decline in labour's political influence, the likelihood of governments acting to help solve this growing crisis of representation is not particularly bright.

To summarize, flexible work practices constitute an important ingredient in the competitive response to a radically different economic, social, technological and political environment. More broadly, the theme that links most of these changes together seems to be a return to market based regulation. Although the attempt to revamp collective agreements, lighten state regulation and so on are sometimes portrayed as deregulation, it is more accurate to see them as a swing of the pendulum away from collective or social regulation toward market regulation or, to come back to a theme I raised earlier, back toward market regulation.

Let me conclude with three points that will serve as caveats to what I have said so far -- because as all academics are trained to do, we have to cover ourselves a little bit -- as well as themes that we might want to pick up in later sessions in this conference.

First, I think it is important that we resist the temptation to exaggerate either the novelty of flexible modes of managing work and labour or the extent of their spread. Obviously flexibility is an important phenomenon and it is widespread, but it is hardly universal. The completely flexible or virtual firm in which employment relations have been reduced to short-term exchanges on something resembling a spot market, is a fiction or very nearly a fiction. Instead, the vast majority of firms, the research shows, have sought to introduce some aspects of flexibility, including sub-contracting and contract labour, without going the whole hog.

Second, we have to be careful not to equate the search for flexibility with the strategy of externalization. This is going to be quite a temptation over the next two days because the key focus of this conference is on sub-contracting, contract labour and outsourcing, methods that are essentially means of externalizing work in an effort to enhance flexibility, reduce costs and offload risks. But we will need to remember, throughout the two days, that externalization is a choice and that other options are available.

Third, these other options are especially important when we consider that an overly enthusiastic search for flexibility can sometimes lead management to try to achieve incompatible goals.

I was in a plant here in southern Ontario recently where an HR department, like so many others these days, was launching all sorts of programs aimed at fostering greater loyalty, commitment, team work and so on. However, at the same time the production managers were turning increasingly to outsourcing, short-term layoffs, contract labour, as a means of achieving their particular goals. So, not surprisingly, the employees found it just a little bit difficult to become enthusiastic about all the talk about partnership and cooperation when their basic job security was being regularly threatened.

This suggests, I would say, that we need to take a close look at the options for becoming more competitive, to measure them carefully against the broader objectives of the firm itself, the needs of employees and the interests of society as a whole. Now that, of course, is the standard way for industrial relations researchers to conclude this kind of discussion, to call for good competitive strategies as opposed to bad competitive strategies. But it is also important, I think, to go one step further and to suggest that a single minded pursuit of competitiveness as such is, as the MIT economist Paul Krugman put it, "a dangerous obsession".

Let me finish up with a very brief quote from the Lisbon group, which I have in French:

"Le problème que pose la compétitivité n'est pas tellement le fait qu'elle existe mais bien plutôt le fait qu'elle prétende s'imposer comme la seule règle potentiellement comprise et respectée par tous. L'obsession de la compétitivité a fait en sorte que celle-ci est en bonne voie d'éliminer du débat public tous les autres principes. Elle ne souffre apparemment aucune concurrence."

Merci. Thank you very much.

M. BRAULT: Je veux d'abord remercier Tony de sa présentation.

Sans plus de délai, I will call upon Terence Hoopes to make his presentation.

I would ask you to put your questions on the back burner for the time being, so as to allow us to hear each presentation before we go to the question period.

MR. TERENCE J. HOOPES (U.S. Department of Labor): Good morning. Bonjour. Buenos días.

I am Terry Hoopes. As Mr. Brault indicated, I work at the Labor Department, but I am a tax attorney by training and I really got into employee benefits through that way.

This issue presents a number of issues that raise some tensions and conflict between the U.S. tax laws and the labour laws on the other hand.

I first came to the issue at the Labor Department when we were working on the contingent work force. As with contracting out, there was widespread confusion over exactly what that meant. To me as a benefits policy attorney, what it really meant was, is there something different about contingent workers or firms that contract out in terms of the benefits that are provided. We find an ageing workforce and an ageing population in the United States. Questions regarding retirement savings and health benefit security have moved from academic discussions into real life examples that mean the difference, in some cases, of life and death for Americans and for others in ageing populations.

What we found was that certain practices resulted in reduced benefits for a number of individuals. We can call them workers, but really, the focus is on individual people. What we were not sure of was whether the reduced benefit frequency was a cause of contracting out or merely an effect of contracting out. We spent some time questioning that, but then we decided it really did not matter, it was the phenomenon of the reduced benefits associated with certain types of workers that raised great public policy concern.

I am speaking today on the legislative framework in the United States regarding contracting out. As Mr. Brault indicated, there are great challenges in definitions here, so I want to try to be clear in terms of where I am coming from and the interest that I have in these issues.

The classification of workers affects their legal entitlements, both under the labour laws and other laws that govern the workforce. It also affects the way businesses and individuals are taxed. Misclassifying workers as employees or not as employees can have serious consequences, not just for the workers and their firms, but also for the government. It is quite a challenge these days for the Department of Labor to come in and determine who a firm's employees are in many instances.

We have also seen a lot of legislative interest in these issues, in terms of classification of workers. We have several different interest groups pushing and pulling in different directions to change the statutory definitions. The status quo, or the definition that we work with now, is equally unsatisfactory to almost all parties. But it is the devil we know. We understand, with all of its drawbacks, what the definition is.

It can be quite confusing having the labour laws and the tax laws use different definitions, as well as having the Congress considering modifications to those definitions. In addition, state laws can also apply in determining who is an employee for purposes of, for example, workers compensation programs.

For example, the growth of temporary firms has raised concerns regarding who the employer is, for accountability purposes, and in some states they have set up a two-tiered system where the firm is initially looked to for primary liability, with the temporary agency standing behind that liability. In other states, they say that both parties are liable for workers compensation responsibilities.

Turning to the topic of contracting out more precisely, the topic of the conference, I want to note that in the United States there is a great degree of freedom in terms of how a business seeks to perform certain functions. The analogy I use in my written material is that if a company needs a certain tangible product, it has a great degree of freedom in choosing whether to manufacture that product or to buy it from an outside supplier. The same is generally true with respect to services or other functions. The primary exception is labour- management relation laws, where we see a union representing a workforce in negotiation with an employer. I will be speaking more on that in a few minutes.

We have seen a trend recently in the United States, for the reasons that Professor Giles mentioned, where more businesses are seeking to focus on their core competencies. They frequently want to focus on business strategies in order to maximize their profits and survive in a more global and more competitive environment. Outsourcing is being seen as a way to implement the strategies, so that outsourcing is used as a tactical method.

The labour-management relation laws in the United States allow employers and unions to negotiate over contracting out. Employers and unions are free to specify that contracting out can be restricted for certain functions, or to place certain numerical limitations on the number of temporary workers to come to a firm, or it can explicitly recognize that an employer is free to contract out.

One of the problems that the labor movement has seen is that when you have workers other than common law employees, it has been difficult to organize those workers. It is conceivable that employees who work for temporary firms may be in greater need of having representation through the unions than other types of workers, but it is difficult to find and communicate with and organize those workers.

A recent case study that we have seen in the United States involves Fedex, the package delivery service. After years of fighting to have representation for the pilots of Fedex, a union was recently recognized and now the company is in the process of attempting to negotiate with the union for the pilots over the first collective bargaining agreement.

The pilots are extremely interested in placing limitations on the firm's ability to contract out the pilot services, especially on, as is described in the press, the coveted overseas routes. However, the company, perhaps with a little bit of a sour taste in its mouth after the unionization fight, has not been too excited about negotiating over these contracting out limitations. In fact, they have not yet been able to reach any sort of collectively bargained agreement on this issue or on other issues. Recently the pilots threatened to strike over this issue. The company's response was you are free to strike if you care to, we are proceeding with our plans to contract out.

Eventually the union returned and conceded that they wanted to bargain for the best agreement that they could receive and that they were not going to strike over this one issue.

What I found very interesting was that as the strike was becoming closer, the pilots, who represented a small portion of the total workforce, had they gone out on strike, would have resulted in the lack of work for the entire firm, all of its employees. The other employees showed up at the headquarters of Fedex to demonstrate in favour of management and they were not particularly sympathetic to the relatively highly paid pilots going out on strike.

The National Labor Relations Act governs mandatory subjects of collective bargaining in the United States. One of the areas where bargaining is mandatory is anything that affects the terms and conditions of employment. Contracting out has been viewed as sometimes affecting the terms and conditions of employment and sometimes not. So depending on the particular circumstances of the case, some of the decisions have come down on both sides of the fence. The standard for determining whether bargaining is required over contracting out is whether the benefits for labour-management relations in the bargaining process outweigh the burden that bargaining would place on the conduct of the business.

Two cases that illustrate the contrast in results that can occur include one where an employer wants to contract out maintenance work that the union workers had been performing traditionally, and there the courts determined that where you are simply replacing the work of the union members with other workers, that does affect the terms and conditions of the work for the affected members of the union. But in a more recent case that is listed in my written materials, in October of 1998 the court decided that a general contractor in a construction business did not have to bargain over every single instance of contracting out, whenever it wanted to, for example, subcontract out the drywall work in a building that it was constructing.

In that situation, the contract actually had language in it regarding contracting out, but it was not a restriction or a recognition that contracting out was explicitly authorized, except to the extent that it said where contracting out was done, which is quite common in the construction business, that the employer was obliged to make sure that the workers of the subcontractor were receiving the same types of wages and benefits as the union members, prevailing wages in effect.

I mentioned the federal tax treatment of employees. We have seen frequently where it is difficult to determine whether an employee-employer relationship exists; this can be quite critical in determining who pays the social security taxes, who is responsible for withholding and depositing income tax amounts, unemployment compensation taxes, and the eligibility to participate in tax favoured pensions and group health plans.

We have seen, as an enforcement agency, that certain employers are quite interested in misclassifying their workers, to call them independent contractors because of the opportunities for cost savings on the cost side, in particular cost savings on the fringe benefit plans. The proliferation of new types of working arrangements with staff leasing and temporary firms and professional employer organizations, have made this determination even more confusing.

The U.S. Treasury Department, which is responsible for collecting taxes in the United States, is concerned that some of these new firms present challenges in their ability to collect taxes. The situation they are concerned about is that if you have a manufacturing firm that goes out of business, there are usually tangible assets that can be attached to satisfy the tax liabilities. If a temporary firm goes out of business, frequently there is nothing left but an empty office that had been rented and some telephones which have been unplugged.

The Workers Compensation Program at the Labor Department had similar concerns. But when they started looking into the actual experience, they determined that the temporary firms in fact were more likely to be current with their tax payments than the small businesses that they tended to service. So while they initially had some concerns, as they looked into it more closely they determined that in fact this could be a positive development.

For tax purposes there is a safe harbour that applies so that if an employer has misclassified its workers as non-employees, there is a way where they can come back into grace without paying heavy penalties.

I would like to contrast that now with the way we do business over at the Labor Department, where it is black and white, one is either an employee or not an employee, and when a firm engages in contracting out, frequently the firm does not view the workers as employees. We view this as a factual determination. We have brought a couple of cases recently. I notice that Business Week has an article in today's issue talking about a couple of our cases. One involved Microsoft, and the other involved Time Warner Incorporated, the publishing firm.

Time Warner was using temporary workers and freelance writers, hundreds if not thousands of these people, and treating them as non-employees. And yet, they showed up to work, they were given assignments, they were assigned deadlines, they worked in offices run by Time Warner. My agency filed a law suit recently, challenging the denial of benefits for those affected workers. With respect to the pension benefits, you can put a dollar sign on the potential damages to the workers. But interestingly, one of the remedies that we are seeking is to enable the employees, as we view them, to retroactively elect whether they would have joined the group health plan or not. I think that it may be somewhat difficult to handle these matters retroactively, but we have proceeded instead.

In the interests of time, I will simply note that my written materials discuss the various laws the Labor Department enforces and interprets, and note that the written material at the end contains a list of factors that apply for the various laws in determining whether someone is or is not an employee entitled to labor protections. Some of these issues certainly arise whenever there is contracting out and unfortunately for all concerned, it is not easy to be certain that you have classified your workers correctly. On the other hand, we do not have a very simple legislative fix to this and expect it to become more and more of an issue with globalization and flexibility demands.

MR. BRAULT: Thank you, Mr. Hoopes, for this very interesting presentation.

Without further ado, I will ask Mr. Cinta to make his own presentation.

You are free to make bets between yourselves as to whether or not all the speakers will respect the time allotted. You may also want to decide whether or not we will be invited over for a drink at the bar if this panel is able to do all it has to do within the time allotted.

Thank you.

YURI CINTA DOMINGUEZ: Buenos días. I am going to speak in Spanish if you don't mind. I will try to make it slowly.

Los procesos de subcontratación del trabajo no son un fenómeno reciente en el mundo. De hecho, ciertas ramas de la economía han estado presentes en las formas de organización del trabajo y de la producción como parte de su funcionalidad.

Resulta importante la discusión de este tema dentro del ámbito internacional, ya que, originalmente, la subcontratación se utilizaba cuando una empresa usuaria carecía de personal especializado para la realización de labores específicas por un corto tiempo. Sin embargo, actualmente, en muchos países se recurre a ella para disponer de un mayor personal, pero evitando la relación directa con todos sus trabajadores y, así, eludir cargas fiscales y de seguridad social.

Haciendo referencia a la legislación laboral mexicana, el fundamento constitucional para la regulación de las relaciones laborales se encuentra plasmado en el artículo 123 de la propia Constitución. Dicho artículo se divide en dos apartados correspondientes a distintas relaciones laborales. El apartado a), que interpretando sus disposiciones, rige de manera general todo contrato de trabajo, incluyendo el trabajo en régimen de subcontratación, y, el apartado b), que rige las relaciones de trabajo entre los poderes de la unión, el gobierno del Distrito Federal y sus trabajadores.

El citado apartado a) del artículo 123 constitucional da origen a la Ley federal del trabajo, legislación que resulta el principal ordenamiento jurídico en México en cuanto a materia laboral se refiere. De este ordenamiento, se pueden desprender las siguientes interpretaciones y conceptos:

El término trabajo se define como toda actividad humana, intelectual o material, independientemente del grado de preparación técnica requerida por cada profesión u oficio.

Por trabajador, se entenderá la persona física que presenta a otra persona física o moral un trabajo personal subordinado.

Por relación de trabajo, se entiende, cualquiera que sea el acto que la origine, la prestación de un trabajo personal subordinado a una persona, mediante el pago de un salario.

Es pertinente señalar que el salario tienes dos características fundamentales. La primera, que es un elemento constitutivo de la relación de trabajo, y la segunda, que es una consecuencia de la prestación del servicio.

Aquí también es importante clarificar los conceptos de personalidad y de subordinado que hace mención la legislación. La naturaleza personal de la prestación del servicio dentro de la relación laboral se refiere a que el trabajador deberá prestar el servicio por sí mismo y no por conducto de otra persona. De lo contrario, dicha relación se podrá interpretar como no laboral. Por su parte, el término subordinado también sirve para diferenciar las relaciones de trabajo de otras prestaciones de servicios que se encuentran reguladas por diferentes ordenamientos jurídicos, distintos al laboral. En México, no toda actividad realizada de una persona para otra, está regida por la legislación laboral, por lo que es necesario diferenciar los caracteres que nos permiten establecer si la prestación de un servicio se encuentra regulada por el marco laboral o por un ámbito del derecho común o privado.

En relación a todo esto, la subordinación debe entenderse, de manera general, como la relación jurídica que se crea entre el trabajador y el patrón en virtud de la cual el trabajador está obligado, dentro de la prestación de sus servicios, a cumplir sus obligaciones bajo las instrucciones dadas por el patrón y, todo esto, para el mejor desarrollo de la empresa.

El término patrón se define como la persona física o moral que utiliza los servicios de uno o varios trabajadores. Aquí debemos destacar el hecho de que si el trabajador, conforme a lo pactado o a la costumbre utiliza los servicios de otros trabajadores, el patrón de éste lo será también de los otros.

Ahora bien, dentro de la legislación laboral mexicana, la figura de la subcontratación no existe como tal, sino que dicho concepto puede equipararse al término intermediación, regulado de manera específica por nuestra legislación laboral. En este sentido, para los efectos de nuestra legislación, el término intermediario se define como a la persona que contrata o interviene en la contratación de otra u otras personas para que presten servicios a un patrón.

Cabe señalar, que los tipos de intermediario regulados en nuestra legislación, se encuentran en tres diferentes artículos. La intermediación es un acto anterior a la formación de la relación de trabajo. Es decir, la intermediación es la actividad de una persona que entra en contacto con otra u otras, para convenir con ellas en que presten sus servicios bajo una relación laboral en una empresa o establecimiento. De esta manera, el intermediario es, ante la empresa o establecimiento que se beneficia con la prestación de los servicios, un gestor o agente que actúa por cuenta de la misma.

Por lo que al intermediario se refiere, se desprenden las siguientes observaciones: El intermediario no se beneficia con el trabajo que se le presta a la persona por la cual está contratando. Los beneficiados con el trabajo contratado por intermediación son responsables frente a las relaciones de trabajo con los trabajadores.

Para que exista la intermediación, es necesaria la relación triangular entre el intermediario, sus trabajadores y la empresa usuaria. Aquí es pertinente aclarar cuales son las relaciones que existen entre estos tres protagonistas del trabajo en régimen de intermediación. El intermediario y sus trabajadores tienen una perfecta relación laboral en la que se presenta un servicio de manera personal, subordinada y mediante el pago de un salario. Por su parte, la empresa usuaria y el intermediario establecen una relación que no se puede considerar laboral, sino que tiene un carácter mercantil. Sin embargo, es importante destacar que, en ella, se presentan elementos de obligatoriedad para ambas empresas respecto de los trabajadores.

Por último, la relación que existe entre los trabajadores del intermediario y la empresa usuaria no puede considerarse tampoco como una relación de trabajo, ya que no se dan los elementos de personalidad y subordinación que, como vimos, son las condiciones necesarias para configurar la relación de trabajo, aún cuando puede llegar a existir una responsabilidad solidaria entre las empresas usuarias y el intermediario.

La legislación laboral establece que se considerarán como patrones y no como intermediarios, las empresas establecidas que contraten trabajos para ejecutarlos con elementos propios suficientes a fin de cumplir con las obligaciones que se deriven de las relaciones con sus trabajadores. En caso contrario, serán solidariamente responsables los beneficiarios directos de las obras o servicios por las obligaciones contraídas con los trabajadores.

En virtud de todo esto, ........ un régimen de intermediación se debe entender la prestación de un trabajo personal subordinado a una persona física o moral que, sin disponer de elementos propios suficientes para cumplir con las obligaciones que deriven de las relaciones con sus trabajadores, ejecuta obras o servicios en forma exclusiva o principal para otra empresa física o moral.

La legislación laboral, al establecer una responsabilidad solidaria entre el intermediario y las personas que se benefician directamente con la prestación del servicio, otorga ciertas situaciones jurídicas que son ventajosas para los trabajadores. Para entender los efectos de la responsabilidad a la que se refiere nuestra legislación, es necesario comprender que el intermediario asume de manera principal las obligaciones que se derivan de la relación con sus trabajadores, por lo que la responsabilidad solidaria que asume la empresa usuaria surge a raíz del incumplimiento por parte del intermediario de dichas obligaciones. Por ejemplo, una empresa conviene con una persona en realizar la construcción de una casa habitación en el régimen de administración de obra. Si la empresa constructora no cumple con las obligaciones contraídas con los trabajadores por no contar con los elementos propios y suficientes para ello, el dueño de la obra será solidariamente responsable de dichas obligaciones laborales. Sobre este punto, los Tribunales han resuelto que, para que la empresa usuaria pueda deslindarse de esta responsabilidad solidaria, tendrá que demostrar la solvencia del intermediario para que entonces éste sea el que cumpla las obligaciones con los trabajadores.

Dentro de las relaciones laborales que se originan por contrato de intermediación, se observa lo siguiente:

Los intermediarios no podrán recibir ninguna retribución o comisión con cargo a los salarios de los trabajadores.

Los trabajadores disfrutarán de condiciones de trabajo proporcionales a las de los trabajadores que prestan sus servicios en la empresa beneficiaria.

De lo anterior, se debe interpretar que cuando el trabajador en régimen de intermediación ejecuta su labor con elementos propios suficientes del patrón, adquiere los mismos derechos que corresponden a los trabajadores subordinados a esta empresa. Sin embargo, cuando es la empresa usuaria quien cuenta con los elementos propios y suficientes, no nos encontramos frente a un trabajo en régimen de intermediación, sino en una perfecta relación laboral.

Quisiera concluir mi intervención diciendo que a pesar de que la legislación laboral mexicana establece claramente cuándo existe una relación de trabajo propiamente dicha y cuándo una relación de intermediación o subcontratación, en esta última persisten ciertas circunstancias que deben ser analizadas con detenimiento. Se hablaba de la flexibilidad que la legislación debe tener en este tema para poder discutir ciertos factores, ciertas circunstancias que se pueden presentar y poder determinar bien quién responde para los trabajadores, quién responde de sus obligaciones. Por todo eso, me parece muy importante la realización de este tipo de foros en los que se puede conocer la experiencia y la aplicación de la legislación de otros países.

Muchas gracias.

M. BRAULT: Merci, Monsieur Cinta.

Sans plus tarder, je passe la parole au Professeur Bernier.

PROF. JEAN BERNIER (Université Laval, Québec, Canada): Bonjour. Good morning. Buenos días.

Pendant que le canon lumière se réchauffe et que la technologie se prépare à se mettre en place, on me permettra de remercier vivement ici Gaston Nadeau du ministère du Travail du Québec pour l'assistance qu'il m'a apportée dans la préparation de la présente communication. En fait, il ne serait que juste que nous co-signions cette communication.

Après avoir entendu nos collègues américain et mexicain qui ont, je pense, largement confirmé les propos que tenait Serge Brault dans son mot d'introduction, à savoir la difficulté de s'entendre sur le concept de sous-traitance, et aussi de la diversité des règles applicables, je crois que ma communication ajoutera à cette diversité.

En fait, toutes les provinces du Canada, de même que le législateur fédéral, ont adopté, à un moment ou l'autre, des dispositions légales qui touchent, directement ou indirectement, la sous-traitance et l'impartition. Ces règles ont toutes pour objectif de protéger ce qui constitue la pierre angulaire du régime de rapports collectifs du travail, à savoir l'accréditation syndicale et la convention collective, en évitant que le transfert total ou partiel d'une entreprise ait pour effet de mettre en danger le droit d'association et la convention collective.

Lorsqu'on considère l'ensemble des législations en vigueur au Canada, on observe qu'en cette matière non seulement les objectifs sont communs, mais il y a aussi une certaine similitude dans les moyens de les atteindre. Néanmoins, on constate également certaines différences non négligeables d'une province à une autre, et plus particulièrement en ce qui concerne le Québec.

En conclusion, je tenterai d'esquisser certaines voies d'avenir, aussi bien en regard des transferts à l'intérieur de la confédération canadienne qu'en se qui touche ce qu'on pourrait appeler le particularisme de la législation québécoise.

Les règles relatives à la sous-traitance et à l'impartition, à défaut d'être toujours formulées explicitement, découlent des dispositions applicables dans les cas de vente, de transfert ou d'autre forme de disposition de l'entreprise. Ces dispositions prévoient généralement que le transfert d'entreprise s'accompagne d'une transmission chez l'acquéreur des droits et obligations résultant de l'accréditation syndicale et de la convention collective liant déjà l'entreprise cédante. En somme, c'est la reconnaissance du rattachement de l'accréditation syndicale et de la convention collective à l'entreprise et non à la personne de l'employeur. De plus, cette protection des droits collectifs est automatique, puisqu'il s'agit de dispositions d'ordre public. Le cas échéant, les parties intéressées n'ont qu'à en faire constater l'application.

Il s'agit en quelque sorte de faire obstacle à la règle civiliste de la relativité des contrats, ou à la règle du « privicy of contract » sous le régime de la « common law », et d'éviter que la vente, le transfert, la cession totale ou partielle de l'entreprise, ait pour effet de rendre caduques l'accréditation syndicale et la convention collective, quelle que soit l'intention réelle poursuivie par l'employeur.

Par ailleurs, en aucun cas les textes de loi n'ont pour objet de limiter le droit de l'employeur de confier des travaux en sous-traitance ou de faire appel à des entreprises extérieures pour venir exécuter chez lui certains travaux. Lorsque de telles limites existent, ou bien lorsque le recours à la sous-traitance est assujetti à certaines conditions, ce n'est pas dans la loi mais plutôt dans les conventions collectives qu'on les trouvera. C'est ainsi, par exemple, que certaines conventions collectives limitent le droit des employeurs de recourir à la sous-traitance en ce qu'elles assujettissent cette pratique à la condition qu'elle n'entraîne aucun licenciement ou aucune mise à pied.

Pour ce qui est de la transmission des droits en tant que tel, dans deux provinces seulement le législateur précise-t-il que les textes visent également la sous-traitance, et encore dans certaines circonstances seulement. Néanmoins, les instances compétentes ont considéré, le plus souvent et de façon constante, que la sous-traitance est une forme de transfert ou de cession partielle de l'entreprise dès lors que l'objet de la sous-traitance peut être considéré comme une entreprise au sens organique du terme.

C'est donc le transfert total ou partiel de l'entreprise elle-même qui donne ouverture à des dispositions pertinentes, et non la forme que peut revêtir ce transfert. Par ailleurs, lorsqu'on estimera qu'il s'agit de sous-traitance simple de main d'oeuvre, on conclura que les règles relatives à la transmission d'entreprise ne s'appliqueront pas puisqu'il n'y a pas sous-traitance d'entreprise mais simplement un transfert de fonctions.

Néanmoins, dans toutes les provinces à l'exception de trois, l'instance compétente a le pouvoir de déclarer, par le biais d'une procédure dite de déclaration d'employeur unique, de déclarer que deux employeurs juridiquement distincts ne font qu'un pour les fins de l'application des lois relatives aux rapports collectifs du travail. Cette déclaration sera prononcée lorsque la commission aura acquis la conviction qu'il s'agit d'une entreprise à double volet, ou bien qu'on est en présence d'une intégration ou d'une communauté de direction suffisante. On peut croire que cette déclaration est susceptible de couvrir un certain nombre de situations qui seraient d'ailleurs apparentées à la sous-traitance de fonctions et qui seraient autrement écartées de la portée des règles protectrices visant les situations de transmission.

L'application de ces règles assure non seulement la transmission de l'accréditation et de la convention collective chez le nouvel employeur ou chez les sous-traitants, mais elle prévoit la continuation de toutes ou de certaines des procédures engagées au moment du transfert, qu'il s'agisse, selon la loi applicable, d'une requête en accréditation, de négociations collectives déjà entamées, de l'arbitrage d'un différend ou d'un grief, ou d'un recours contestant un congédiement en raison de l'exercice d'un droit résultant de la loi.

Bien que similaires à bien des égards, la législation québécoise, de même que l'interprétation qu'en ont faite les tribunaux, comportent certaines caractéristiques qui mettent en lumière le particularisme du cadre juridique applicable au Québec. Pendant de nombreuses années, la jurisprudence du Tribunal du travail s'est montrée partagée entre deux conceptions de la notion d'entreprise, donnant ouverture à l'application des règles régissant la transmission des droits en cas de sous-traitance.

Selon un premier courant de pensée, l'entreprise doit être considérée comme un ensemble de moyens permettant d'atteindre les buts pour lesquels elle a été constituée, ces moyens consistant dans un ensemble d'éléments humains, matériels ou intellectuels. C'est ce qu'on a appelé la conception organique de l'entreprise. Pour les tenants de cette thèse, pour qu'il y ait transfert ou cession partielle d'entreprise, il ne suffit pas qu'il y ait uniquement transfert de fonctions, mais il faut qu'on puisse observer qu'il y a une cession d'une partie de l'entreprise, c'est-à-dire d'un ensemble de moyens. Cette approche, on l'aura noté, est celle qui prévaut ou prédomine dans les provinces anglophones.

Selon un deuxième courant de pensée qui a cours au Québec, l'entreprise est plutôt constitutée d'un ensemble de fonctions dont l'exécution permet de réaliser son objet. C'est ce que l'on a appelé la conception fonctionnelle de l'entreprise. Dès le moment où il y a transfert d'un certain nombre d'opérations ou de tâches vers un sous-traitant, cela suffit pour donner ouverture à l'application des dispositions relatives au maintien de l'accréditation et de la convention collective, dans la mesure évidemment où il s'agit de fonctions couvertes par l'accréditation syndicale.

On comprendra aisément que cette conception fonctionnelle de l'entreprise donne lieu à une application beaucoup plus large des règles protectrices du droit d'association et de négociation, en même temps qu'elle constitue, de ce fait, une contrainte plus grande pour les employeurs.

Cette vision contradictoire de l'entreprise -- conception organique, conception fonctionnelle -- a amené la Cour Suprême du Canada à se pencher sur la question. Dans l'Arrêt Bibeau rendu en 1988, la Cour a statué que la définition de l'entreprise qui doit prévaloir est celle qui correspond à la conception organique de l'entreprise. Toutefois, cette définition organique de l'entreprise n'excluait pas qu'en certaines circonstances le simple transfert de fonctions puisse être considéré comme une cession d'entreprise dans la mesure où l'entreprise en question ne posséderait pas d'autres caractéristiques propres. Il s'agissait là d'une ouverture visant des situations exceptionnelles, mais les tribunaux du Québec n'ont pas tardé à l'emprunter pour en faire une interprétation telle, qu'elle fait de plus en plus place, de nouveau, à la conception fonctionnelle de l'entreprise.

Depuis l'introduction dans la législation des dispositions relatives à la transmission des droits et obligations, la loi québécoise a toujours comporté cette exception dite de la vente en justice. En effet, alors que dans les autres provinces ce n'est pas tant la forme que revêt le transfert qui compte, mais plutôt l'objet du transfert, c'est-à-dire l'entreprise elle-même, le législateur québécois a voulu que l'entreprise qui fait l'objet d'une vente en justice soit, en quelque sorte, libérée de toute obligation résultant de l'accréditation ou de la convention collective en vigueur au moment de la faillite.

De façon générale, le Commissaire du travail au Québec dispose de pouvoirs largement similaires à ceux des Commissions de relations de travail des autres provinces, sauf sur une question qui n'est, du reste, pas négligeable. C'est celle de la déclaration d'employeur unique.

En effet, contrairement à ses homologues des autres provinces ou du fédéral, le Commissaire du travail québécois n'a pas le pouvoir, sauf face à une situation d'osmose totale, de déclarer que peuvent être considérés comme un seul employeur aux fins de l'accréditation et de la négociation collective deux employeurs qui ont des liens organiques suffisamment étroits pour être considérés comme tel. On peut probablement soutenir que ce pouvoir permet aux Commissions des autres juridictions canadiennes de compenser, en quelque sorte, la non-application des dispositions relatives aux droits de suite en cas de sous-traitance déguisée vers un employeur lié.

En conclusion, je vais jeter un regard sur l'avenir en abordant brièvement deux questions.

Dans un état fédéral comme le Canada se pose aussi la question de savoir ce qu'il advient de l'accréditation et de la convention collective liant une entreprise de compétence fédérale qui passe dans le champ d'une province, ou réciproquement. En l'absence de dispositions prévoyant la reconnaissance mutuelle des règles applicables en matière de transmission des droits, ce passage entraîne automatiquement la caducité de l'accréditation et de la convention, à telle enseigne que le syndicat et les salariés ainsi affectés se trouvent contraints de reprendre, a benicio, les procédures en accréditation devant les instances compétentes.

Suite à la recommandation du Groupe de travail chargé de réexaminer le Code canadien du travail en 1996, le législateur fédéral adoptait, en juin 1998, une disposition au Code, dont la mise en vigueur n'a toutefois pas encore fait l'objet d'un décret, mais qui introduit la reconnaissance automatique de l'accréditation émise par une province, ou de la convention collective conclue en vertu des lois d'une province, lors du transfert d'une telle entreprise du champ de compétence provincial vers le champ fédéral. Jusqu'à ce jour, deux provinces seulement prévoient la réciproque.

Quelques perspectives au Québec. Sous la pression du monde municipal, le ministère du Travail du Québec a créé, en 1996, un Groupe de travail chargé d'examiner les dispositions relatives à la transmission des droits en cotisations d'entreprises afin de chercher à les adapter à la situation actuelle. Bien que l'harmonisation de la législation québécoise avec celle des autres provinces du Canada n'était pas le premier but recherché, force est de constater, a priori, que plusieurs des recommandations de ce groupe de travail vont dans le sens d'un rapprochement avec les textes et les pratiques des autres juridictions canadiennes. J'en mentionnerai simplement quelques uns.

D'abord, il est apparu important que le Québec adopte, lui aussi, une règle de réciprocité applicable aux entreprises passant de la compétence fédérale vers celle des lois québécoises.

Deuxièmement, le groupe a recommandé que l'exception de vente en justice soit retirée, car il apparaît que rien ne la justifie, d'autant plus que la faillite paraît avoir, à l'occasion, servi au redémarrage d'une entreprise dorénavant libérée de la présence syndicale et de la convention collective.

Le groupe a aussi recommandé que suite au glissement jurisprudentiel évoqué plus haut, le législateur précise bien que les dispositions relatives à la transmission des droits et obligations ne trouvent pas leur application lorsqu'il s'agit d'une simple concession de fonctions de travail.

Le groupe a aussi recommandé que de façon concommitante à la recommandation précédente, le législateur accorde au Commissaire du travail le pouvoir d'émettre une déclaration d'employeur unique, comme cela existe dans la plupart des autres juridictions au Canada.

En terminant, encore une fois, bien que l'harmonisation des lois du travail avec celles qui sont en vigueur chez nos voisins n'était pas le but premier poursuivi, c'est quand même de façon tout à fait consciente que les auteurs du rapport ont pris en compte l'appartenance du Québec à un espace économique commun. Voici d'ailleurs un extrait de ce qu'ils écrivaient à cet égard -- et je terminerai là-dessus.

"Sans faire de l'uniformisation des règles juridiques applicables dans un espace économique commun un objectif en soi, nous ne pouvons renier le fait qu'une norme juridique est sensée correspondre à une certaine vision de la société. Or la société québécoise, tout en respectant sa spécificité, évolue au sein de l'espace économique nord-américain et participe, à sa manière, à l'évolution de la société nord-américaine, comme cette dernière à la sienne. Voilà qui autorise la prise en compte des règles juridiques élaborées par nos voisins."

Je vous remercie.

M. BRAULT: Merci, Jean.

Rest assured that we will indeed have time for coffee, as planned. One of the tasks that I have as a moderator is to summarize the very interesting presentations that were made, so I will draw some very personal conclusions from the presentations we heard this morning.

First of all, as we can see, the phenomenon itself is not easy to define. We have heard from our presenters that it is a social, political, as well as legal issue, that is indeed raised in all our three jurisdictions.

Je voudrais très brièvement vous rappeler que dans un rapport qui avait été préparé par l'Organisation internationale du travail en 1996, on avait essayé de définir ce qu'on entendait par sous-traitance. La notion avait été décomposée de la façon suivante.

On disait d'abord, c'est le cas d'une entreprise qui embauche des travailleurs pour ses tâches normales par l'entremise d'une autre entreprise qui, elle, conserve certains attributs de l'employeur. Je pense que ça rejoint certains des éléments de la présentation de notre ami mexicain.

Ensuite, il y a le cas d'une entreprise qui embauche des personnes pour ses tâches normales et qui leur donne le statut de travailleurs indépendants travaillant pour leur propre compte. Je pense qu'on voit des éléments ici qui ont été soulignés par Monsieur Hoopes dans sa présentation, où on voit la difficulté de classifier un travailleur, est-il un employé, est-il un entrepreneur indépendant, travaille-t-il pour son compte, travaille-t-il pour autrui.

Le troisième cas, c'était celui d'une entreprise qui passe un contrat avec une autre entreprise pour que celle-ci se charge de la production de biens ou de fournitures de services qu'elle-même assure normalement. On voit ici, encore une fois, la notion traditionnelle de sous-traitance.

Dans son ouvrage, Canadian Labour Law, George Adams nous dit ceci du phénomène:

"Subcontracting or contracting out involves the transfer, by an employer, of work previously done by its own entreprise and its own employees, to an outside contractor."

He also speaks about contracting in:

"... which would be a subset of subcontracting in general, wherein a subcontractor comes into the employer's premises to perform functions, through the employer's specifications, formerly undertaken by the employer's own employees. It is also referred to as 'labour only subcontracting'."

Dans la mesure où il s'agit d'un phénomène qui est passablement répandu, on a vu ce matin, à la présentation de nos orateurs, à la fois que le phénomène est difficile à décrire et que dans la mesure -- et c'est là-dessus que je vais terminer -- dans la mesure où on recourt à la sous-traitance au nom de la flexibilité, on peut présumer que c'est parce que les coûts associés à la sous-traitance, les coûts largement définis, sont des coûts moindres que le recours à la forme traditionnelle d'emploi.

On a vu, dans la présentation de la législation, que les limites -- je pense que c'est ma compréhension de la présentation qui nous a été faite, mais on voit que les législations domestiques de chacun de nos pays ont, en fait, été définies en fonction de la relation traditionnelle employeur-employé, master-servant, ou préposé. Alors que là on assiste à une apparition, à une prolifération de nouvelles formes d'emploi, et de nouvelles formes aussi d'organisation du travail, et qu'en fait la sous-traitance qui nous rassemble aujourd'hui est une manifestation de ces phénomènes et que le recours à la sous-traitance est un phénomène croissant qui n'est pas étranger à la faiblesse relative de la législation en ces matières.

Je vais me contenter de conclure en vous citant un ouvrage canadien, que ceux d'entre nous qui sommes familiers avec l'arbitrage considérons un peu comme notre bible. C'est l'ouvrage de Brown and Beatty intitulé Canadian Labour Arbitration. It is as follows: "in assessing whether or not our labour legislation, as such, has any impact on the recourse to subcontracting or contracting out, a determination that certain tasks fall within the class of work normally performed by employees within the bargaining unit does not imply that the employees have a propriety right to that work. To the contrary,..."

This is probably the most important issue.

"... in the absence of specific language in the collective agreement providing otherwise, it is now universally accepted in Canada that bargaining union work may be subcontracted to non-employees, provided that the subcontracting is genuine and not done in bad faith. And whatever the view may have been in the earlier times, it is now settled that to prohibit subcontracting, the agreement must expressly so provide."

This is obviously in the context of industrial relations, where you have a union organization involved. So given the fact that most of the labour force is not covered by collective agreements, I guess it is fair to say that regardless of how we characterize it, indeed subcontracting is a phenomenon that is basically not covered except in the case where there is a transfer of a business, in the case of Canadian legislation, or Quebec legislation for that matter.

Malheureusement, le temps qui nous est alloué, étant donné qu'il y a une sanction très sévère à le dépasser, est terminé. Ce serait un sacrilège de vous priver du café, alors nous allons faire la pause maintenant et vous pourrez en discuter dans le couloir en prenant un café. On aura sûrement l'occasion d'échanger par la suite.

Merci beaucoup de votre attention. Merci à nos panellistes. Merci bien.

--- Pause

--- Reprise après la pause

M. BRAULT: Mesdames, messieurs, you may want to take your seats.

Our next speakers are both from the United States. Before we turn to their presentation, we have just been allowed to go a little beyond 12:00 if we feel like it. I was told that a number of you had some questions to put to our former panellists and, obviously, to our next panellists, so after their presentation, we will turn to the floor for questions. If indeed the former panellists are still around, I will probably invite them to join us here to take questions from you.

We will break some time around 12:15 p.m. or 12:30 p.m., but rest assured that any time we take beyond 12:00 o'clock we will recover later on, in the sense that we had planned to start at 1:30 p.m. Should we go beyond 12:00 o'clock, we will obviously resume a little later.

Our next speaker is Brent Garren, who is Senior Associate General Counsel of the Union of Needle Trades, Industrial and Textile Employees, otherwise known as UNITE, which has 250,000 members in, mainly the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. Mr. Garren represented the AFL-CIO at the ILO's International Labour Conference for the past four years, sitting on the technical committees concerned with the protection of homeworkers and with contracts, labour.

We did, in the past, indeed find time to have a few drinks together in Geneva and I know that he will have a lot to say on our next topic.

Brent, the floor is yours.

MR. BRENT GARREN (Senior Associate General Council, Union of Needle Trades, Industrial and Textile Employees, United States of America): Good morning.

I would like to thank the organizers of this conference for this opportunity to address you all. I, like you, am looking forward to the whole proceeding, today and tomorrow. I think it will be very useful.

What I am going to speak on is not, perhaps, exactly what the title in the program is. Basically I want to explain the union's point of view on the two issues of contracting out and the use of independent contractors in place of employees. Those are the two subjects I want to deal with: contracting out, and the use of independent contractors.

Concerning contracting out, I would draw the following distinction. I believe there are legitimate reasons for contracting out, and illegitimate reasons. The legitimate reasons go to adaptation to change, flexibility, as Professor Giles explained it, in terms of increased efficiency or involving the use of either employees, either workers or management, with specialized knowledge, specialized tools, where you are bringing some specialized input into the process. There, you have contracting out that increases productivity, increases efficiency. That is perfectly legitimate and as a unionist discussing social policy, we have no objection to that.

As a footnote or a parenthetical, let me add that in particular collective bargaining situations where particular groups of workers we represent may lose their jobs, that represents a problem that we have to deal with. But right now, I want to speak more in terms of social policy, and that kind of legitimate contracting out is something that we have no problem with.

What we have an enormous problem with is contracting out that is used to avoid unions, avoid collective bargaining agreements, lower wages, and eliminate health and other benefits. The elimination of health benefits, as Terry Hoopes discussed a little bit on an earlier panel, is, I think, a particular problem in the United States, where we have no national health care system and health care is largely delivered through private employers and, in particular, through union contracts.

The essential response of the labor movement, I believe, to the idea of contracting out, or certainly the response of UNITE, my union, is to stress the responsibility for the user enterprise, the enterprise that is contracting out the work, sending the work out to the enterprise that will actually perform the work -- in ILO terminology, the entity that sends out the work is called the user enterprise. The essential point is to make the user enterprise responsible contractually, legally, and morally, for the conditions of the employees in the contracting shops. And to the extent we have full responsibility for the user enterprise, that will both eliminate or minimize illegitimate contracting out, while allowing contracting out for legitimate efficiency purposes.

Let me speak a little bit about the history of contracting out, particularly in the women's garment industry in the United States. That is what I am most familiar with. Contracting out is a 70-year-old phenomenon in women's garments. In the 1920s in New York, when the cloak and suit industry and skirt and women's garment industry employed hundreds of thousands of workers, my predecessor union, through a series of general strikes in New York, was able to organize the garment industry and put a floor under the wage and working conditions that were terrible, truly sweatshop conditions. Shortly, within a few years after achieving union contracts with decent conditions, 75 per cent of the employers in the cloak and suit industry shut down their inside shops, fired their workers, stopped producing garments and, instead, turned to contractors.

This shift from inside production to contracting production did not bring in any specialized equipment, did not bring in any specialized knowledge, did not introduce any efficiency. It had one purpose, and one purpose only, which was to avoid the union contract and have the manufacturers avoid all responsibility for conditions in the contracting shops. What the manufacturers were able to do was play one contractor off against another, because contractors in the garment industry, it is extremely little capital, it is basically the provision of workers, of the labour, that is all that is involved in contracting. The contractor himself has, as I say, extremely little capital. It takes less capital to start a garment shop in New York city today than it does to own a taxi cab. All that contractor does is act as a glorified foreman for the manufacturer, but dressed up as an independent businessperson.

There are roughly 20,000 contracting shops in the United States today, just as there were, in terms of similar numbers, in the twenties. The manufacturers can play one contractor against another, induce an auction block system, a bidding war system, in which the contractors compete against each other for the work, basically one point of competition, how far they can drive down wages and labour costs.

That system, that we had in the twenties, has not basically changed. Through union contracts and otherwise, some of the horrors of it has been controlled, but to this day, 85 per cent to 90 per cent of garment production, particularly, again, women's garments, garments that are subject to fashion, are contracted out. Today we have the giant branded manufacturers, like Nike, like Reebok, the giant retailers, like Federated, like the Gap, like the Limited, responsible for the production of billions of dollars worth of clothing, making hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in profits and having their production carried out today in the City of New York, in Miami, in Los Angeles, in tiny little contracting shops where the violation of minimum wage is rampant. Two-thirds of the contracting shops in the garment industry in the United States do not pay minimum wage. Roughly two-thirds or more do not pay overtime. There is virtually no enforcement of occupational safety and health. For thousands and thousands of these workers, hundreds of thousands, really, no taxes are collected. They operate in a black market.

And you have the ludicrous situation, where somebody can be making a pair of pants for Wal-Mart and their contractor goes out of business owing them 10 weeks worth of wages, and that worker cannot collect the unpaid wages, ultimately, for a product that is being designed and controlled by Wal-Mart and sold by Wal-Mart and the profit goes to Wal-Mart, but because this worker works for a 20-person contracting shop in Chinatown in Manhattan, they cannot collect their back wages.

This is something that happens -- millions of dollars of back wages are lost by garment workers in the United States annually. There are millions of dollars that are recovered by the Department of Labor, by the union and others working with the Department of Labor. That is a small portion of the wages that are lost because of a contracting out system. Of course workers would be able, ultimately, to recover if Wal-Mart were their employer, if Liz Claiborne were their employer, if Nike were their employer; but because they are employed in contracting shops, they suffer the conditions they do.

As I said, the basic response of UNITE to contracting out in the women's garment industry -- and, we believe, an appropriate response in general -- is the notion of responsibility for the user enterprise. In our contracts or private collective bargaining agreements in the garment industry, we have contracts with some of the producers, what we call jobbers in the garment industry, such as Liz Claiborne, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, and these contracts require them to put their work only in union shops, not to use non-union contracting shops, and require them to pay directly for employee benefits, such as pension and health care and vacation, and require them to guarantee the wages in the contracting shops so that if the contractor defaults on the wages, then we can go directly against a Liz Claiborne for unpaid wages.

So to the extent that we are able to unionize and maintain unionization of the Claibornes and the Ralph Laurens, we can impose this kind of responsibility. But unfortunately, it is now a small sector of the garment industry that is under those kind of contracts, so we are engaged in a variety of other attempts to make the retailers and branded label manufacturers responsible. A major element of that is a campaign of public opinion involving demonstrations, exposés, when we find, for instance, unpaid wages, which we did with Wal-Mart, people making Wal-Mart clothing in New York. When they could not collect their wages, we had a series of demonstrations, press conferences and so on, to put the spotlight on Wal-Mart, to reclaim the back wages.

Various efforts towards corporate codes of conduct, some of which are sponsored by the White House. The Apparel Industry Partnership is one of those. The ILO is dealing with corporate codes of conduct. This is another avenue to try to establish responsibility for the retailers and branded label manufacturers.

The third thing we are doing is legislative, which, frankly at this point, given the political situation, we are unlikely to achieve any time soon on the national level. The essence of the legislation we are seeking, the two things I want to point to, one, there is a Bill in Congress, called the Stop Sweatshop Act, which would make the garment industry retailers and manufacturers responsible for violations of the Minimum Wage and Overtime Act, so that workers who now only have a legal remedy against the fly-by-night contractors who go in and out of business and very often do not have the resources to pay when they are found to have violated the Fair Labour Standards Act -- that is the federal minimum wage and overtime act -- this legislation would now mean that the workers would have a right to collect their unpaid wages and unpaid overtime from the Wal-Marts and Macy's and the Gap and so on, who directed the operation that they worked on.

The second thing I want to point to is that we have a provision in our labour law, specifically for the garment industry, that exempts garment industry manufacturers and contractors from secondary boycott laws. Secondary boycott laws -- I hope people are familiar with them, I do not really have the time to go into it -- are an incredible impediment when workers in a contracting shop want to exercise economic power to engage in collective bargaining. Secondary boycott laws often prevent them from using their economic power against the firms, the user enterprises that actually control their conditions, their flow of work. The prices set by the user enterprises sets a ceiling on the wages and benefits that workers in the contracting shops can get. The secondary boycott and anti-trust laws are government regulation at their worst. They are regulation aimed specifically at preventing -- or perhaps aimed is not right, but have the result specifically of preventing workers from exercising their economic power against the decision-makers who control their standards.

Let me speak very briefly on the question of independent contractors and the misclassification of employees as independent contractors.

I used to drive a cab in the City of Chicago. I worked for Yellow Cab. I would go in and I would get 45 per cent of the metre. It was essentially a piece rate system. The more I put on the metre, the higher my percentage, the more I would get back. One day I went in to work and I was told that I now was not an employee, I had to pay the company to lease the cab, I had to pay the company for gas, and what was left over, I could keep as my profits. Absolutely nothing changed in the way in which I did my work. I had no more control over the business, no more risk of profit and loss, no more anything than I did the day before, but now, if I spoke to the driver next to me and said we ought to get together and do something to get a higher percentage on the metre, I would be violating the anti-trust law and I would be subject to trouble damages.

That is the situation that millions of workers face. There are cleaning contractors. There is a case in Seattle, where the company that does the cleaning -- again, you are talking about multimillion dollar real estate companies that get the cleaning contracted out. They took each floor of the building and charged people. They said come and be a business person, buy the lease, buy the option, the right to clean this floor of the building. And those people who had been, in the past, or trying to be represented by SEIU, Service Employees International, immigrant women making essentially minimum wage or less, all of a sudden became independent businesspeople, were denied the right to a union, denied minimum wage, denied all the protection of labour law.

That is the reality we face. I just want to say, in terms of that, it is essential that labour law look at the economic reality of subordination. If the person performing the work is under subordinate circumstances to the person providing the work, that is an employee and that person deserves the protection of labor law.

Thank you.

MR. BRAULT: Thank you, Brent.

Our next speaker is Sharon Cohany, who is an economist in the office of employment and unemployment statistics of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. She has extensive experience with the BLS new measures of contingent and alternative employment arrangements, helping to develop concepts in questionnaires, in authoring articles in the Monthly Labor Review.

Given the difficulty we have trying to define the notions we are trying to address here, I am sure that Sharon's presentation will be of great interest.

Thank you.

MS SHARON COHANY (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics): I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak on BLS research in the area of alternative employment arrangements.

First, BLS, for those of you who may not know, is a major statistical agency of the U.S. government, responsible for a number of programs that measure the well-being of the American worker. BLS is a data gathering and disseminating agency and not a policy agency, although our data, of course, are used extensively to craft and to evaluate a variety of policies.

In recent years in the United States, there has been considerable concern over job quality. There has been a perception of growth in non standard employment arrangements, a perception of increasing temporary work, of intermediated employment, of a weakening of the ties between worker and employer, terms such as "disposable worker" or "just-in-time workers" gain currency. There is a lot of discussion of these issues and some attempts to measure it, but very little hard data.

BLS saw a very definite need to step into this area and provide some conceptual framework and some information. We began doing the conceptual work, in the late nineteen eighties, for both contingent and alternative work arrangements. We received funding for a first survey in February 1995.

This survey was conducted as a supplement to the Current Population Survey which is our monthly survey of some 50,000 households that is the primary source of information on the labour force. We identified four alternative work arrangements that we were particularly interested in. I should say, as other speakers have said, that these are not necessarily new arrangements, but they were ones that we felt could be measured through a household survey and, in fact, were important to measure. Those four were:

Independent contractors, independent consultants and freelance workers, which we refer to as independent contractors, for short.

The second arrangement was on-call workers, those workers who report to work when they are needed, when they are asked to report.

The third arrangement was temporary help agency workers, those workers who are employed by temporary help firms.

And the fourth arrangement was contract company employees, which are those workers who are employed by a company that contracts out, them or their services, and who usually work on the premises of the company for which they are doing the work.

Our findings from February 1995 were rather interesting, I think, and somewhat surprising, even to us. We can compare those findings with a repeat of the survey in February 1997. In both cases, we found that one in 10 workers belonged to one of these four alternative arrangements. The largest by far was independent contractors, which accounted for 6.7 per cent of all workers.

We also found tremendous diversity, within the four arrangements and among them. For example, independent contractors as a group tended to be fairly well compensated. They also had a high level of satisfaction with their way of working. Most of them preferred to be an independent contractor rather than a regular employee. And very few of them were contingent, that is very few regarded their arrangement as temporary.

On the other hand, temporary help agency workers had pay that was below average. A majority would prefer to have a regular job, although a substantial minority did prefer their way of working. And somewhat surprising was the extent of long-term assignments among temporary help agency workers. I believe in the latest survey about 28 or 29 per cent of temps had been on their current assignment for one year or longer.

As far as unionization, relatively few of the workers in these alternative arrangements were union members, even in the context of relatively low unionization rates in the United States in general.

Between 1995 and 1997, there were relatively few changes in the extent or composition of workers in alternative arrangements. In fact, they grew at about the same pace as employment overall, although temporary help agency workers and contract company workers grew somewhat faster, on average. The demographic characteristics were very similar. One thing that seems to have changed is the preference for the arrangement. More workers in 1997 expressed a preference for their alternative arrangement than was the case in 1995.

The type of information that we can get on alternative work arrangements from a household survey is somewhat limited. Household surveys are very good for getting demographic and job data, but they are not the source for information on topics such as outsourcing or contract labor. We do have some limited information that I would like to mention, that is based on employer surveys.

The first was a special set of questions that was added to a number of industry wage surveys in the mid-1980s. These questions asked companies in about 13 manufacturing industries whether they contracted out for a variety of business services and, if so, to try to identify their motivations for doing so. Three motivations that were identified were: to reduce labour costs; to adjust to volatile demand for the company's products or services; and to take advantage of specialized skills that existed in the contract firms.

A lot of analyses of these data have been done by Kathryn Abraham, currently the Commissioner of Labor Statistics, together with Susan Taylor, in an article in the Journal of Labor Economics -- that is probably the one that goes into the most detail -- where they studied the relationship of the kind of service contracted for to the motivation involved, as expressed by the company.

In addition, BLS has a large monthly survey of establishments, the Current Employment Statistics Survey, which has been used to gather some information on some of the industries that have been discussed this morning. For example, that is how we know that temporary help agency work has increased something like sixfold from 1982, the first year that the survey captured that information, through 1997. It is also able to record the rather dramatic rise in employment in a variety of business services.

In conclusion, I would like to let you know, first, that there will be a third supplement to the Current Population Survey, on contingent and alternative arrangements, conducted in February of 1999. The results of that survey should be available some time late in the year. I think it is worthwhile to note the limited amount of data on outsourcing and contract work in general. More of the BLS information has been collected from the point of view of the worker. However, I think this kind of information can answer many questions and address some of the myths that surround these issues.

Thank you.

MR. BRAULT: Thank you very much for these very interesting presentations.

We will now move to questions from the floor. Are there any questions you wish to put to this morning's speakers?

I will ask you, please, to identify yourself and indicate to which speaker you direct your question.

MR. DICK MARTIN (Canadian Labour Congress): Thank you. I am Dick Martin, with the Canadian Labour Congress.

I want to direct my question to Professor Giles this morning, on his statement, as I understood it, that the world is changing because there is a lessening of the amount of people in unions and union strength in negotiating collective agreements. I am asking that because I challenge that.

To the best of my knowledge, in Canada we have only dropped about a per cent or thereabouts through the last horrible recession. I know there has been a decline in the United States, but generally, in Western Europe, with the exception of England, there has in fact been an increase in many cases, including an increase in the former Eastern Bloc. And just before the economic crisis of Asia, unions such as the South Korean Workers were growing in rapid numbers, so it seems to me, on a worldwide basis, that indeed it has not dropped, that it has at least stayed the same if not gathered in other places.

My second question is to our Mexican colleague, from their department of labour. When you do the calculations about contracting out, we do know that there is an increase throughout Mexico, indeed in Latin America, of the informal sector. Is that a part of the calculation of where contracts are going in particular in Mexico?

MR. BRAULT: Thank you, Mr. Martin.

First, Mr. Giles.

MR. GILES: I can answer from here, I do not have to run up to the table.

It is true that the union density in Canada has not shrunk very much, and it is also true that there is some variation from country to country. But what is true, if you look at, for example, the most recent ILO report on industrial relations in general, they took a very careful look at unions across the world and, yes, in a number of countries the absolute numbers are staying stable, but the proportion of people in unions is dropping in the majority of countries, and has dropped over the last 10 or 15 years.

I think yes, Canada is something of an exception to that general trend, but even so, I think if you look at the importance of the public sector in holding up the union density rate in Canada, there is some cause for concern here too.

MR. BRAULT: Thank you, Mr. Giles.

Mr. Cinta, can you take the second question?

YURI CINTA DOMINGUEZ: Es una pregunta muy interesante.

En México, lo que se está haciendo precisamente, es tratar de crear alguna estructura para poder salir de la informalidad o del trabajo informal, para que pase a ser algo formal. El trabajo informal en México es algo totalmente fuera de la legislación. Se interpreta como algo ilegal, por lo tanto no está regulado específicamente por nuestra legislación laboral en el presente y, por eso, estamos tratando de crear situaciones que permitan que no exista un trabajo informal, para que sea más fácil regularlo.

No sé si esto responde a la pregunta.

MR. BRAULT: Thank you.

Other questions? Sir?

ROBERTO FLORES: Roberto Flores de la Secretaría de Trabajo de México.

A mí, me parece que han sido muy interesantes todas las presentaciones y yo quisiera en particular hacer una pregunta, comentario al Sr. Anthony Giles en relación con las tendencias, quizás también a los otros expositores.

En realidad, tenemos un cambio importante en el mercado de trabajo, las tendencias hacia un trabajo por cuenta propia, como incrementando su participación en el total de la población económicamente activa. Las formas estas nuevas, no tradicionales, de trabajos asalariados que se confunden con trabajos por cuenta propia.

Nos está siendo evidente que el mercado de trabajo está modificándose aceleradamente en relación con el mercado de trabajo tradicional de la época industrial, taylorista, en el cual teníamos relaciones mucho más claras de subordinación. Y, en el futuro, va a ser algo sustancialmente diferente, acentuándose este tipo de desempeños laborales que no vamos a terminar de identificar si son subordinados o no son subordinados. Y eso es lo que va a pasar. Eso es lo que tendremos en los próximos años. Entonces, yo pienso que seguir pensando en que las legislaciones que tenemos más adaptadas hacia mercados laborales tradicionales deban de forzarse para alcanzar a regular mercados que van a ser sustancialmente diferentes implicaría que vamos a hacer un gran esfuerzo social por adaptar estas formas de regular los mercados en una forma mucho más flexible, amplia, pero buscamos, por otra parte, que los sistemas de protección no estén necesariamente definidos hacia las personas de trabajo asalariado.

Yo pienso que debemos transitar hacia una legislación y de protección hacia el trabajo, no necesariamente al trabajo asalariado, sino al trabajo en su conjunto, trabajadores por cuenta propia, trabajadores que tienen su actividad ya desempeñada no en una relación subordinada, deben ser protegidos socialmente. Debemos de ampliar esos esquemas de cobertura porque el mercado dentro de diez o veinte años va a ser mucho más difícil de identificar en una relación de tipo de subordinación al tradicional.

Entonces, yo quisiera preguntarle al Sr. Anthony Giles si, en el futuro, prevé, identifica, algún tipo de tendencia en términos de la legislación que pueda cubrir estos mercados mucho más, mucho más... no tradicionales.

MR. BRAULT: Mr. Giles.

MR. GILES: We have a slight problem here. My earphones are under the table up at the front, so you will have to summarize the essence of the question for me.

MR. BRAULT: I will do the best I can.

The intervenor's comments had to do with the fact that new forms of work are appearing and, to use my own words, seem to have fallen between the cracks of the traditional definitions our legislation was built around. And given that it is foreseeable that these new forms of work will be expanding in the future, is there anything in sight that would indicate that we are able or would be able to protect and extend social protection to these new forms of work relationship.

Is that a fair summary, sir?

Thank you.

MR. GILES: Is there anything in sight? In the short term, I am not terribly optimistic. I think someone this morning said that what we are going through is a fundamental redefinition or move away from the traditional employment relationship, and much of our legislation, policy based responses, are still rooted in that traditional model of what an employment relationship constitutes. What legislative initiatives there have been, have been largely at the margins of that and have not tackled the fundamental question of how you even tackle the problem of representation in the context of an economy that is throwing up new forms of putting people to work and organizing the way they do their work.

I think we can tackle it. I think a society, any one of the three societies represented here, or any society, is able to tackle fundamental problems, given the right conditions. Where I am more pessimistic is that I do not see, right now, the pressures on the public policy context that would lead to the kind of fundamental rethinking of our industrial relations laws and our social policies that is needed to adapt to this context.

So while I would say that it is possible, it is desirable, I am not optimistic about the short-term likelihood of it.

M. BRAULT: Merci, Monsieur Giles.

If I may throw in my two cents worth here, I will just remind you of the fact that, as mentioned by May Morpaw, a few years ago the federal government had a task force I was involved with on the changing nature of work. One of the issues that was addressed was, in fact, the limited impact of our current notions of employment and traditional way of defining labour legislation. What we did find was that the clientle, so to speak, that is covered by labour legislation, tends to narrow; and if I may make a link here with Mr. Hoopes' comments, it is the fact that some day, we have to keep in mind that we have to protect the economic or fiscal base for social policies.

For instance, if people are able to write themselves out of unemployment insurance, or employment insurance, at some point we will have a narrower base of people paying premiums and, yet, we will still be faced with issues of unemployment. That is the kind of challenge we have, and probably one step in the right direction is to know that we are in a direction that is not likely to change and that this direction is that there will be new forms of work in the future that are not currently addressed, or sufficiently or correctly addressed. It is also a challenge for employers, as well as union organizations, to adapt their own action to this new environment.

Next question, please.

Gracias.

OCTAVIO MANUEL CARVAJAL TRILLO: Mi nombre es Octavio Carvajal, soy asesor empleador de México y mi pregunta va dirigida al Sr. Garren a quien, primero que nada, quiero felicitar por su excelente exposición.

En el sector empleador mexicano estamos muy preocupados y en contra de lo que en la OIT se ha dado y proliferado como concepto de los códigos de ética o códigos de conducta. Nos preocupa porque sentimos que se crea un medio para formalizar barreras no arancelarias en posibles accesos a mercados internacionales y se distrae la atención del problema concreto que se pretende atacar. Hace un mes estuvimos en Bolivia tratando el problema del empleo de los menores y, hoy, en este foro, vuelve a relucir la figura del código de conducta.

Mi pregunta es si creemos que realmente este código de conducta pueda ser una herramienta para solucionar los problemas del abuso en los esquemas laborales o, realmente, puede constituir un elemento político que nos distraiga de la razón de ser y nos convierta en una nueva plataforma de conflicto entre los esquemas comerciales de los países.

MR. BRAULT: Mr. Garren.

MR. GARREN: That is an excellent question that has many, many different aspects.

From my point of view, the point of view of the AFL-CAO and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, we are very much looking for ways to insure that trade and workers' rights are linked, that access to markets such as the United States market would be dependent upon, in practice, the recognition of rights of workers to engage in freedom of association, collective bargaining and so on.

That is, as I am well aware and I am sure everybody else is, a very controversial subject, but it is something we believe in very much. Whether codes of conduct are effective, or how effective they are, in achieving that goal, that is seeing that workers' rights are respected in any kind of trading area, is another question. Our preference, our very strong preference, is for actual legislation, international legislation and national legislation, that links workers' rights and trade. But I believe that codes of conduct are a step in that direction and, in particular, I believe they are important in terms of establishing the principle that, for instance, a Wal-Mart or a K-Mart or a Macy's or a Gap is responsible for the conditions in the contracting shops. Whether those contracting shops are in New York, Miami, Sri Lanka, Guatemala or Korea, wherever they are in the world, the companies that are making the money off the work being done in those shops are responsible for the conditions in those shops.

MR. BRAULT: Thank you, Brent.

One last question. Sir, would you please go to the microphone.

MR. DON DOWLING (Hewitt Associates, United States of America): Thank you. My name is Don Dowling, from Hewitt Associates in the States.

I also have a question for Mr. Garren. When you hear about the business of agriculture, often people are lamenting the demise of the family farm in favour of agro business. I think, maybe to a lesser degree, we hear about that in business too, as far as the rise of these corporate multinational companies and the corresponding threat that makes to entrepreneurialism and the engine of the economy and the fact that we still have, I think, the biggest sector for jobs are smaller companies.

When I was listening to your comments, taking to the logical conclusion, the point I was understanding, if we had the Wal-Marts and the big apparel manufacturers and the Microsofts employing everybody who provides a product or a service that they end up using, I think the conclusion we would lead to is that we would have much quicker dominance by these big companies and much less entrepreneurialism. I think there is an important social danger to that. Perhaps there is a benefit to contracting out, at least to the extent that it is small business entrepreneurs starting up, providing office cleaning services or making apparel or different things, and perhaps some of the businesses are important in the economy and it is important for the economy to have an outlet for entrepreneurs to start up businesses like that.

Could you talk about that social side of it, please?

MR. GARREN: Thank you for the question. It raises an important point.

Particularly in the garment industry, as a union we abandoned any attempt to prevent contracting out 70 years ago. Our goal is not to prevent history. That is resolved, it was resolved a long time ago. Our goal is to regulate it, if you will, modify it, so that the legitimate side -- I found Sharon's categorization very helpful in that regard, certainly the legitimate side of bringing in specialized skills and specialized resources, that that is allowed maximum room. And the side of straight-out lowering labor costs, which I see as illegitimate, that that is minimized as much as possible.

It is not our goal to prevent contracting out. It is, again, to see, in very concrete terms, that if you have a multimillion dollar real estate company with a big public image and city contracts and what not, that it is held responsible for the wages and benefits of the workers performing that cleaning and that they are not deprived access to those resources of the user company when those resources are essential to seeing those workers get decent wages and benefits.

MR. BRAULT: Thank you, Brent.

Before turning the floor over to May for a few indications as to the next session, I wish, on everyone's behalf, to thank our last speakers, as well as our former speakers, for a very stimulating and interesting morning.

A lot of questions have been raised. Some directions are identified and there is a lot of room for discussion, not only over lunch, but in our next session this afternoon.

I wish to thank you all for your very good attention and participation.

THE CHAIRPERSON (May Morpaw): Merci, Serge.

Just a couple of housekeeping things to note. I should thank Mr. Brault very much for moderating this first session this morning.

--- Luncheon adjournment

--- Upon resuming

SESSION 2: CONTRACT LABOUR/CONTRACTING OUT: ASSESSING THE RESULTS TO DATE

MR. FRANK ROQUE (Hewitt Associates, United States of America, Moderator): We are a little bit behind from this morning and it is my objective to get us back on schedule because I do not want to be late for the cocktail party later on.

By way of introduction, my name is Frank Roque. I am an attorney with Hewitt Associates from the United States.

My purpose is to moderate this afternoon and keep the speakers on schedule, and they are willing to cooperate, like this morning's speakers.

For the remainder of this afternoon and tomorrow morning we are going to be focusing on case studies, case studies from employers, as well as the union perspective, with respect to contracting out.

The considerations they will be talking about are their own experiences, as far as the considerations associated with the decision to contract out, the decision to support or not to support a decision to contract out.

For the remainder of this afternoon we will be hearing entirely from the Canadian and Mexican point of view. Tomorrow morning you will hear on the U.S. and Canadian and Mexican point of view.

If I could take a couple of minutes to kind of frame the discussions for this afternoon, this morning we heard some of the concerns as far as the contracting out decision. The focus was primarily on the impacts as far as regulatory concerns, as far as how the government saw contracting out as far as being consistent with or not consistent with its employment or tax laws. We also heard points of view as far as the very, very legitimate concerns about the misuse of contracting out with respect to union avoidance and, effectively, the concern about the reduction in the status of a worker's working conditions. And lastly, of course, the impact on the workers, whether it is a reduction in their wages, job elimination, lost benefits.

We focused a lot of this -- and I do not mean to bring it up in terms of refuting or disagreeing with the speakers of this morning, but the focus, really, was on the impact on the worker, and then reading into the impact on the worker who might have been affected by a contracting out decision, reading into that decision by the company -- and I think that there are practices and decisions that were what was termed an illegitimate concern, whether it was out and out union avoidance or trying to avoid or circumvent employment related laws or worker protection laws, or whether it was reduced benefits or benefit coverage.

However, there are -- and it was brought up, as well, and acknowledged, there are some legitimate business concerns in companies making a decision to contract out. I ask that as we hear the case studies, we think about both the illegitimate and legitimate concerns. The legitimate concerns that were identified this morning were competitiveness, in particular with respect to competitiveness in the global workplace, as well as some of the transformations in society as far as worker needs.

Another legitimate concern or objective that was identified was, in the area where there is a specialized tool or a specialized skill that was not traditionally provided by a worker of the company, that that would be viewed as a legitimate concern.

I will bring up additional concerns that we think are legitimate employer concerns or objectives in contracting out. One is process improvement. In the U.S. in particular, but I think this is something that is being realized worldwide, is that a contracting out decision is a legitimate decision, and one that is almost a necessity for business is process improvement, so it is not cost reduction. In fact, in some respects, a contracting out decision for process improvement could be a cost increase for companies. The areas that are traditionally seen as being contracting out decisions which are legitimate are in payroll administration, information technology. In the U.S., because we have a surplus of lawyers relative to the world, the outsourcing of a legal department, as well as just administration of some areas, benefit administration or human resources.

Another area -- and this is something that in the U.S. we are experiencing, but my suspicion is that the U.S. does not have exclusivity on this -- is there is a shortage of workers. The shortage of workers can be defined in a number of ways, but one way that a shortage of workers is happening is with respect to the fact that the individuals that companies want to employ resist employment. As Ms Cohany, from our U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, brought up, some individuals prefer being an independent contractor than to be subjected to a master-servant traditional employment relationship. So I bring that up, as well, that in some respects the contracting out decision is not made really by the company, but is mandated by the worker that the company needs.

A third matter, which is something that the U.S. is experiencing, is with respect to the provision of, in the U.S., traditionally provided benefit programs, in particular health insurance and health coverage. In the U.S., the cost of health insurance is still a concern and, aside from some other initiatives, what we have experienced is that the large employers are able to purchase health plan insurance and health plan coverage for their employees in a much more cost-effective manner than smaller employers or individuals, that mass purchases is where the insurance company and the health care industry is focusing its attention and, effectively, pricing health insurance coverage for the smaller employers and individuals out. What we have seen as a phenomenon is that some insurance companies have developed approaches where they would say let us employ your people, and go to a number of small employers and say we will lease your employees back to you, but by virtue of we, the insurance company, now employing and leasing all of your employees, we will have a larger purchasing base by which we can provide group purchasing power along the lines of what the larger companies are having. So that is another reason that we see contracting out and non traditional working relationships where people are being leased back to their employers. Why it is doing it, and if we focus on what the effect is, is to enhance the working conditions of the individuals where their employers, without that arrangement, could not afford to provide the kind of health insurance coverage that they otherwise would get under the leasing arrangement.

One last perspective that came up from this morning's conversations is that there is a struggle in defining what is contracting out and what is a non traditional working relationship. There was some discussion about the fact that contracting out is really a return to older work practices, so that it could be an issue, depending on one's historical point of view, maybe contracting out and what we call the traditional working relationship may actually be a blip.

The other perspective that I think is worthwhile bringing up is, when we have these discussions about contracting out, we tend to think about an individual employer and its decision to enter into a non traditional working relationship with individuals that it used to employ.

I will use the example of a company that decides to contract out its payroll administration services. That is certainly where, after the decision to contract out, the payroll department, and maybe the payroll system and the individuals responsible for support of that system are now no longer employed by the company, but are employed by another company that specializes in payroll administration. I think from all of our discussions and the way we framed it, that would be clearly a contracting out decision. But I wonder whether or not we would view this as a contracting out decision if we saw that this particular company was the exception to its competitors, where all of its competing companies never had a payroll department, never had employees supporting a payroll system, would we not view that -- I think it is legitimate to say that some companies would say, that company that we viewed as contracting out was actually modernizing and effectively going with the norm, and that it was untraditional to have that payroll department employed by its employees and something that we need to take into account as well, which is industry practice, not just the decision of one company, but what is going on with respect to its competing companies.

With that, I am going to turn it over to our distinguished speakers who will give case studies.

To my immediate left is Caroll Carle. He is a human resources professional with Noranda Corporation from Canada.

To his immediate left is Rod Hiebert who is the President of the Telecommunication Workers Union in Canada. He will give the union perspective.

To his immediate left is Octavio Manuel Carvajal Trillo. He is a consultant, an attorney, from Mexico, and works with employers in employment related matters.

Our first speaker will be Mr. Hiebert. As I mentioned before, he is the president of the Telecommunication Workers Union. He is from British Columbia. He will give his perspectives as far as the impact or the union considerations in supporting or not supporting an employer's decision to contract out.

MR. ROD HIEBERT (President, Telecommunication Workers Union, Canada): Workers in the telecommunications industry have long been at the front line of the battles over the issues of contract labour, contracting out, and technological change.

It is my view that our union has come up with an approach to dealing with these issues that has proven effective in meeting our members' needs.

The TWU initially dealt with the issue by negotiating restrictive contract language. Our goal was to ensure that BC Tel could not have the work performed by our members done by people working for lower wages and under inferior working conditions. But this approach was not sufficient. This language was impossible to administer and as a result, it did not substantially reduce the movement of work out of the bargaining unit.

In 1971, the TWU negotiated a provision in the contract which required the company to negotiate with the union prior to contracting out any work performed by the classifications set out in the agreement. At the same time, however, this clause also allowed the company to contract out 33 specific jobs, including snow clearing, the use of backhoes, and garbage disposal.

This new contract clause included two further important conditions. It required that any work contracted out consistent with the terms of this clause had to be done by a unionized firm; and it stipulated that all contracting out would cease when TWU members were laid off. Furthermore, it was agreed that an arbitrator would be appointed within 72 hours to resolve any disputes related to contracting out.

Despite the contract's explicit terms and conditions, however, the company continued to contract out the work without consulting the TWU. The union was left frustrated, compelled to fight to maintain control over its work. The ensuing years witnessed an endless series of walkouts, wildcat strikes, arbitrations, injunction applications, and court cases. In the end, most of the disputes were resolved in favour of the union.

The issue came to a boiling point in 1978 when the company insisted that the collective agreement restrictions on its ability to contract out seriously impeded their ability to manage. In that year's round of contract negotiations, management demanded that the article be deleted in its entirety. In exchange, they offered to guarantee that no employees with two years seniority would lose their job due to technological change. Management argued that with such protection, the union no longer needed to restrict the company's ability to contract out. But the union feared that once the company had contracted out a significant amount of work, management would circumvent the protections provided by the proposed tech change clause by laying off some of the remaining unionized employees and arguing that its actions were caused by economic, not technological, factors.

When the dispute reached impasse, Dr. Noel Hall was appointed as conciliating commissioner. But Dr. Hall soon booked out of the dispute, citing the fundamental lack of trust about technological change and contracting out which lay at the root of the disagreement between the parties.

A very bitter three and a half month strike ensued. The dispute was finally settled with the assistance of B.C. Supreme Court Justice Henry Hutcheon.

In the new collective agreement, our contracting out protections were improved with the establishment of a contracting out and technological change committee composed of an equal number of representatives from the company and the union, with an independent chairperson.

The new contract language stipulated that there would be no contracting out of work that was in dispute between the company and the union until the committee or the chairperson had heard evidence from both sides and had rendered a decision.

The language carried over from the old clause restricted the issues which the committee could address. The chairperson was given the power to make final and binding decisions if the committee could not reach an agreement.

Finally, the updated clause guaranteed that no union member who attained two years seniority could lose their job due to technological change.

This operative language has remained untouched in the ensuing 20 years. Despite the introduction of an enormous amount of new technology, the union and the company have both grown. Today, the TUW has approximately the same number of members that it had in 1978 and we have not had a strike or lockout in 17 years.

I guess the relevant question is whether the union has damaged BC Tel by restricting the company's ability to contract out. In our view, the reverse is true. Because of the contract restrictions that I have described, BC Tel is being compelled to make use of the many strengths that are covered by the existence of a diverse, well trained, stable workforce. BC Tel has done very well throughout these years. The company's financial picture is very strong and it is highly rated by industry observers and investors.

While other telecommunications companies have been contracting out their data processing, computer installations, linework, cable splicing, and printing, BC Tel has been insourcing, growing its business as a result. For instance, ISMBC, a division of BC Tel, has been using its solid base of well trained people and in-house computing power to contract in data processing and other types of computer work from other companies. ISMBC is a highly successful, profitable company which contributes significantly to the overall strength of BC Tel.

In another instance, in 1996 BC Tel loaned 120 highly trained unionized installers, line persons and cable splicers, to U.S. West, to assist that downsized American company in bringing its telecommunications network in the States of Washington and Oregon up to a workable standard. These craft people, who are our members, brought back photographs which documented the fact that the network down there was experiencing severe problems caused by neglect and poor maintenance.

How do U.S. West problems relate to the issue of contracting out? The company's problems stem from the fact that its unionized staff had been downsized and re-engineered past the point of no return. Its trained workforce had been gutted and was replaced by low-cost contractors. These contractors who were supposed to do much of the U.S. West maintenance and construction had little or no experience in the field and little commitment to the company. Given their extremely precarious economic position, contract workers take shortcuts and use cheap materials to maximize their meager incomes. But this results in construction and repair work that are inferior and unreliable because work is done improperly and problems are only given a temporary fix.

Despite its detrimental effect on U.S. West's operations, the ability to use cheap fly-by-night contractors created perverse financial incentives for the company. The contracting out of work of its formerly unionized employees enabled the company to maximize its profits in the short term, but it was the use of cheap labour that resulted in the disintegration of its telephone network. The financial benefits proved to be short-lived. As the phone system in Washington and Oregon fell apart and service suffered as a result, the Federal Communications Commission threatened U.S. West with massive fines and rate reductions for its customers.

When the issue of contracting out is discussed, these and similar negative consequences are often neglected.

The existence of the contracting out restrictions in our contract and the internal dispute resolution mechanism which is designed to address matters related to contracting out and technological change, have enabled us to avoid similar problems in the relationship between the TWU and BC Tel. In the past 20 years, a total of perhaps a dozen issues have proven sufficiently intractable that they required a decision from the chairperson of the committee. Many disputes have been dissolved within the committee, through agreements which meet the needs of both parties and which are without prejudice to the collective agreement.

For example, our members sell BC Tel's long distance calling cards in the company's phonemart. Despite the fact that this is our work, the union has agreed to allow BC Tel to conduct trials in which employees of non union retailers sell BC Tel's long distance calling cards. We knew that if we did not yield on this issue, these dealers would continue to sell the long distance service offered by BC Tel's competitors anyways. Given our inability to influence the behaviour of these non union retailers, the union would not have benefitted from restricting the sale of these BC Tel calling cards.

In a series of other cases, the union and the company have agreed to establish clear lines between what can and what cannot be contracted out. Instead of a winner-take-all approach, both parties have worked together to ensure that each other's real needs were met.

In conclusion, I would like to say that the TWU's efforts to restrict and control BC Tel's contratcing out amounted to a struggle over our members' futures. Because this clause has proven useful to both parties, we have been able to direct our efforts to the pursuit of projects which have proven mutually beneficial instead of wasting our efforts on unnecessary litigation and arbitration. Now when a dispute arises, both parties have motivation to come to a workable resolve. As a result, the union has been able to achieve a modicum of stability and security for its members, despite the massive technological and organizational changes that have racked the industry.

Thank you.

MR. ROQUE: Thank you, Mr. Hiebert. That was a very, very good description of what sounds like a win-win situation for a company and its workers and the decision not to contract out.

Our next speaker is Caroll Carle. As I mentioned earlier, he is a human resource professional with Noranda Corporation. His background is, he spent some time with both the Canadian federal government, as well as with Bell Canada, Nabisco, and another company. Mr. Carle.

MR. CAROLL CARLE (Noranda Corporation, Canada): Good afternoon, everyone.

As you heard, I work in labour relations at Noranda. Because of that, I guess, I get to talk about this subject, if not on a daily basis, on a weekly basis for sure.

What I have tried to do for today's discussion is to bring it down to a level where we operate, I guess, the guys in the trenches in labour relations, the union side, the company side. As I was coming down in the plane this morning, I had this vision that what I was going to hear this morning was going to be very high level, very interesting of course, but not at the level that we work it out on a daily basis. I guess what happens is that the trends that we create while doing our jobs become theories and lessons that everybody can learn from.

What I will try to do is simplify the discussion to the point of explaining to you what our mindset is at Noranda, how we deal with issues of outsourcing or contracting out, and how we communicate with our employees in these issues.

First of all, we have to identify what kind of business we have, or what kind of business we are, because of the impact it will have on our decision-making process in the future. We are very decentralized in terms of a company. We have operations in many areas of the world, but in fact each operation or each site is very autonomous and each site makes their own calls in terms of outsourcing or contracting out.

We are not an integrated company, therefore very free in making decisions. We cannot be experts in all things. We have discovered that in the past. We are in a global market, mines and metallurgy, and we are in a very specific sector that is very competitive globally.

What is the company mindset in terms of outsourcing or contracting out? First of all, it is the view of the company, and most site managers that I have dealt with in preparing negotiations or going through negotiations, that our employees are the most qualified and the most efficient people to perform the work in which we specialize. It is also our view that they are better qualified to maintain the equipment required to operate our sites. So I guess I will not have an argument there, to start with.

I believe that the unions, if we go to the union side of Noranda, they agree with us that our people are the best qualified and better equipped to perform the work related to our specialty. But they also have strong feelings about some of the work that is not directly related to what we do and that they feel should be performed by their members, our employees, and we end up by having strong discussions at negotiation tables for that. That has created, in the last 10 to 15 years, a kind of pattern that we have evolved to in order to create what we have now.

First of all, I would like to get into what is the criteria used by the company, what do we use as criteria to decide if we even discuss outsourcing or not.

We looked at things that are outside our expertise -- I think I am recutting most of the things that have been said this morning -- such as, for example, construction. We are not a construction company, we are a mining and metallurgy company. Building and putting drywall, like I heard this morning, is not our specialty. We will try to leave that to outside contractors.

Specialized maintenance, if it is something that does not occur on a regular basis, if it is something that really occurs once every two years or whatever, would you want to have full-time employees waiting for that to happen? We set that aside as an outside contracting possibility.

Transportation. We are not a transportation company and, therefore, not being integrated vertically, we are not a transportation company, we leave that to specialists.

Other issues that affect our decision to even consider contracting out is the sensitivity of the timing of projects. As an example, I can tell you of a mine that we had to prematurely close in northern Quebec and it was just before another mine was scheduled to open a few miles away. Our objective, of course, was to use our employees to go from one site to the other. That was possible, except that there was a full year between the two sites, one being operational and the other one shutting down. The other problem was that we had some development needs for our employees, in order to better perform in the new site that we were opening because it was extremely cost sensitive in terms of the ability of that site to be productive.

Along with the union, we sat down and discussed a plan by which the employees would have the opportunity to go back to school, to learn certain competencies that we thought were essential for the efficiency of the new operation, and while they were in school we had contractors open the mine, start up the operations to get the site ready for us to exploit it later on. We are at the end of that process. The employees are slowly coming back to work, finding the site ready to work for them. So we thought it was a win-win situation with the use of contractors.

Of course emergencies sometimes are issues that we take into consideration, health and safety, et cetera. What do we do before we contract out? After we have decided, all right, let's look at this program or this project, should we outsource, should we contract out or not, what do we have to do before we do that? When the company intends to identify a project for contracting out purposes, we notify the joint committee on contracting out, which we have, not in all sites but in some of the sites where they have negotiated joint committees in the collective agreements -- by the way, we are unionized in the vast majority of our sites, so having the work done by non unionized employees is not an issue for us.

We notify the joint committee on contracting out. Their responsibility is consultative in nature. It is not decisional in nature, it is consultative, but we understand the value of that consultation. We discuss the possibility of calling back laid-off employees if we have them. We have very few sites where we have employees on layoffs. Most of our sites have very short recall lists, if any. We do encourage contractors to use our own employees, our laid-off employees when we have them, if they have the competence or the ability to do the work. We have seen a lot of cases where because we are in remote areas, contractors quite often do not have the manpower necessary to do the work. We have employees that are waiting for work and they have the capacity to do the work, so they call on our employees sometimes to work side by side.

The most important thing is that we insist that the contractors respect our policies on environment and safety.

What has been the result in terms of a collective agreement? Because we had the same history, I guess, in the past as the BC Tel people had with their union, we have tried certain things that did not work out, we have had some conflicts before, a long time ago, but in the last 10 to 15 years in some cases we have never had a work stoppage. We have entered into agreements with contract language that basically says, very similar to what we have heard elsewhere, that the company will continue its practice of having its own employees execute the work as long as employees are available in the prescribed time. We talked about the timing issues, we need to have an overhaul on a piece of equipment, it needs to be done in a certain time. Because it does have an effect on their own lives, if it is not done in time you have to lay off employees, you are not winning.

Employees have to have the qualifications and the competence to do the work. If it is specialized, if it is not our area of expertise, if they do not qualify to do the work, we will consider going out.

The equipment and machinery must be available. Again I come back to something that is not done on a regular basis, we are not going to purchase the equipment or lease the equipment that is not going to be used efficiently.

Finally, all three items that I have just mentioned -- the availability of employees, the qualifications of employees, and the availability of equipment -- has to be competitive in terms of cost, quality and efficiency.

What is the future for us in that area? We think that both the union and management have reached a level of maturity in these discussions. We have managed to find language that was acceptable to both parties, that was simple in nature, that they could explain to their membership, that we could explain to our management people, especially those who have the ability or the responsibility of calling somebody -- you know, an electrician, come on over and fix this. Before they do that, they have to look at this, think it over, make sure that it is not referrable to the joint committee. I think because of the fact that we have reached that maturity, we will keep on improving in terms of our relationship in that area. It is all based, I guess, for success. It is all based on training, development and openness in terms of discussions on problems that face us.

Thank you.

MR. ROQUE: Thank you, Caroll.

Our next speaker is Octavio Manuel Carvajal Trillo. He is an attorney and a professor of law. He also has worked as a consultant and an attorney working with employers in the employment area.

OCTAVIO MANUEL CARVAJAL TRILLO: Muy buenas tardes.

Hace unos días, nos reuníamos los que hoy formamos la delegación mexicana en este evento y teníamos como factor común el comentar lo que nos asustaba el clima, la posible nieve y estar a grados bajo cero, francamente aterradores para los mexicanos. Quiero dar las gracias a los Canadienses de haberse preocupado por los delegados mexicanos y hacer todo su esfuerzo porque no fuera así. Lo que no sabíamos es que utilizarían el fenómeno del Niño y La Niña para que la temperatura estuviera agradable y sintiéramos el calor canadiense. Muchísimas gracias.

Voy a dividir mi presentación en la parte teórica, la parte introductoria, para hacer un análisis ya del caso práctico que les presentaré y que está relacionado con una serie de empresas de reciente creación que se llaman Afores, o que se designan Afores. Yo sé que les voy a dar un poquito de problema a los traductores con este término, son administradoras del fondo, de fondos para el retiro de los trabajadores.

En un momento en que esto esté listo, comenzamos.

He de decirles que, en primer lugar, el problema de la subcontratación en México, como atinadamente Yuri lo apuntara esta mañana, no es algo nuevo. Y podemos encaminarlo a que la necesidad de la subcontratación es a partir de la especialización en ciertas áreas. Para hablar de subcontratación tendríamos que partir del concepto relación laboral en México. Como ya lo decía mi amigo Yuri, esta mañana, en México existe relación de trabajo, independientemente de que se firme o no un contrato laboral, cuando hay la prestación de un servicio personal, subordinado y mediante el pago de un salario. Estos tres elementos nos van a marcar el criterio a seguir para interpretar si existe o no relación laboral entre quien presta un servicio y quien, finalmente, lo recibe. Derivado de esto, existen conceptos en la ley que sería conveniente retomar.

El concepto empleador o patrón se identifica como aquel que recibe, que contrata, los servicios de un trabajador. Visto desde este punto de vista, no nos resuelve el problema.

Existe otro concepto, ya entrando un poco más en materia, que se define como el intermediario. Aquel agente que sirve de enlace entre el trabajador y el patrón. hasta ahora no tenemos mayor problema. Pero el problema se empieza a dar cuando este intermediario no solamente hace este aparente enlace, sino que aporta elementos de trabajo. Y este es otro criterio importante para identificar dónde está el responsable de la relación laboral. Si el intermediario aporta elementos de trabajo, herramientas de trabajo al empleado, a la persona que desarrolla el servicio, entonces no habrá intermediación, habrá relación laboral.

Un concepto muy interesante en nuestra legislación, es lo que el artículo 15 de la Ley nos indica cómo el patrón final, es decir, el beneficiario final de los servicios, aquel que o para quien los trabajos realizados por un empleado o por empleados de un supuesto intermediario, fundamentalmente o mayoritariamente, se destinan a satisfacer particulares necesidades de un empleado.

Partiendo ya de estos conceptos, voy a relatarles el caso práctico que teníamos preparado y que voy a sujetar a su consideración como les comentaba, las Afores. Hace aproximadamente tres años tuvimos una nueva ley del seguro social que cambió el sistema de ahorro para el retiro. Este sistema de ahorro para el retiro exige a los empleadores mexicanos tomar el 2% del salario de sus trabajadores y destinarlo a una serie de fondos para generar, en el futuro, la garantía de pensiones en favor de los trabajadores. Estas empresas Afores se constituyeron a partir de esta reforma. Están reguladas en una nueva ley que se llama Ley de sistemas de ahorro para el retiro y me voy a referir a ella como ley del SAR. Esta ley también prevé la existencia de una comisión nacional de sistema de ahorro para el retiro, a la que me referiré como CONSAR.

Como referencia, las Afores son empresas privadas, en las que puede participar la inversión extranjera hasta en un 49 %; el 51 % está limitado a personas físicas o empresas mexicanas.

Hay tres puntos de subcontratación que podríamos identificar en las afores. Los dos primeros, yo les llamo de causas naturales. ¿Por qué de causas naturales? Porque los establece la ley y son las aseguradoras que el día de mañana serán quienes paguen estas pensiones a los trabajadores. Y otras empresas que se llaman Siafores, que son administradoras de los fondos, son sociedades de inversión que se encargan de que estos fondos tengan una productividad en los diferentes esquemas financieros que hay en nuestro país.

No es complicado concluir que, por obligación legal, las Afores tienen que subcontratar estos servicios de una manera formal y clara. Sin embargo, donde tenemos el punto de conflicto, y que es a lo que me referiré específicamente en esta charla, se refiere a los agentes promotores. Y voy a hacer un poquito de historia. Cuando nacen estas Afores, el producto a vender en el mercado era la afiliación a sus sistemas para darles los servicios de rendimiento de sus aportaciones, de sus fondos, una orientación y una asesoría financiera a los trabajadores, que poco conocen del tema, y, finalmente, cuando, de acuerdo a la ley, hubieran de pagarse esas pensiones, tener la posibilidad del acceso ya fuera de los mismos pensionados trabajadores o de sus beneficiarios en caso de muerte.

Evidentemente, cuando esto nace, toda la PEA mexicana, es decir, la población económicamente activa en México, era el mercado a atacar por estas empresas. Había 19 millones de trabajadores en la calle que tendríamos que afiliarnos. ¿Qué estrategia siguieron las Afores para ello? Contratar a una serie de agentes promotores para que fueran ellos quienes hicieran el enlace, es decir, la contratación a los trabajadores para que se afiliaran a la Afore. Pero estos agentes tienen una regulación específica en la ley de la materia de los Afores. Los agentes deben ser siempre personas físicas, autorizados por la comisión nacional del sistema del ahorro para el retiro, CONSAR, y podían ser, o bien, agentes independientes, y aquí viene el primer problema, o bien, empleados de la propia empresa. Sin embargo, por ahí en la ley para el trabajo, tenemos otro resquicio legal adicional. Cuando hablamos de agentes promotores hay un capítulo en la ley que nos dice que los agentes promotores siempre serán trabajadores de las empresas, salvo que intervengan en operaciones aisladas o que bien el trabajo no lo ejecuten personalmente. Estos dos supuestos no se encuadraban en los agentes promotores de las Afores. Pero las Afores no podían contar con este ejército de promotores y contratarlos para siempre. Los 19 millones de trabajadores que estaban en las calles no iban a estar ahí por siempre. Este mercado se iba a agotar y tendríamos que pasar a una siguiente etapa en las Afores que seria la de captar la afiliación y dar el servicio a los afiliados de la orientación, de la información, etc. Se optó pues, por contratar a los trabajadores agentes promotores a través de empresas administradoras de nóminas o administradoras de recursos humanos. Y la CONSAR, en un esfuerzo muy rescatable pero jurídicamente criticable, emitió una circular, de hecho fueron dos, la circular CONSAR 051 y 052, en donde estableció que los agentes promotores no podrían recibir ninguna percepción que no proviniera bien de la Afore o bien de la empresa administradora que se hubiera contratado para ese fin, o que se hubiera constituido para ese fin. Es decir, le daba a la propia Afore la facilidad de crear una empresa ex-profeso para esa finalidad. Lo que la mayoría de las empresas ha hecho es continuar con las empresas que originalmente tenían para contratar a estos servicios.

Ahora bien, ¿cuál ha sido el resultado de esto? El resultado, al principio, pareció optimista, aceptable; sin embargo, hemos encontrado algunos inconvenientes que vale la pena rescatar y re-enfocar.

Los promotores no se sienten parte de la organización. Eso es una realidad. Y eso ha afectado a muchas Afores en su imagen corporativa. Esto también nos ha traído, como consecuencia, la necesaria entrada y salida de personal que ha encarecido los costos de capacitación.

Finalmente, las Afores se encuentran ante un reto muy serio. Ya pasó el boom de la contratación masiva inicial. Ahora, tenemos que encargarnos de otros efectos. Cada seis meses, los trabajadores afiliados pueden tomar la decisión de continuar en la Afore en las que están afiliados, o bien, cambiar de afore. Es una de las actividades de los promotores, de tratar de que esos indecisos que andan en el mundo, puedan caer o retomarse en la Afore que están representando. Tenemos que especializar entonces a nuestros agentes promotores a no nada más dar la información y las formas de afiliación, sino a vender un poquito más la imagen corporativa de la empresa y a involucrarse más en los procesos operativos de las mismas. Quizás en el futuro, yo me atrevería a apuntar como una de las conclusiones, ante esta realidad del mercado concreto de las Afores, tengamos que regresar a esquemas tradicionales en donde un limitado número, ya muy específico a cada región de la república mexicana, de agentes promotores, sean los que se dedican a estas actividades pero dentro de la organización.

Para concluir, la contratación outsourcing, como la podemos denominar porque en México no existe jurídicamente cuando menos, una figura que se describa como subcontratación, debe estar muy planteada muy relacionada con la especialización de la empresa. Considero que es inadecuado el buscar subcontratar actividades que están íntimamente ligidas con el objetivo de la empresa. Es conveniente para mejorar las condiciones de operación de las empresas que determinadas áreas, que no son la especialidad de la empresa, sí puedan ser subcontratadas. Recuerdo, no hace mucho en México, había una jurisprudencia que sostenía que los policías, guardianes de la seguridad de las empresas, eran trabajadores de las empresas, independientemente del origen del contrato porque sería en el criterio del beneficio, del beneficio final del servicio. Hubo una evolución de criterios en los Tribunales y, es lógico concluir, que las empresas no pueden ser un todo, especializadas en todo, para que capten trabajadores que se dediquen a todo. Así el caso de la limpieza, así el caso de la vigilancia y, si hablamos de empresas manufactureras, en el momento de distribuir sus productos, es lógico que pudiera haber subcontratación de transporte, subcontratación en sistemas, subcontratación en cuestiones que no van relacionadas íntimamente a la actividad con el propósito de mejorar la calidad de los servicios, con el propósito de agilizar las operaciones y, nunca, el de eludir una responsabilidad patronal que es, desgraciadamente, la preocupación mayor de nuestras autoridades cuando dictan las leyes, cuando interpretan las mismas y se apartan de la intención fundamental de los empresarios que es eficientar sus empresas, que es poder participar en este reto de competición internacional en la que no se vale, es decir, en la que se vale todo menos quedarse atrás.

Muchísimas gracias.

MR. ROQUE: Thank you.

I think we need to thank our speakers, because without any prompting on my part they have actually got us ahead of schedule.

What is scheduled between 3:00 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. is discussion and questions and answers. I will open it up to the floor for any questions or comments that any individual wishes to make.

Please come to the mike and identify yourself.

MR. BRENT GARREN (UNITE, United States of America): I am Brent Garren from the United States. I have a question for Rod.

Does your union attempt to organize the contracting companies -- I know you have BC Tel, but the companies that they might contract with -- and if so, what kind of wages and benefits can you get at those firms compared to the dominant firm?

MR. HIEBERT (TWU, Canada): We have tried to organize some of these contractors, but there are very few contractors that BC Tel gets away with using. Most of them are with the building trades, and any of the major building construction or anything like that is already unionized, so there is very little.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I also have a question for Rod, just to play devil's advocate for a minute.

The contracting in that your members and BC Tel have won, who has lost jobs as a result of that?

MR. HIEBERT: When we worked out agreements where we have taken over some of this work, a lot of times we brought the workers into the union with us and they would come right over with the contract. Some who wanted to come, they came right into the union, and others have either taken buyouts or whatever from the company that they left. We have done that, as sort of a regular pattern, where we have brought them into the union and they came to BC Tel to work.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: A question for Rod, again.

You mentioned about your subcontracting committee. Who acts as the chair? Is it an internal chair or a neutral third party?

MR. HIEBERT: No. Up until just lately, it was Paul Fraser who is a lawyer that used to be chair of the B.C. Power Association. It is just like a standard arbitration case, where we try and work it out ahead of time, and with his assistance if we cannot, and he has to make a decision. We start out with opening statements, present our cases, cross-examination of witnesses, final argument, the whole thing. It is just like a standard arbitration when we get to that stage.

MR. ROQUE: I will direct this question to both Caroll and Rod.

Both of your case studies really make the point of having a strong relationship and communication between the employer and the union before the contracting out decision is being made. Effectively in some respects -- and this is just my personal take on it, in some respects the union is saying give us the first chance to staff it with members before you decide to go outside the union, or whether or not we want to include these new employees in our membership.

My question is: What kind of factors have you seen, both on the union side as well as on the employer side, in even decicing whether to staff it with the unions or to contract out?

MR. CARLE (Noranda corporation, Canada): There are a lot of factors. Once it goes to the committee, to start with you can bet that the company has made a fair amount of study on the case and it warrants us considering it. The factors are costs, efficiency, timing. Timing is extremely relevant because if we need a piece of equipment to go in to be ready for a transformation of an entire wing of an operation, you cannot miss it by a week or two because that could be your profits for six months. So timing, costs, efficiency, ability to do it, do we have the equipment, all these factors go in.

I can honestly say that in most cases, presented with the right facts, the committee will come to an easy decision. The one time where they have more problems is when everything is pretty close. Well, we might be able to do it in time, we might be able to do it at the same cost. That is when you have to make the call, but there is no decisional power from the committee, so the company still has to make the decision and live with the consequences.

MR. HIEBERT: The factors in our agreement are pretty well the same: the skills and manpower required and the availability of machinery. Part of the problem that you have is if the work is already contracted out and you fight to get it. It makes it more difficult to resolve after that point because the work is already gone and you are looking at a monetary settlement. So it is always best, we found, in labour relations, to deal with the issue before you really have the problem and you have to fight to get it back. It is always easier at that point.

MR. ROQUE: Are there any other questions or comments from the floor?

I will direct a question to Mr. Carvajal.

It seems that in your talk you were really focusing on, where contracting out or outsourcing is appropriate really is with respect to functions or specialties that are new to an employer. I apologize, I do not recall the Spanish term, but that the retirement plan administrator function was new as a result of the new laws as far as funding for retirement plans, so that was new and it required specialization.

Is that the only situations that you have seen where that has been successful in contracting out, or have Mexican employers also experienced advantages or considered contracting out what are really traditional functions among their employees?

OCTAVIO MANUEL CARVAJAL TRILLO: Gracias.

No, desde luego existen otros aspectos y otras actividades industriales empresariales en México en donde la subcontratación ha servido bastante. Inclusive hubo un concepto que se definió como empresas integradoras para los procesos de exportación en donde una empresa, por ejemplo, una fabricante de muebles, tenía la necesidad de contratar proveedores de ciertos elementos, de ciertas materias primas, pero cumpliendo con las exigencias de los mercados internacionales en materia de calidad y de materiales no tóxicos, etc., entonces, esto resulta un poco complicado porque no cualquier proveedor podría cumplir con estos requisitos y se estableció este programa, que, además tenía una serie de apoyos fiscales para que aquellas empresas proveedoras de industrias exportadoras pudieran cumplir con los requisitos de calidad. En este orden, varios procesos de la producción de este tipo de empresas se subcontrataron formalmente con un éxito rotundo, además de que empezaron a permear esta nueva cultura empresarial hacia la exportación, hacia la calidad total hacia proveedores que no tenían un acceso directo a los mercados internacionales y que, a través de esa integración a un producto final, lo pudieron lograr.

MR. ROQUE: As a follow up, did the employers experience any negative reactions from the employees or unions in Mexico?

OCTAVIO MANUEL CARVAJAL TRILLO: Desde luego, no fue fácil, sobre todo hay esquemas sindicales en México que son difíciles todavía de entender y de lograr una armonía, pero, en la mayoría de los casos, planteándoles las necesidades y los beneficios en cuanto a que, teniendo mayor acceso a productos de calidad, estos podrían ser comprados, podrían ser demandados en el extranjero con resultado de enriquecimiento de las empresas y, por ende, de mejorar las condiciones de trabajo a los trabajadores fue la manera en que las representaciones sindicales vieron con buenos ojos estas estrategias.

MS WENDY HASSEN (Alberta Labour): Wendy Hassen from Alberta Labour.

Rod and Caroll, you have described some joint processes in working with yourselves and your workplace partners, whether they be union or management.

A couple of challenges I am just wondering how you faced in your process. One, regarding information sharing, because there seems to be always some sort of difficulty in terms of trying to figure out what is fact and what factors are appropriate to bear into decision making -- and contracting out is a very sensitive one -- have you had any issues dealing with information sharing or agreements in terms of the business pros and cons, dollars, financial statements of the companies, et cetera, that assist you in these decision-making processes?

Secondly, when you are faced, or if you have been faced, with situations where there is a contracted alternative or option that appears to be viable, has that generated any innovations with the internal workforce that have justified keeping it in house? Has it spurred any new processes or ideas, to increase productivity, et cetera, in order to be competitive?

MR. HIEBERT: First of all, there is a provision in our agreement that calls for the chairperson to report to the company union at all times on technological change. So when there is an issue coming up with technological change or contracting out, that should be brought to the committee first. So there is an information sharing; and that, for the most part, works well.

Because there is a lot of pressure on both the company and the union -- like, if you do not have contracting out clauses, it is the company's ability, as you heard earlier on, to just be able to contract it out. But because there is pressure on both parties, and the union and the company have dealt together for many years, we always look for those innovative solutions, like with the calling cards that I noted.

There are quite a few others, and I can just give an example where we have people in the shops that do all the millwork for the phonemarts and they build all the work stations. There was a problem, where we did them all for the Lower Mainland, right around Vancouver, but some of the remote areas, we did not do them all. So we just came up with an agreement, outside of the chairperson making a decision, that we would do the millwork for those remote areas and ship them up there, then a local contractor could install them. There are a lot of innovations like that, that we work things through.

MR. CARLE: Companies have been taught to hide numbers -- I mean from what I have learned of business -- and that is how you are trained. You are not trained to show your numbers. However, that has changed in the last, I guess, couple of decades, or more recently, because of profit-sharing plans and that kind of stuff. I guess we are pretty open with the question of numbers because we do have profit-sharing plans in most of our sites. Again, this is a site-by-site operation and the sites openly print and post all kinds of numbers on profits and efficiencies of certain operations.

Our employees know exactly which part of the operation is efficient, which is not, and they know if we go out for a subcontract -- they know how much they will be saving and because they are part of a profit-sharing program, they are not necessarily against outsourcing it when it is profitable for the employees as a whole.

In terms of innovations that have been brought forward because of the necessity to discuss that kind of issue, I cannot think of any specific one, but I know that we have had quite a few. I do not know if it is because of the profit sharing or to avoid the contracting out or a combination of both, but obviously when the discussions begin to open up, a flow of new ideas comes out and any company must take advantage of it -- we do -- and the employees benefit.

MR. JIM CARTER (Association of Canadian Search, Employment and Staffing Services): Jim Carter, with Association of Canadian Search, Employment and Staffing Services.

A question for Mr. Trillo. Do you have any examples in the public service in Mexico where, for instance, a ministry like SECOFI will downsize and use the contracting out option?

I knew that the Laboratory for National Standards, in Mexico, did recently privatize. Are you aware of that example or others like it? And, was contracting successful?

OCTAVIO MANUEL CARVAJAL TRILLO: Le agradezco su pregunta y le voy a pedir una disculpa por no entrar en la respuesta profundamente, pero estaría yo robándole un tema de mucho interés a mis compañeros de la Delegación mexicana que van a exponer mañana, precisamente sobre las experiencias del sector público en la subcontratación en donde, dicho sea de paso, tienen ellos otra legislación, no es la Ley federal de trabajo la que los rige, sino la Ley de los trabajadores al servicio del Estado, que es un poquito más tolerante, por decirlo de alguna manera, con las estructuras patronales del gobierno hacia sus trabajadores. Seguramente tendrán una respuesta muy nutritiva y muy rica, pero no quisiera yo entrar en la materia en respecto a mi compañero de la Delegación mexicana.

MS SUSAN SPRATT (Canadian Auto Workers): Susan Spratt, Canadian Auto Workers.

I would like to ask Rod, what your experience has been with telework and, in fact, what kind of language you have done to deal with telework which is kind of a new phenomenon in telecommunications?

MR. HIEBERT: We believe that telework, if it is implemented, there have to be some real restrictions on it. I actually wrote a paper and presented it a couple of years ago in Ottawa, for the Finance Department. There are a lot of things that have to be worked out on telework, first, before you get into it, because it is another way that a lot of costs can be downloaded onto employees. There are some real difficulties, where employees never see the people they work with and they do not get a chance to find out what is going on around them. You can find where one worker will be told one thing, and another worker will be told another, and it is really, really difficult to get a hold of those people. We have some real big concerns; we really have not gone into that and we won't until we get those restrictions that we need.

MR. ROQUE: Any more questions or comments?

We are scheduled for a break at 3:30 p.m. It is 3:15 p.m. right now. My recommendation so that we can remain on schedule -- here is where I am, the taskmaster moderator -- is if you can return by 3:50 p.m., our next scheduled speaker is to start at 4:00 p.m., so that we can wrap up on time.

Thank you.

--- Short recess

--- Upon resuming

MR. ROQUE: Let's get started. I will say that we are on the home stretch and I thank you for your attention and your continued attendance. It is 4:00 o'clock and it has been a very full day. That is saying a lot.

Our final speaker for the day is Jean Gervais. He will speak as far as the public sector experience, as an employer, and the contracting out decision.

Jean is the Director of Transformation for the City of Gatineau. When he and I discussed his responsibilities -- I apologize to the Mexican delegation, but my understanding of when he described his responsibilities, which is to help organizational change, I would refer to that, and the U.S. would refer to that, as a change agent. He will speak to what I believe is the contracting out considerations or experience that the public sector has had, as well as his own experience as the change agent for the City of Gatineau.

MR. JEAN GERVAIS (City of Gatineau, Quebec, Canada): Thank you very much.

I do not know if change agent means that I change Canadian dollars to American dollars, but I would be very rich then.

I will address the group today in French. I will receive questions in both the French and English languages.

Being probably the only representative of the public sector presenting today, I certainly will want to present what happened at Ville de Gatineau, but I will also be glad to relate it to other activities in the public sector in Quebec.

Mesdames et messieurs, il me fait plaisir d'être ici aujourd'hui et de m'adresser à un auditoire si prestigieux sur un sujet à la fois controversé et qui anime de nombreux différends dans le domaine des relations de travail.

Je voudrais d'abord vous présenter l'employeur que je représente quant aux vues que j'exposerai devant vous aujourd'hui.

La Ville de Gatineau est une ville de 105 000 de population, située au Québec, en banlieue de la capitale nationale, Ottawa.

Gatineau embauche quelques 625 employés réguliers à temps plein, en plus d'un nombre variant entre 50 et 150 employés temporaires, occasionnels ou saisonniers. Répartie sur 141 kilomètres carrés, dont 65 kilomètres carrés de zone urbaine et 76 kilomètres carrés de zone rurale, elle doit entretenir quelques 408 kilomètres de voie urbaine, 121 kilomètres de voie rurale et 201 kilomètres de trottoir. Le réseau d'égouts fait 635 kilomètres, l'aqueduc 398, et plus de 2 260 bornes fontaines, lesquels nécessitent tous l'entretien, tout comme les 86 parcs avec équipement récréatif, en plus des 190 hectares d'espace vert.

De plus, le service de la sécurité publique doit assurer la protection contre les incendies et le service de police, incluant les enquêtes criminelles. Tout ça, c'est pour vous mettre en situation. Gatineau est la cinquième ville au Québec au niveau population, et c'est un milieu mi-rural, mi-urbain.

La Ville de Gatineau détient son existence légale de l'autorité provinciale. Elle est régie par la Loi des cités et villes. Au niveau du travail, la Ville de Gatineau, tout comme les municipalités au Québec, est assujettie au Code du travail du Québec de façon intégrale et ne bénéficie d'aucune exemption, comme c'est le cas pour certains ministères du gouvernement du Québec, des hôpitaux et des commissions scolaires. De plus, les municipalités au Québec sont totalement autonomes en matière de relations de travail et de gestion de ressources humaines, sans encadrement de l'autorité du ministère des Affaires municipales, tant au niveau des négociations que de la rémunération.

Il importe ici de souligner le très fort taux de syndicalisation dans les municipalités au Québec. Ces données-là font en sorte que je dresse la situation telle que nous l'avons connue.

Le sujet de la sous-traitance et de l'impartition a été une préoccupation du monde municipal depuis de nombreuses années. Nous avons pu être témoins de diverses tendances, lesquelles ont évolué au même rythme que les tendances similaires dans le secteur privé, mais toujours avec quelques mois, voire quelques années, de retard. En effet, cette évolution se faisait normalement suite à la pression constante des entreprises sur la gestion publique.

La sous-traitance et l'impartition, tout comme la protection de l'accréditation, ont fait l'objet de vive polémique. Elles sont devenues une préoccupation si importante dans le monde du travail au Québec que le gouvernement a créé une commission d'étude, la Commission Mirault, pour faire le point sur les Articles 45 et 46 du Code du travail du Québec, lesquels établissent les règles d'application lors de l'aliénation totale ou partielle d'une entreprise. Le Professeur Bernier nous a largement entretenus de ce sujet ce matin.

En effet, dans bien des cas la sous-traitance a été assimilée par les tribunaux, tant administratifs que judiciaires, à de telles aliénations d'entreprises. De plus, la jurisprudence à cet égard a été grandement discordante au cours des années 1980, pour se stabiliser quelques années plus tard en assimilant systématiquement la sous-traitance ou l'impartition à des aliénations ou des transferts de responsabilités d'entreprises, tout comme l'expliquait ce matin le Professeur Bernier.

Le Groupe de travail a pu dresser six constats:

Premièrement, un consensus patronal sur la nécessité de maintenir des dispositions légales pour empêcher que l'aliénation d'entreprise et les modifications de structure ne donnent prise à des manoeuvres anti-syndicales, du moins au niveau du discours officiel.

Deuxièmement, les groupements patronaux considèrent que la sous-traitance est assimilable à des contrats de fourniture de biens ou de services, plutôt qu'à la notion de concessions partielles d'entreprises.

De nombreuses ententes portant sur la sous-traitance se concluent dans le domaine municipal ou privé, même en marge de la règle de droit contenue aux Articles 45 et 46 du Code du travail et très souvent au su et avec l'accord des syndicats.

Une stabilisation de la jurisprudence sur le sujet, fin des années 1980, début des années 1990.

Cinquièmement, les groupements syndicaux se refusent à corriger les dispositions des Articles 45 et 46 du Code du travail sans revoir en même temps les notions fondamentales d'employeurs, de salariés, d'unités d'accréditation et de négociations collectives.

Sixièmement, l'imposition diamétralement opposée des groupes syndicaux et patronaux quant à la nécessité de raffermir le texte de l'Article 45, y compris la sous-traitance simple.

Ce groupe de travail a été formé, à l'insistance de l'Union des municipalités du Québec, en particulier, qui voulait avoir une exemption au niveau de certains articles du Code du travail, notamment en matière de sous-traitance.

Au cours des années, la Ville de Gatineau, à l'instar des autres organisations, a dû vivre ces expériences à l'égard de la sous-traitance et de l'impartition. D'abord, Gatineau, issue d'une fusion en 1975, a toujours eu recours à la sous-traitance et à l'impartition dans certains domaines de ses opérations. De façon générale, elle a assumé ces tâches en régie, avec ses propres employés. Je vous ferai part ultérieurement de la répartition des activités qui sont réalisées par les employés et celles qui sont données en sous-traitance.

Je crois important de vous décrire une expérience spécifique vécue par l'organisation municipale de Gatineau au début des années 1990 et qui a largement contribué à façonner la philosophie municipale à l'égard de la sous-traitance, celle de Gatineau bien sûr. En effet en 1991, suite à des pressions externes et considérant la précarité de l'état des finances municipales de Gatineau à l'époque, les autorités ont décidé de donner à l'entreprise privée, pour une période de trois ans, la coupe de gazon et le nettoyage des parcs et espaces verts de la ville, alors que ce travail était jusqu'alors effectué par des membres de l'unité d'accréditation des cols bleus.

Il est utile de préciser ici qu'il y a une clause de la convention collective à la Ville de Gatineau qui précise que la Ville peut donner des contrats à forfaits en autant qu'il n'y ait pas de mises à pied.

Une analyse financière à l'époque établissait que cette façon de faire faisait économiser environ 100 000 $ par année aux contribuables gatinois. Ce qui devait arriver s'est effectivement produit. Même si aucun employé n'avait perdu son poste, le syndicat des cols bleus a déposé une série de griefs à l'encontre de cette décision, ainsi qu'une requête devant le Commissaire du travail, pour faire constater la transmission d'entreprise et prolonger vers le nouvel employeur la convention collective existante à la Ville de Gatineau.

Il s'ensuivit une série de débats judiciaires et quasi judiciaires impliquant tant l'entrepreneur que le donneur de travail, la Ville de Gatineau. Le débat a été soumis en première instance au Commissaire du travail, qui a tranché en faveur du syndicat. Un appel a été logé devant le Tribunal du travail, qui a confirmé la décision initiale du Commissaire enquêteur. Une demande d'évocation a été soumise devant la Cour Supérieure, qui a rendu un jugement toujours dans le même sens. Un appel a été logé par la Ville devant la Cour d'appel du Québec, mais retiré ultérieurement, en effet le contrat étant arrivé à échéance après trois ans, trois ans de débats juridiques, et les frais judiciaires des parties avaient été très importants. Les autorités municipales ont alors convenu de discuter avec le syndicat afin d'en arriver à un règlement acceptable pour tous et qui permettrait aux contribuables de Gatineau de continuer à recevoir un service de qualité au meilleur coût possible, c'est-à-dire un coût similaire à celui des services rendus en sous-traitance.

Il est également important de souligner que la qualité du travail accompli durant la période de sous-traitance a été inférieur par rapport à la période où le travail était effectué par l'équipe municipale. La surveillance et le contrôle de qualité n'étant plus aussi constants, beaucoup plus de plaintes de contribuables ont été reçues à la Ville. Il fallait souvent réagir à ces plaintes et, dans la plupart des cas, une équipe d'employés municipaux devait corriger la situation. Ces interventions et la gestion des plaintes additionnelles sont aussi des coûts cachés qui n'avaient pas été pris en considération lors de l'évaluation et la comparaison des coûts.

Suite à ces négociations, la Ville a conclu une entente avec son syndicat des cols bleus, lequel a accepté de prendre en considération les préoccupations de productivité, le besoin de flexibilité et les contraintes budgétaires. Nous avons convenu de reprendre en régie l'entretien des parcs et espaces verts, en contrepartie de quoi le syndicat acceptait de modifier la convention collective pour consentir des concessions importantes au niveau des salaires du personnel saisonnier à qui incombait ce type de tâches.

Nous avons alors dû procéder à l'achat de matériel et d'équipements dont nous nous étions départis lors de l'octroi du contrat de sous-traitance. Une évaluation ultérieure, au bout de la première année, une évaluation conjointe, nous a permis de constater que nous offrions le service à coût un peu plus élevé que l'entreprise privée, mais d'une qualité supérieure. Considérant les coûts indirects importants qui avaient été identifiés, nous estimons qu'il n'y a plus d'écart de coûts pour cette opération.

De plus, comme nous avons les meilleures relations avec nos employés, le travail se fait de façon plus harmonieuse dans toutes les autres activités.

Depuis ce temps, beaucoup de travail a été fait avec l'ensemble de nos employés. Leur implication est régulièrement sollicitée quant à l'organisation du travail, soit de façon formelle dans le cadre du processus de transformation organisationnelle, soit de façon informelle par les superviseurs de premier et de deuxième niveaux dans le cadre des rencontres de coordination, ou même lors d'échanges personnels sur les lieux de travail.

La philosophie des autorités municipales en matière d'impartition et de sous-traitance est bien traduite dans un document de réflexion récemment adopté par les autorités municipales sur la vision de la Ville de Gatineau. Dans un chapitre intitulé "Ce que nous ne voulons pas être", les autorités municipales reconnaissent la nécessité d'avoir recours à différentes mesures pour s'adapter aux nouvelles réalités et aux pressions financières.

Elles constatent que la privatisation des services ne relevant pas directement de la fonction politique est une de ces mesures. En effet, certaines municipalités ont privatisé, en tout ou en partie, leurs services techniques, leurs services de loisirs, les équipements culturels. Cette tendance semble vouloir également s'élargir de plus en plus à d'autres services tels la production et la distribution d'eau potable, la protection contre les incendies, la construction, et même l'entretien des infrastructures. La Ville de Gatineau n'a pas retenu, et n'a pas l'intention de retenir, cette approche. Trois raisons motivent cette décision.

La Ville de Gatineau estime qu'elle a une responsabilité beaucoup plus large à l'égard de ses citoyens que la planification du territoire et la protection du public. Elle estime que son rôle comprend l'ensemble des mesures liées à l'aménagement et à la qualité de vie.

D'autre part, les différentes expériences qui ont eu cours au Québec, d'ailleurs, n'ont pas toujours été concluantes quant aux économies réelles générées par la privatisation. À qualité et à volume égal, la Ville de Gatineau estime qu'elle peut, de concert avec ses employés, offrir la gamme actuelle de ces services d'une façon plus responsable et à meilleur coût. Toutefois, cette approche n'exclut pas pour la Ville de maintenir sa pratique de recourir aux services de l'entreprise privée dans les circonstances où elle ne possède pas, soit l'expertise interne, soit l'équipement approprié, ou lorsque le maintien d'un stock important est requis ou bien que les activités en cours limitent sa flexibilité, la disponibilité de ses effectifs, ou encore que cette façon de faire représente une économie réelle ou une meilleure efficacité inatteignable autrement.

Finalement, la Ville de Gatineau entend respecter les obligations légales et contractuelles qu'elle a envers ses employés, et maintenir des communications et des échanges réguliers avec ses partenaires internes quant à l'organisation du travail.

Il faut également souligner d'autres motifs pour avoir retenu cette approche, lesquels sont strictement opérationnels et économiques et qui peuvent se résumer comme suit:

Maintenir chez son personnel une expertise dans la plupart des champs d'activité.
Développer le sens de responsabilité de ses employés.
Augmenter la fierté et la motivation du personnel.
Maintenir d'excellentes relations de travail. Et,
S'assurer des meilleurs coûts en tout temps.

Il est également important de souligner que Gatineau ne cherche cependant pas à prendre en charge de nouvelles tâches ou de développer de nouvelles expertises, mais plutôt maintenir celles qu'elle possède, afin de ne pas être à la merci de sous-traitants dans un marché réduit.

Cependant, la Ville de Gatineau recherche, dans un souci d'efficacité, à utiliser ses ressources de façon extrêmement rigoureuse. Elle s'est fixé comme objectif d'optimiser au maximum ses services, afin de pouvoir figurer dans le premier quartile des villes comparables au Québec. Gatineau a déterminé trois grandes cibles à protéger au cours des prochaines années, et l'organisation de ses services sera orientée en fonction de ces objectifs.

La vision de Gatineau pour les années qui viennent s'énonce comme suit:

Gatineau, étant une ville constituée d'une population jeune et en croissance, devra poursuivre son développement et se doter de tous les moyens appropriés pour garantir les services attendus, pour assurer le bien-être de ses citoyens, ainsi que pour accroître leur fierté et celle de ses employés.

Même si elle assume avec ses employés un grand nombre des activités de services directs à la population, la Ville de Gatineau fait également appel à des sous-traitants dans certains domaines et les mandate pour la réalisation, en tout ou en partie, de certaines fonctions. Voici la liste non-exhaustive des mandats confiés à des tiers.

Sur base d'impartition totale: la collecte des vidanges -- on n'a jamais fait ce travail; le lignage de rues -- on n'a jamais fait ce travail, ça a toujours été sous forme d'impartition; on a développé aussi certaines sociétés d'économie mixte, comme l'aéroport de Gatineau, qui est une corporation totalement indépendante, ainsi que la corporation de la Maison de la culture de Gatineau.

Le travail qui est fait en sous-traitance partielle: le déneigement. En général, les nouvelles rues sont partagées à part égale. Les anciennes rues, tout dépend de la répartition. Tout dépend de l'expertise nécessaire, par exemple les côtes. Les trottoirs et les bordures, l'entretien se fait par nos employés. La construction se fait en partage entre nos employés et l'entreprise privée, et là aussi il y a des comparaisons de compétivité. L'écurage d'égouts, même chose, il y a des éléments qui sont donnés à l'externe, il y a des éléments qu'on garde, qu'on fait à l'interne, avec nos employés.

Juste pour vous donner un exemple, dernièrement une analyse a été faite, une expérience a été faite, où on a comparé un sous-traitant, le nombre de kilomètres ou de mètres linaires qui peut faire un nettoyage d'égouts dans une journée, par rapport à nos employés, ce qui nous a permis de constater que, d'une part, un de nos appareils devait être réparé et qu'il ne fonctionnait pas adéquatement, et ce qui nous a permis aussi de constater que nos superviseurs dérangeaient nos gens régulièrement pour les envoyer à d'autres tâches, alors ils ne se concentraient pas sur le travail principal, ce qui faisait que leur productivité était de loin moindre. Donc ce problème a été réglé.

Au niveau du balayage de rues, ça aussi c'est fait en partenariat. Des employés en font une partie, tout le nettoyage du printemps, et c'est suite à une entente récente avec nos syndicats, on a pu se débarrasser de deux de nos balais ou vacuums pour donner à l'entreprise privée cette partie du nettoyage du printemps et ne pas être obligés de garder de l'équipement inutilement, toute l'année, pour quelques cinq à six semaines de travail.

Feux de circulation, c'est partagé.

L'entretien des compresseurs dans les arénas aussi.

L'entretien ménager. Certaines bâtisses sont faites par nos employés, d'autres bâtisses sont faites par l'entreprise privée, tout dépendant de la nature même du travail.

Les rénovations d'édifices sont généralement données à l'extérieur.

Les réparations de véhicules, c'est partagé également. Il y a des endroits où on ne peut pas compétitionner d'aucune façon. On ne peut pas faire l'entretien, le changement d'huile et le graissage sur nos véhicules à 19 95 $ comme le garage du coin peut le faire, et à la même vitesse, alors nos mécaniciens doivent s'absorber sur des choses plus importantes.

Et c'est comme ça à l'ensemble des tâches.

Les syndicats sont très au courant et, encore une fois, il y a discussion constante là-dessus, sans qu'il y ait de comité formel.

En conclusion, les motifs qui ont amené les différentes décisions en matière de sous-traitance ou d'impartition à la Ville de Gatineau découlent tous d'expériences vécues, de la philosophie de gestion, ainsi que des valeurs corporatives dont l'organisation a bien voulu se doter au cours des années. Le maintien du dialogue avec ses partenaires internes est une priorité qui est le résultat direct du processus de transformation organisationnel actuellement en cours au sein de la municipalité et qui touche particulièrement les employés des services extérieurs et les employés de bureau.

Je vous remercie.

MR. ROQUE: Thank you, Jean. That was an excellent illustration of the considerations, as well as providing us with examples of services that have been contracted out and not contracted out, and the considerations associated with it. It was a wonderful way of wrapping up some of the experiences that I think all employers see in the contracting out.

Are there any questions for Jean, or questions for any of the speakers? Hopefully they are in the room when a question is directed.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: In most municipalities where this contracting takes place, at least on the west coast, it is all great until all equipment is dispensed with, then the prices start to escalate. And with only three premier collection companies run by the stockmarket in New York, you know who is going to pay the increased cost. It will not be them.

MR. GERVAIS: That is the experience we have, that if we get rid of all the equipment and the expertise, we are bound to have costs rising like hell. Agreed.

MR. ROQUE: Are there any other questions or comments from the floor?

I am also charged with the responsibility of wrapping up today's discussions, so I am going to take a few minutes just to provide my perspectives as far as what we have heard today. By no means view the conclusion of my remarks as the end of the session. If there are any questions, I would be happy to respond to them as well.

Starting with this morning, where we heard about the various considerations and focusing on the theme of flexibility, then hearing the governmental and union concerns associated with whether it is union avoidance or a way of circumventing employment laws or protections, then some of the valid business considerations, I think what it comes down to when we are talking about contracting out, at least what we have heard today, what I am taking away from the speakers, is that when we evaluate a contracting out decision, it really comes down to what is the motivation of the company in deciding to contract out or whether to contract out, whether it is driven by a legitimate business decision, as far as whether it is cost reduction competitiveness or process improvement, or whether it is really a means to avoid obligations associated with the traditional worker relationship or employment relationship. I suspect that in most cases, in a contracting out decision there will be no absolutes, that there will always be a mixture of both legitimate and what was called earlier illegitimate business reasons and then the decision is, what is the predominant driving force of the contracting out determination.

When we look at the business considerations, I have summarized them into, really, three types of factors. One is cost reduction, and cost reduction in the globalization of markets is really coming down to cost competitiveness. The cost of delivering goods or services is a driver as far as being a successful business and the profit margins. I think everyone aknowledges that. Unfortunately, when it comes down to contracting out decisions or with respect to workers, the way to keep costs down or to reduce costs really comes down to two issues: reduce wages, or contract it out to a firm that can provide it at a cheaper level. In a way I make it extreme, but I think that is the competing interest when we are talking about a business who is driving its decisions on cost reduction.

But we also identified, or the speakers have identified, that specialization is another factor that causes a business to think about contracting out. The specialization comes down to the idea of competitiveness, again, whether it is maintaining software or computer systems, and whether or not you can build and keep the expertise in house, or whether you need to contract out with companies who specialize in that area.

It also is a process improvement matter. Many companies have found that -- I should say employers -- as Jean Gervais brought up with respect to the issue of waste disposal, some companies find that contracting out these services to companies whose core business or specialty is in that area is a much more effective way of delivering those services.

A third factor that might drive a business decision in the contracting out decision are external factors, factors that are beyond the business' control. What I identified here are a couple. One is worker shortage. What I am addressing here is, as we mentioned earlier, there has been a growing acceptance among workers of non traditional working relationships. Effectively, in some situations, in particular in the information technology computer programming area, the workers are demanding independent contractor status.

Other ways we have seen the worker shortages is with respect to the ability to get affordable health care in the United States and the fact that smaller companies are finding it is actually in their interest and in their employees' interest to have their employees employed by an insurance company or a leasing agency, where then the leasing agency, by virtue of its purchasing power, can provide better benefits at a cheaper cost to the employees than if the employer was doing it. So we have to take that into account.

We also heard the union and worker perspective that there is a concern, and a very, very legitimate concern, about the fact that if contracting out decisions is just left to management or business decisions, there could be issues about union avoidance and I do not think it is unions trying to protect their membership for their membership's sake, but really the whole purpose of the union was just to protect and empower the workers so that they are viewed as more of a partner with the companies in delivering the business. And the concern about lower wages, lost benefits, lost protections, as well as -- and Mr. Hiebert brought this up in his presentation, as well as Mr. Gervais -- a lack of ownership. When you have an individual provide services to a company where the individual does not have an employment relationship or loyalty to that company, that qualitative factor is lost and, in a way, the stake as far as creating innovations and efficiencies may not be there, unlike where you have a traditional employer-employee relationship where, there, it is in the mutual interest of both parties to deliver a product that is successful. The telecommunications workers experience is an excellent illustration of that.

Then we also have to bring in the government and their concerns. I think their concerns are more on a societal perspective. They are concerned about lost benefit coverage, as Mr. Hoopes brought up as far as the U.S. Department of Labor is concerned, whether it is as simple as an employer setting up these non traditional working relationships to get out from under its social security tax or unemployment tax liabilities, or whether it is the issue about having these individuals employed by a leasing firm that, upon bad business circumstances, the leasing firm disappears and the government is left holding the responsibility of taking care of these individuals, whereas in a traditional employment relationship the company who actually receives the services from the individuals would bear some responsibility. I think we need to take that into account.

What we also heard from the case studies this afternoon is that a key way -- because these are all competing and, in a way, there is no quick fix or quick solution or a formula that says automatically we should contract out or we should not contract out, the experiences that we have heard from all of the employers is to have some way of information sharing, where the business identifies or discusses to the workers what are the motivations for contracting out, and giving, maybe, the union or the workers the first choice or first opportunity to come up with a way of doing it.

As Mr. Carle brought up, the issue sometimes is, can you deliver within this time frame, and sometimes that seems to be less threatening to a union. I think that is what he was describing, where sometimes the union relented on the provision of certain services that were traditionally provided by union membership, only because the union was not able to deliver that particular service within the time frame needed for the company. I think it really comes down to sharing information and providing opportunities to the traditional employees, whether represented or not, whether or not they can deliver to meet the business' needs. The only way to understand that is for the business to articulate its needs.

Those are my observations, from our speakers and from the discussions we have had so far. I would very much welcome any more comments or observations or conclusions.

MR. DON RITZ (Syncrude): Don Ritz, with Syncrude.

In our company, in the location we are at, we have about 10 per cent of our population which is made up of indigenous people and North American Indians in the region. What we have done, as a very deliberate part of our strategy, is to actually carve parts of our business out and help them develop their own business on things that we could help them develop their skills and abilities on. We have essentially cut contracts to allow them to continue on in that part of the business.

I was just wondering if anyone else has had any experience with going beyond just a business need and operating more out of a moral conscience, as we have in this area, or for any reasons other than what we have talked about today?

MR. ROQUE: I will give individuals an opportunity to come to the floor and respond to the question.

The one area which we have seen, employers' experience in the U.S. where there has been that kind of partnering with individual employees, that certainly has been a motivation. I think some of that motivation also comes from the fact that the employers feel they are citizens of their communities and have a civic responsibility to take care of the communities.

In the U.S., employers are constrained in some respects because of the Taft-Hartley and labour laws which, in some respects, inhibit or prohibit employers from setting up employee groups or sponsoring employee work groups. There has been proposed legislation to modify those laws, but in some respects those inhibit some of the employer efforts along the lines which you described. At least in the U.S., that is what our employers have experienced.

MR. JIM CARTER: Jim Carter, with the Association of Canadian Search, Employment and Staffing Services.

I would just like to mention that in our industry there are staffing companies who lend a hand to that part of society they are trying to reintegrate in the community, whether they be on welfare or other forms of social assistance. This is a great part of our segment, to reach out to the less fortunate, to train them, to integrate them back into society and to offer them jobs in the community, in a very real and viable way. I am sure the gentleman from Syncrude is aware of the staffing industry's commitment to this. There are many examples throughout our segment of the workforce…

MS SUSAN SPRATT (Canadian Auto Workers): Susan Spratt, Canadian Auto Workers.

I would like to talk about a great concept that was in Ontario until the present government was elected. That was the legislation around employment equity.

Employment equity targeted people with disabilities, aboriginal women, workers of colour, to integrate them into workplaces. In fact, the statistics show that both in the private and public sectors, employment equity was a real move forward in the public interest around issues of employability, training, that were jobs around not just about pre-training jobs, but really about integrating everyone in the community.

I would like to congratulate corporations here who have worked with targeted groups in order to integrate, but I think one of the unfortunate things that the new government that we have here did was to dismantle employment equity, because it worked quite well and it did a number of issues around looking at minority and other groups that are viable employees in the community. I just wanted to add that to the discussion.

MR. ROQUE: The last speaker's comments prompted a question in my mind, which is what she is bringing up is the notion of legislation in Canada, or laws in Canada which were -- and pardon this ugly American's point of view of this, or ignorance on this particular thing -- my understanding was that the purpose of those laws was to break down what were viewed as traditional discriminatory pay or benefit practices between professions or occupations which were held traditionally by males -- or males and females, or of native origin. I am wondering, has anybody thought about or does anybody have any opinion on how contracting out may be another means of breaking down those barriers?

MS SPRATT: I just want to clarify. It is not being an ugly American, it is just understanding different pieces of legislation.

There were two pieces of legislation. One was pay equity, that dealt with the issues that you just raised. The other issue was around employment equity. That was actually set around the five targeted groups for employability, because there were barriers that are there, to stop employment discriminatory practices by, not just corporations, by trade unions, by associations, by everybody -- everybody was covered under the legislation, to bring down those barriers.

From our perspective, at least at the Canadian Auto Workers, those are integral parts of public policy that in fact make us more competitive and create better and more educated workers. We see those in the area of competitiveness, as good and integral parts of public policy that need to be there in the area of competitiveness within nation states.

MS CAROLINE WEBER (Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada): Hello. My name is Caroline Weber. I am from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.

I think these issues are really important because we have not heard a whole lot about what is the effect of contracting out on the individual. We hear more about what goes on in the workplace, and whether it is good or not for businesses, or whether or not unions like it, or what is the employment tradeoff. We have not heard a whole lot about the impact on individuals.

There was one study in Canada a couple of years ago, a small study that did sort of a quasi-experiment, sent out resumes, some of which had some contract experience on them, some of which had some permanent full-time experience, and people with full-time experience tended to get hired more quickly than the people with contract experience. But, compared to people with no experience whatsoever, the people with contract experience still did better. So there is a little hint there, that maybe contract experience for people without alternatives is a way of getting back into full-time employment. Certainly the temp agencies tell that story, as well, and they tell it well, I think, in general.

I think that the BLS attempts, the U.S. information linking the form of the employment contract with household surveys is the right way to be going here.

But to move on a little bit and back to where you were starting, I am a little concerned about the discussion around intent and motivation around contracting out. I am not sure, trained originally as an economist, that worrying about people's motives or intentions with respect to contracting out is the right way to think about this, that we would rather be looking at behaviour and outcomes and forms, rather than worrying about why people are doing it. It is useful to have this discussion, but in the longer run I think we need to move on in terms of what are the impacts both on individuals and on the workplace. If you could comment on that, please.

MR. ROQUE: Sure. I would be happy to comment on that.

In some respects, I would say motivation -- I should say my background, I consult with management, so I do have a skewed view of things, so I am trying to be objective on these matters.

If we looked at purely motivation, I think we would fall into a trap, where as long as the company or employer can state a legitimate business case in terms of it is necessary to be successful or more successful, and the company does not look into how this may improve or what kind of impact it would have on employers, I think we can quickly fall into the justifications of the old sweatshops that existed in the U.S. around the turn of the century, where cheap labour, regardless of what kind of working conditions, is fine because it helps the bottom line. So in some respects, I do not think motivation should be the only consideration in whether or not an employer's decision to contract out or how to contract out should be evaluated.

On the other hand -- and this shows you why I work with management -- if we do not take into account the business considerations, in some respects then the partnership between the employer and the employee really is a partnership that will be doomed to financial ruin. Where if the employer or the employees do not take into account what the cost associated with these particular services are, and keeping them in house and ignoring the fact that this can be done cheaper by contracting out or through another innovation, that company or business will soon be out of business because its competition is going the other way. So that is what I meant by there are no absolutes. We cannot find one automatic thing where if this company says it is a business decision, then we should just accept it because there is a moral motivation or impact associated with that decision as well. I think it is finding that balance.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: The context here is between Canada, Mexico and the United States. But, more and more in the computer industry in the United States, contracting out is Bombay, India, Pakistan, and what I am hearing here is what business wants. But I have not heard a study of how this is going to affect the government, how is it going to affect us to run our society in North America. Because if all this income is taken out of the marketplace and is put in elsewhere, and only the profits are here and then to be used elsewhere, when and how will the government receive money and how will our system survive? Because contracting out, let's face it, is to reduce costs. Now, this is only the first step. What will be the next step in business appetite?

We are starting to dismantle the system. It will not stop with garbage. It will go on, and on, and on, till there will be no government, no democracy.

MR. ROQUE: I have a difficult time responding to that without getting into a broad philosophical discussion on what the purpose of government is, but I guess the one point that I would take issue with -- I think contracting out or the decision to contract out is not always motivated by cost reduction. It could just be, simply, there is another entity or individual out there that can do it better than me. And that value, whether I can do it cheaper, the intrinsic value of having it provided by a specialist outweighs the higher cost it would be if I were to do it in house.

The example that I would use -- and I think we can all find different examples -- would be the example of the business that hires law firms. That is, in effect, the legal function and the legal services for a company can easily be done by contracting in, by building a legal department. But whether or not that in-house legal department is as effective compared to a law firm that bases its legal opinions and advice on its collective experience, not just with respect to its client but its experience with the government, its experience with the other regulatory agencies, experience with other companies, both competitive and non competitive, I think there is a value there and I think business itself says there is a value and they are willing to pay for that even though it may mean increased costs.

I think there are several examples where contracting out is done not because of cost, but because of some other qualitative improvement or value that a company gains by contracting out.

MR. TOM DUFRESNE (International Longshore and Warehouse Union): Tom Dufresne, International Longshore and Warehouse Union.

You talk about your clothes shops. I think if most unions could get the kind of conditions that the law society has for its members, we would be quite pleased with this conference, thank you.

MR. ROQUE: Speaking for some of the colleagues in the U.S. legal profession, they would say they would like the hours -- even though they bill for more, the hours that they work, they feel that they are in the sweatshops of the thirties. You are seeing this lawyer sweat.

THE CHAIRPERSON (May Morpaw): Let me first thank Frank for moderating this last panel this afternoon. I think he has gone beyond the call of duty in terms of probably what he anticipated having to do up here. Thank you very much, Frank.

Thank you, Mr. Gervais.

Certainly I would not expect him to answer in terms of what governments are going to do, particulary being here in Canada.

I am also going to dodge the question today. We may have something to say at the end of the day tomorrow in terms of potential areas to look at, from all three countries, that we may want to work on in the future, but I will leave that for now and draw today to a close.

Thank you very much for your attention. Please come and join us at the cocktail reception.

--- Upon commencing at 9:03 a.m.

THE CHAIRPERSON (May Morpaw): Good morning. Bonjour. Buenos días.

We have a moderator for the morning session, until the break at 10:30 a.m., Caroline Weber from Queen's University.

I will turn the floor over to Caroline.

MS CAROLINE WEBER (Queen's University, Canada, Moderator): Thank you very much, May. Good morning to everyone.

Yesterday we struggled with trying to understand the various legal, and perhaps cultural, context of contracting out, then we began to get into a richer understanding of contracting out by looking at various case studies. Today we are going to continue -- the morning, anyway -- with looking at some more case studies, trying to get that richer view of these various contexts.

The initial plan of this conference, actually, was to start out yesterday with examples of why different firms may or may not choose to contract out and, then, hopefully to move into today with examples of positive, and perhaps negative, experiences of contracting out.

As I thought about what went on yesterday, I realized that it is not that tidy, that you get, sort of, all of that and the various case descriptions of what is going on in these various firms. So my challenge to the audience today will be to keep these themes in mind and to consider these themes as you are listening to these very rich stories.

We will start with our first speaker, then. I would like to introduce Mr. Dale Hogg who is currently Vice-president of Human Resources with Iridium. They have been working on a fascinating project that he is going to give you more information about, but he does bring to his understanding of this situation 20 years of experience in the field, so I am sure you are going to understand some of the complications that Dale dealt with in the interesting strategy that they have pursued.

Mr. Hogg.

MR. DALE HOGG (Iridium World Communications Ltd., U.S.A.): Bonjour. Buenos días. Good morning.

I am Dale Hogg, from the United States, Iridium specifically.

For most of you, I know that Iridium is not a well known name. This is understandable, since only 11 years ago the company Iridium was merely an idea, an idea brought forth by two Motorola engineers. Since that time, a global satellite system has been developed. We now have 66 low earth-orbiting satellites that are alive and well and a company that became officially commercially active only one month ago, November 1, 1998. On that date, we introduced to the world the first mobile hand-held satellite telephone and, with a ton of coordinated effort, we became a global telephone company. This is a first.

This Washington, D.C. based company currently employs some 530 full-time employees and over 300 consultants working under several contracts. Additionally, the major element of the system is contracted out and includes several thousand workers. As you might envision, these contractors have mainly been involved with design, construction and deployment of satellites, as well as the development of all of our business models and software systems.

From its inception, Iridium, like many other companies, determined that the most expedient and the most effective way to undertake this first-in-history massive project -- $5 billion project, to be exact -- was simply to utilize, as best we could, contract labour.

The use of contract labour in high-tech companies is becoming increasingly common, as most of you are aware, to the point now that it often cannot be avoided. More often, high-tech companies have talent needs that require specific and timely solutions. Thus, in this high-tech arena, the question may not be whether to use contract labour or not, but simply ask the question "Is there a choice?"

The reason for this is that high-tech companies may have business needs that cannot be provided by the available talent pool in what might be defined as the labour market. As an example, and in Iridium's case, we recruit from the Washington, D.C. area, which includes Northern Virginia. In Northern Virginia -- perhaps some of you have seen the labour reports as of late -- the unemployment rate is 1.9 per cent, if you can imagine that. There are over 20,000 technical jobs that are available, that cannot be filled. So, guess what the answer oftentimes is?

Oftentimes, the needs of a high-tech company are so specific that outside expertise is indeed needed to provide the service. In addition, just as I mentioned, a competitive labour market makes it extremely difficult to attract new employees, as well as to retain those that you have. In the case of Iridium, the use of outside contract expertise was based on the company's immediate needs. A startup company like Iridium, with a specific date for the launch of business, could not possibly and indefinitely delay the timely launching of satellites, for instance, or the creation of its international billing system.

The ability of Iridium to hire permanent employees to create, implement and deploy such aspects of the business plan simply was not a feasible option. Outside consulting firms and companies with a long history of expertise in this area simply presented to us an immediately available talent pool and we proceeded in that direction.

High tech, however, can be both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because high tech implies being on the cutting edge, on the cutting edge of the market, providing goods or services that have not been available before. It can be a curse, in that companies can be at the mercy of the rapid shifts in technology.

Rick and I were talking about this moments ago, in terms of the speed of change in the business world today. This rapid shift in technology can make products or services actually obsolete before they even find their niche in the marketplace. The outcome, in terms of contract labour, is that many companies cannot fulfil all their business needs with permanent labour that can be hired from the marketplace.

This can help explain the incredible success of some of the high-tech consulting firms that specialize in aiding business, creating their own niche in the marketplace. High-tech contract labour simply feeds off this dichotomy by offering high-skilled labour, backed by solid track records and a proven management structure.

The greatest advantage that we see to working with contract labour in the high-tech area is that the most successful and effective companies have been able to retain the best and the brightest talents that are out there, specialists and experts in certain fields that are both effective problem solvers, as well as excellent communicators. In the high-tech area, providers of contract labour live and die by the quality of the services they provide. Excellence is their trade. Excellence has rewarded them with ever-increasing demand for their services. They cannot afford mediocrity, for that would lead to an empty calendar.

In a number of instances when the contract employee expressed a desire to remain employed by our company, this has, in many instances, eliminated that tough recruiting assignment, and it has been a tough recruiting assignment that we have had many times.

There are some disadvantages. The greatest disadvantage, as I see, to contracting out labour is that you are, in effect, paying for the training of people who do not work for you. As many of you are aware, with some of the contractors you may obtain that seasoned professional with the contractor, but that contractor will, in turn, hire a young college graduate. So I will lead into a couple of other areas which are extremely important in contract labour, and that is, managing those areas.

But contract labour, by definition, is simply temporary, rather than permanent. Yet during that time, contract labour is helping companies achieve their goals. They are, on the other hand, learning about your methods, becoming experts in your systems, and creating this temporary bank of expertise. And, of course, this is all while you are paying them a large amount of money.

This leads, then, to a second possible disadvantage. The cost can be extremely high in monetary terms. The question to ask may be: Is the cost of contracting out labour offset by the potential success of the entire enterprise? For many companies, that answer is yes. For still other companies, the question may, again, simply boil down to: Do I have a choice?

One critical key to the success in use of contract labour is a solid management team. I am very pleased to stand before you and say that I would match the Iridium senior management team against any company in the world. That is a powerful statement. As I stand before you, I share that the management team of Iridium has put together individuals, of some 530 participants, who speak some 40 different languages. That is a powerful, powerful tool and, in fact, epitomizes exactly what Iridium is: a global company.

That management team must be able to comprehend the nature of the work being done and take action to eliminate pretenders. I use the term "pretenders", referring to the inevitable people who, while employed by an outside labour firm, simply do not possess the skills necessary to get the job done as you need to have it. In the case of Iridium, our own chief executive, Dr. Ed Staiano, is actively involved in the management of our key consulting agreements, this, along with the vice presidents of our software system, our engineering department, our business operations entity, and our network operations group.

The results of not effectively managing outside contractors can be costly, both in monetary terms and in future technical problems that may arise from poor workmanship. In a sense, the management team has to know more than the outside labour firm, so that they can recognize inefficiencies and problems that exist and take action to rectify them. Examples include being able to insist on the replacement of inefficient contractors. I assure you in our agreements we have established just that. If they are not performing, we will change them. Therefore, while an outside company may be providing dozens, even hundreds, of experts to help you reach your goals, you may only need a few highly skilled employees to ensure the efficient management of your outside labour.

One of the scenarios for disaster in the utilization of outside labour is to make assumptions, assume that because of their high price, because of their past expertise, the outside contractors can give you what you want without your guidance. The management team of the outside contractors should be reliable, but one cannot rely on them exclusively.

To achieve timeliness and efficiency with outside labour, one needs to make use of incentives, incentives and penalties, penalties and incentives, throughout the term of a contract. For example, meeting or beating deadlines can be accompanied by an extra payment to the outside contractor. Conversely, the failure to achieve goals by certain dates can be met with a monetary deduction from payment. This too, I will share, with Iridium, as you can imagine, the launching of some 66 low earth-orbiting satellites was quite a challenge. All of the launches, all of the satellites, have literally occurred without a hitch. However, when those satellites were placed into orbit, a few were non functional, and at approximately $25 million a piece, one would want to be very cautious in terms of when it is released to our company.

Consequently, what we established with our contractor is: "Wonderful. You have designed, you have constructed, you have launched, and you have placed into orbit. But it is not functional, consequently the cost is yours". The incentive then becomes quite great for the contractor to meet your obligation.

These kinds of practices then lead to a solid communication and an understanding between the parties. This ensures an awareness of expectation.

In conclusion, it is quite clear that high-tech industries are often faced with the challenge of meeting fast paced technical goals in a labour market that may not contain the talent necessary to get the job done. In those cases, many high-tech companies seek out the professional assistance of outside contractors who do have the pool of talent, the experience and the track record to do the job. This, however, does not guarantee success. Managers, again, from within the company need to be as smart as the outside firm or they may not have the insight to guide the outside firm or the ability to recognize when the job is not getting done.

Our experiences to date would suggest that the use of contract labour will continue to increase as the high-tech industry continues to change and grow more and more towards competitiveness, with more and more products and more and more services, and industries that require technical knowledge, as well as the ability to use it effectively towards the achievement of business objectives.

Our plan at Iridium has worked well. In three of our major departments we have now begun contract phaseouts. We expect, in the next six months, that 50 per cent of the 300-plus contractors will end assignments. We, at Iridium, are convinced that our decision to utilize contract labour enabled us to achieve the unthinkable. We developed a business plan that has now been altered and changed and shifted some three or four times. We designed, constructed and deployed a 66-satellite system and its ground support system through 15 different gateways throughout the world and on November 1, 1998, we became the first mobile global satellite telephone system in the world. Without contract labour, these achievements would have been years in coming.

Thank you very much.

MS WEBER: Thank you very much, Mr. Hogg.

Next I would like to introduce Rick Blacow from Collingwood, Ontario, a lovely bucolic area of Ontario which, I imagine, experiences some similar difficulties, for perhaps different reasons, with respect to recruiting high-tech professionals.

Another interesting item about Mr. Blacow, besides the fact that he is working for Sensor Technology, a high-tech firm in Collingwood, is that he has been on both sides of the contracting relationship, so he has perhaps a unique perspective here in that he can give us both the sense of the contractor and the individual who is on contract, as well as in his current position, being responsible for creating these contracts and maintaining these contracts.

I introduce Mr. Blacow.

MR. RICK BLACOW (Sensor Technology, Collingwood, Ontario, Canada): Thanks, Caroline.

Good morning. Buenos días. Bonjour.

Looking back, I would have to say that my working life has been somewhat more checkered than most. I have had successful, if short, careers as a photographer, an auto mechanic/car dealer, a technical writer, a computer programmer and consultant, an Internet provider, and at present I provide an array of technical services to Sensor Technology which, as Caroline mentioned, is a small high-tech company working in a ski resort town, which is an interesting juxtaposition.

Sensor Technology is a manufacturer of high-tech ceramic products. Collingwood, as I said, is on the south shore of Georgian Bay, about 80 miles north of Toronto. Being a high-tech industry in a rural area means that for many of the projects we do, we do not have a readily available pool of labour and hiring people often involves moving them to Collingwood, with their families, on spec often, because as you all know, when you hire someone, you do not know if it is going to work out. So one of our techniques is to contract out. We do this in many areas, not just high-tech help, but we also get some more standard help also by contracting out.

As Caroline said, I have had experience on both sides of contracting out. As a photographer, I worked as a salaried employee from Monday to Friday, and on weekends I worked on a piecework basis as a freelancer for the same studio.

As a technical writer, I started as a full-time employee for a large Toronto company and ended up as a teleworker, back in Collingwood, to complete the project I was working on by remote control.

As a computer worker, I started as an independent consultant. I then joined forces with an engineering firm to form an Internet company and then became a salaried employee of that company.

My present position began as a one-month contract as a network specialist and turned into a full-time engineering position.

These transformations were my choice, others were forced on me by circumstances, but no matter what precipitated the changes, it seems to me that my need to change careers and ways of working has been a constant.

When I hear union people saying that contract work threatens their members' jobs, I understand that. When I hear business people saying that contract work is necessary to compete in today's marketplace, I also understand that. I do not think that contract work is intrinsically good or evil and, like so much of life, it can be either.

This conference, it seems to me, is trying to define contract work and to explore the ways in which contract work is used and controlled in our three countries. It is also, it seems, trying to understand whether contract labour should be encouraged or discouraged. World market conditions and expanding globalization force all companies to improve efficiencies and reduce costs to be able to compete. Automation and high technology reduce the need for mass labour and increase the need for a highly skilled and educated workforce. Traditional companies with large physical workforces have to find ways to move into this new reality.

One method of bridging the technology gap is to hire outside help. Retaining and retraining staff is not always a viable option when things are changing rapidly, though the cost, in human terms, can be high if jobs are lost.

We have moved rapidly from an industrialized economy into an information economy. Collingwood was once an active shipbuilding centre, in fact up until the eighties; they launched their last ship in the eighties. Many other industries moved into the area and used the port and the rail links and all of that infrastructure to set up plants. Since the demise of the shipbuilding industry, the town has basically moved into the tourist business.

Many of the people who were displaced never again found satisfactory employment. Some were incapable of being retrained and others were unwilling to accept that things had changed forever and are still waiting for the shipyard to come back. It seems to me that a similar event is taking place with this new change in the way people work.

Let me return my focus to Sensor Technology and describe how it is coping with the changing nature of work to remain competitive.

Sensor Tech has been in existence for 14 years and began as a supplier of piezoelectric ceramics to manufacturers of end products such as hydrophones. Sensor's market has always been global, and prevailing labour rates, prices and manufacturing techniques meant that Sensor was able to succeed financially, supplying these raw materials to other companies who produce the end products.

The situation has changed over the last few years, until now it is necessary to produce value-added end-user products directly in order to maintain profitability. Producing ceramics is not a highly technical job and Sensor was able to draw workers from the local Collingwood labour pool to form a stable and happy staff. But the move to producing end products involved techniques that were beyond the local capabilities, and this is when contracting out became a necessity.

As small companies go, Sensor is well equipped to perform the wide variety of tasks required to produce our products, and using contract work judiciously has allowed us to get to this position.

Sensor has always prided itself on being a vertically integrated company, which gives maximum control over cost and quality.

To produce the sorts of things we make, we need the skills of mechanical and electrical engineers, scientists, machinists, electronics assemblers, technicians, as well as semi-skilled production workers and office staff. We have a staff of 22. You can see that getting all those skills out of 22 people is difficult.

Our market is worldwide, but where we live places restrictions on how many highly skilled workers can be supported by the local businesses and industries. Therefore, Sensor Tech needs a group of generalists who have the ability to acquire new skills when the need arises. New markets and new products rarely wait while staff members bring up their skill levels to meet the challenges, therefore outside help sometimes needs to be used. This outside help is not meant to replace any current staff or to reduce costs. In fact, it is often very costly because skilled contractors charge very high rates.

So contracting out is used to bridge technology gaps, to allow us to enter new markets until existing staff can gain the necessary skills or the market becomes large enough to support hiring full-time specialists.

It should also be said that many of the contractors we use prefer the independence and high rates that they gain from working as contractors, and many have left lucrative, secure positions to become contractors.

There are also skills and processes that Sensor employs on such an infrequent basis that it is not feasible to bring them in house, even though they may be essential to our products. Anodizing, high volume machining, and product engineering, are three things we are probably always needing to outsource.

Another reason to outsource is to take maximum advantage of the skills of our current full-time staff. By hiring outside help to fill in for skills that might not be present, a careful mix of in-house and outsourced labour can provide benefits for all involved. Our employees are not stressed to perform above their limits, and products do not suffer from their shortcomings.

Contracting out is not Sensor Tech's preferred method of working. It is our belief that a strong permanent staff provides the heart of a successful business. Contracting out has many hidden costs and pitfalls and there are often surprises. The nicest surprise is when everything turns out just the way you planned. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Sure, many things that are done in house can go eerie, but having them on the premises can make detection and correction of an error quicker and easier. Sometimes you do not know how badly things are going with a contracted out job until the job is completed. Sometimes it is just too late by then, so contracting out is not always a bed of roses and, as Dale pointed out, the management of contractors is a very difficult thing to do and requires extra work, site visits, research into contractors. So, there is a great deal of work involved in contracting out.

There are many lessons to be learned about contracting out, but it seems to me that the future landscape of work will include many more temporary workers and outsourcing. Trying to prevent this may not be the best course of action and adaptation may be a better route to take.

We have heard from some industries and unions that solutions can be worked out, but the process can be difficult and painful. Humans are paradoxical in their abilities to both accommodate and resist change. I think the real secret is in knowing when to do which.

Thank you.

MS WEBER: Thank you very much, Mr. Blacow.

Our next speaker on the program is Señor Roberto Flores Lima. Mr. Flores is an economist by training and has conducted research and has taught, through various appointments, in both government and the university environment.

I introduce Mr. Flores.

SEÑOR ROBERTO FLORES LIMA (Secretaría de Trabajo y Previsión Social): Thank you, Caroline.

Good morning. Bonjour. Buenos días.

Tanto que los compañeros han repetido tres veces en los tres idiomas al comenzar sus exposiciones, ya me lo aprendí, así que puedo repetirlo con relativa facilidad. Espero que no haya cometido algún error.

Ayer, mi compañero Octavo Carvajal me dijo que el clima estaba muy agradable, que habíamos podido caminar el domingo por la noche sin los abrigos. Le hice caso y, ayer, cuando salí en la noche, pude caminar como diez pasos antes de congelarme. Afortunadamente, alcancé una puerta que estaba abierta en un edificio y eso me permite que pueda hablar el día de hoy y nadie ha tomado una gripe. Pero es lo extraordinario de Canadá, su gran capacidad de cambio, de ajuste, y es parte de lo que el día de hoy estamos comentando en relación con la subcontratación.

Bueno, yo les voy a comentar en relación con los resultados de una encuesta, la Encuesta nacional de empleos, salarios, tecnología y capacitación en el sector manufacturero. Esta encuesta la levantamos en la Secretaría de Trabajo hace varios años (el primer levantamiento lo hicimos en 1992), exactamente con la idea de poder identificar cuáles son los cambios que está registrando nuestra industria en relación con la organización del trabajo, los ajustes tecnológicos, las diversas formas de remuneración en las empresas y uno de los temas, afortunadamente, fue analizar la subcontratación, lo cual, pues afortunadamente, nos permite comentar ahora con Uds. algunos de sus resultados.

A diferencia de lo que acontecía durante el periodo de industrialización basado en la substitución de importaciones, con la apertura comercial, la industria mexicana ha tenido que enfrentarse hecho de que el mercado ha dejado de estar dominado por los productores para estar determinado a partir de las preferencias de los consumidores.

La adaptación a la demanda no sólo exige la adopción de tecnologías más flexibles, sino también de formas de contratación de personal no tradicionales, a tiempo parcial, por horas, la subcontratación, que permitan a los establecimientos contratar la cantidad y la calidad de trabajo requeridos para responder a las variaciones cuantitativas y cualitativas del mercado.

El principal obstáculo para identificar y medir la extensión del fenómeno de la subcontratación es la ausencia de criterios precisos y homogéneos. No existe una definición...... internacionalmente aceptada de la expresión "trabajo subcontratado", que suele designar diversas modalidades de empleo que se adaptan a muchas circunstancias de trabajo y que se apartan, evidentemente, del trabajo asalariado clásico.

La subcontratación en México parece no constituir aún una estrategia generalizada de flexibilidad laboral como se ha desarrollado en otras economías, sino más bien se ha utilizado para atender aspectos técnicos específicos de los establecimientos y variaciones en la demanda. La información disponible en el sector manufacturero mexicano muestra que formas flexibles de contratación adquieren cada vez más importancia. Así, por ejemplo, en el sector manufacturero, entre 1990 y 1992, sólo el 3.6 por ciento de los establecimientos declararon que habían contratado, que habían recurrido a algún tipo de subcontratación. Hacia 1995, había aumentado esta proporción de los establecimientos a 6.6 por ciento.

La proporción por tamaño de empresa, la proporción de los establecimientos grandes y medianos que subcontrataron personal en 1993-94, la más elevada fue en las grandes empresas, que fue el 17 por ciento de las grandes empresas declararon haber subcontratado alguna parte de sus insumos productivos y el 10.8 por ciento en las medianas empresas. Son exactamente estos establecimientos, los grandes y medianos, los que están más relacionados con la subcontratación.

En cuanto a las ramas económicas en que se registra un elevado porcentaje de empresas que subcontratan, los más elevados porcentajes se concentran en las industrias metálicas básicas y en la metal-mecánica con 17.9 por ciento en la primera y 14.8 por ciento en la segunda. También, un dato interesante es que, en 1995, el porcentaje promedio del valor de la producción que se realizó subcontratando a otras empresas fue de 4.2 por ciento; en cambio, el promedio del valor de la producción que fue subcontratado por otras empresas fue de 11.1 por ciento.

Es importante destacar las razones por las cuales las empresas deciden hacer uso de la subcontratación. Buena parte de los establecimientos que toman esta forma se adaptan principalmente ante cambios en la demanda del producto. O sea, el 24.2 por ciento de las empresas declararon que habían subcontratado alguna parte de su proceso por razones de adaptarse con mayor flexibilidad a la demanda, a los cambios en la demanda. Por necesidad de contratar habilidades específicas con las cuales no contaba la empresa, el 17.2 por ciento de ellas declaró que era esta razón, la principal, porque no contaba con el personal requerido para poder desarrollar internamente este tipo de trabajo y tuvo que externalizar el servicio. Y el 15.6 por ciento de las mismas, declaró que era por razones de buscar una mayor productividad en el trabajo. Estas son las principales razones. Si sumamos los porcentajes nos explican más del 50 por ciento de las razones por las cuales las empresas recurrieron a la subcontratación. Y, básicamente, no se modifican estas razones en el levantamiento de 1992.

En 1992, se observaron diferencias en los establecimientos manufactureros según el nivel tecnológico y el origen del capital, ya sea nacional o extranjero. De tal manera que, las variaciones en la demanda es un motivo más importante para los establecimientos en industrias de nivel tecnológico bajo y en aquellos cuyo capital es nacional en comparación con aquellos de origen extranjero. A su vez, la reducción de costos fue más importante en las industrias de alto y mediano nivel tecnológico que en las de bajo, así como en los establecimientos con inversión extranjera comparados con los nacionales. La demanda de habilidades específicas resalta por su baja significancia en las ramas de menor nivel de desarrollo tecnológico, lo que denota la escasa diferenciación de los mercados laborales internos.

En 1995, para 1995, en las empresas grandes y medianas tuvo una importancia relativamente mayor la ampliación o adecuación a la planta, mientras que para las pequeñas, la búsqueda de una mayor productividad. Llama la atención que fue insignificante la proporción de establecimientos que declararon subcontratar personal buscando salarios y prestaciones bajas o mayor control de personal en ambos años, en 1992 o 93. O sea, menos del 1 por ciento de las empresas declararon que buscaban subcontratación por ahorrarse costos laborales o por reducir el pago de prestaciones.

No existe, en realidad, consenso en el sentido de que la subcontratación, a la vez que genera nuevos empleos, aspecto particularmente central en países como México, precariza las condiciones de trabajo, especialmente en lo que se refiere a remuneraciones, prestaciones como seguridad social, capacitación y seguridad en el empleo. En México, la evidencia empírica no es contundente. Estudios de caso indican que las empresas subcontratadas en sectores donde tradicionalmente ha existido subcontratación, por ejemplo, en la industria de la construcción y la confección, las condiciones de trabajo no son diferentes entre unas u otras, o sea, entre las empresas que subcontratan a las empresas que son subcontratadas. Mientras que en sectores en los que la estructura productiva puede calificarse de empresas modernas, más recientes en el mercado mexicano, los salarios y las condiciones de trabajo son diferentes en las empresas subcontratistas con relación a las que las subcontratan como en el caso de las aseguradoras y la industria de la siderurgia.

Se ha destacado también que la subcontratación promueve la des-sindicalización. Se presume, precisamente, que es la ausencia de sindicatos, lo que posibilita que las condiciones de empleo sean menores bajo el régimen de subcontratación. No obstante, de acuerdo con los datos disponibles, la existencia de representación sindical no parece constituir un factor que obstaculice el proceso de subcontratación o la adaptación de estas formas flexibles de contratación. En 1992, la proporción de trabajadores subcontratados en los establecimientos que declararon contar con sindicato, 2.2 por ciento, era más elevada que en aquellos sin sindicato, 1.2 por ciento.

Con todo, los estudios de caso parecen apuntar en el sentido de que la subcontratación pudiera afectar la presencia sindical, ya que las grandes empresas que externalizan fases de sus procesos productivos a otras empresas están, por lo general, altamente sindicalizadas y está documentado que el traslado de esas fases conlleva la disminución de la fuerza sindical en esas empresas e industrias. Algunos casos en esa dirección, como....... pudieran ser un reflejo en esa dirección. Sin embargo, el impacto no es claro, pues otros estudios de caso también en otros sectores, como el de aseguradoras, muestran que el desplazamiento de personal hacia las empresas subcontratistas no significa necesariamente que el salario sea menor que el de los asalariados de los empresas que subcontratan o que se afecten sus condiciones de sindicalización.

En realidad, como comentaba ayer, la subcontratación o estos nuevos esquemas flexibles de trabajo en las empresas es algo con lo que vamos a tener que vivir, de aquí en adelante o de hace varios años en adelante. Querámoslo o no, las empresas van a seguir recurriendo a esto porque, como hemos escuchado a nuestros compañeros, siempre se está buscando una eficiencia productiva, reducir costos y prestar un mejor servicio. Actualmente, las empresas, parte de la importancia de buscar la competitividad, es utilizar más eficientemente los recursos y yo estoy de acuerdo con ello y todos los empresarios y la sociedad en su conjunto, debemos estar de acuerdo en que las empresas deben ser más competitivas, si eso significa aprovechar mejor los recursos humanos, los recursos materiales tecnológicos. Si todos buscamos el mayor esfuerzo, los menores desperdicios, la protección del medio ambiente y eso es lo que significa, y así interpretamos competitividad, todos debemos buscar hacer un esfuerzo en ello.

Lo que implica, necesariamente, que nuestros marcos legales deben de adaptarse a un nuevo mundo del trabajo. Creo que nuestras sociedades tienden a responder con mayor lentitud en los aspectos de organización y de normas a lo que implica el cambio en el mundo real y son estos cambios los que nos tienen que impulsar a hacer los ajustes que nos permitan proteger a todos los trabajadores, a todos los que trabajamos en nuestras sociedades. Yo quiero imaginar, dentro de algunos años, supongamos veinte años, cuál es la idea que tendremos del mercado de trabajo, por ejemplo en México, en Estados Unidos, en Canadá, en el mundo en general. El número de asalariados tradicionales se va a reducir dramáticamente; los trabajadores por cuenta propia van a incrementar cada vez más su participación en el mercado laboral y, lo que hace algunos años, era algo tradicional, un trabajo para toda la vida -recuerdo a mi padre que tuvo un trabajo para toda la vida, se cambió muchas veces de residencia, dentro de nuestro país, pero tuvo un trabajo para toda la vida. Los cambios de hace veinte años, la gente podía cambiarse dos o tres veces de trabajo. Actualmente, la gente no solamente se cambia de trabajo, sino que puede tener dos o tres trabajos y más si trabaja por cuenta propia. El trabajo a través de vía Internet y demás, posibilita que todos trabajemos mucho más diversificados en diversas empresas y para varias empresas físicas o morales.

Por lo tanto, las políticas públicas deben adaptarse y buscar fomentar que se den estos procesos de subcontratación. En México buscamos, a través del sector público y con los recursos que tenemos disponibles a través de un programa de subcontratación que impulsa SECOFI y de un programa de capacitación que promueve la Secretaría del Trabajo y otros programas de Nacional Financiera y el Banco Nacional de Comercio Exterior, que constituyamos conglomerados, en inglés, clusters, que busquemos que se den niveles de productividad y de eficiencia a escalas regionales y locales. Nosotros tenemos la idea de que actualmente ya no compiten empresas individuales. Es evidente que compiten sistemas productivos en donde todas las empresas dependen de la capacidad de que sus abastecedores de productos, de servicios, de distribución, sean tan eficientes como ellas para poder mantenerse en el mercado. Nuestros sistemas productivos deben de tender a eso y es evidente, por todo lo que hemos escuchado en estos días, que la subcontratación es algo que llegó para quedarse y tenemos que perfeccionarla y buscar adaptar nuestros marcos normativos para ello.

Con esto concluyo y les agradezco mucho su atención.

Muchas gracias, buenos días.

MS WEBER: Thank you very much, Señor Flores.

I would like to introduce our last speaker, Monsieur Normand Cadieux. He is currently working for Hydro-Québec and he has the lovely title of Directeur, qualité de vie au travail. Again, he is one of our panellists who brings more than 20 years of experience from the world of work and, this time, from both the labour and the management side of the experience.

I give you Monsieur Cadieux.

M. NORMAND CADIEUX (Hydro-Québec, Québec, Canada): Bonjour. Je ferai ma présentation en français. J'ai donné à sous-contrat ma présentation en anglais et en espagnol, aux gens en arrière.

Il me fait plaisir de m'adresser à vous ce matin et de vous parler un peu de Hydro-Québec et de l'approche Hydro-Québec en matière de sous-traitance.

D'abord, dans un premier temps peut-être vous dresser un portrait de famille de ce qu'est l'entreprise Hydro-Québec. En quelques chiffres, dans un premier temps, Hydro-Québec est une société d'état à vocation commerciale, qui existe depuis 1962 et qui a mission de produire, de transporter et de distribuer de l'énergie, particulièrement de l'électricité.

C'est une entreprise qui compte, à la fin de 1997, plus de 3 400 000 clients; qui a fait, à la fin 1997, 7 927 000 000 $ de ventes et qui a eu un bénéfice net, à la fin de 1997, de 786 000 000 $, un bénéfice qui va être un peu moindre en 1998, compte tenu de la belle tempête de glace qu'on a eue au début de 1998.

En termes d'effectifs, il y avait, à la fin 1997, 20 663 employés, dont 15 459 étaient syndiqués, donc 70 pour cent de la population. Soixante-dix pour cent des employés à Hydro-Québec, du personnel, est syndiqué, donc c'est une entreprise très fortement syndiquée.

Il y a un grand syndicat, qui est le Syndicat canadien de la fonction publique, qui comprend les employés de bureau, de métiers, des techniciens, qui compte 13 800 employés sur les 15 500 qui sont syndiqués; et d'autres plus petits syndicats, comme le Syndicat des ingénieurs et le Syndicat des scientifiques, des gens qui font la recherche à notre Institut de recherche. On a plus de 300 chercheurs qui font la recherche dans le domaine de l'électricité.

Une entreprise fortement syndiquée comme Hydro-Québec a évidemment des clauses de sous-traitance dans chacune de ses conventions collectives, qui, de façon générale, empêchent l'employeur de faire de la sous-traitance s'il y a des mises à pied ou s'il y a du personnel qui peut être déclaré surplus à cause de la sous-traitance.

Avant de parler de sous-traitance comme telle, il faut voir d'où on vient comme entreprise, parce que c'est une prémisse au travail qu'on a fait sur la sous-traitance. On a fait, en 1993, un virage important dans le domaine des relations de travail et, je dirais, on a fait un virage important comme entreprise, comme telle, en termes de gestion d'entreprise. Dans les années 90, on a fait le virage qualité, donc on a adopté des modes de gestion de qualité totale, et on a aussi fait un virage en termes de relations de travail.

Il faut dire que l'entreprise, des années 1960 à 1990, a été une entreprise avec une approche avec les syndicats qui a été beaucoup une approche de confrontation. On a eu énormément de conflits de travail, des années 1960 à 1990. On a fait vivre beaucoup de personnes des ministères de conciliation et de médiation au Québec. On a créé beaucoup d'emplois et on a fait vivre beaucoup de firmes d'avocats. On a eu une approche, vraiment, de grèves et de confrontations pendant toutes ces années.

Cette approche-là s'est terminée dans les années 90 et on a fait un virage complet. On est maintenant en mode partenariat, on est en mode de travail de style résolution de problèmes, d'approche coopérative, avec nos syndicats. Ce qu'on essaie, c'est d'avoir des ententes gagnant-gagnant entre les parties.

Ce virage en relations de travail -- qui est vraiment un virage très important -- a entraîné avec nos syndicats une réflexion sur quelle doit être la vision des relations de travail dans une entreprise importante comme la nôtre. On l'a fait -- et vous l'avez, malheureusement juste en français, sur le petit modèle que vous avez devant vous, sur l'acétate.

Ce qu'on cherche, dans un premier temps, si on va dans la colonne à droite, on cherche à avoir des ressources qui soient compétentes et mobilisées. Pour avoir une entreprise qui fonctionne, il faut du personnel compétent, il faut du personnel qui soit mobilisé pour faire le travail.

Il faut que ce personnel-là puisse travailler à un produit -- c'est le triangle en bas, à gauche. Il faut qu'il travaille sur un produit -- dans notre cas, c'est l'électricité -- qui soit adapté, et au moindre coût. Donc il faut produire les choses au moindre coût, pour satisfaire notre client, qui est en tête de la pyramide, qui, lui, a des attentes de plus en plus importantes, et pour être capable de faire face à la compétition, compte tenu que le monde de l'électricité est un monde qui est de plus en plus déréglementé.

Vous savez qu'avec l'ouverture des marchés... notre marché au Québec est ouvert et nous avons été acceptés par un organisme américain pour pouvoir aussi vendre de l'énergie aux États-Unis, donc on est dans un marché de moins en moins réglementé. On est en train de vivre ce que le domaine des télécommunications a vécu il y a quelques années, donc il faut être capable de faire face à la compétition.

Ce qu'on a fait -- et ce modèle-là est très simple -- ce qu'on a fait, c'est qu'on a convaincu nos syndicats que l'élément le plus important dans une entreprise comme la nôtre est d'avoir un client qui est satisfait dans ses attentes, et pouvoir être capable de livrer le produit au meilleur coût possible pour faire face à la compétition. Et c'est avec ce background-là qu'on fait des relations de travail aujourd'hui. Donc on fait des relations de travail, on a convaincu nos syndicats de faire des relations de travail pour pouvoir livrer un produit au meilleur coût et qui réponde aux attentes des clients.

Ce que ça a occasionné comme virage au niveau de la sous-traitance, dans un premier temps, évidemment, comme je l'ai dit tantôt, le dossier de la sous-traitance, des années 60 aux années 90 a été un dossier qui a été conflictuel avec les syndicats lors des négociations, et même en dehors des négociations. Ça a été source de conflits, de grèves illégales, et cetera. Les ententes ont toujours eu pour effet, dans le temps, de limiter les droits de gérance et d'être difficilement acceptables. On a longtemps vécu des articles de conventions collectives qui déterminaient quels étaient les domaines où on pouvait faire de la sous-traitance et quels étaient les domaines où on ne pouvait pas faire de la sous-traitance. Et ça, c'est excessivement difficile à gérer, c'est source de conflits et d'arbitrages continuels.

On est sorti de cette problématique-là dans les années 90. Il faut dire qu'on a eu un peu l'aide du gouvernement parce que, à la négociation de 1990, le gouvernement a légiféré pour imposer une convention collective, et a un peu limité les droits des syndicats quant à la sous-traitance, c'est-à-dire ramener la clause de convention collective à empêcher la sous-traitance s'il y a des mises à pied ou des surplus de personnel.

Ce qu'on a fait, à partir de 1991 mais particulièrement en 1993, on a signé une entente de partenariat avec nos syndicats, qui est un peu le reflet de ce que je vous disais tantôt, d'une nouvelle approche en relations de travail non conflictuelles, et on a créé un groupe de travail pour revoir notre approche vis-à-vis la sous-traitance.

Ce groupe de travail a travaillé durant deux ans. C'est un groupe patronal-syndical qui a travaillé pendant deux ans à analyser tout le phénomène de la sous-traitance, à exprimer un peu tous les paradigmes que chaque partie avait sur la sous-traitance. Il en est ressorti une règle de comparaison de travail interne-externe, que je vous expliquerai tantôt. C'est notre approche et c'est cette règle-là.

Justement pour passer à la règle et vous donner un peu ce qu'il y a derrière cette règle-là, quelle est notre vision des choses concernant les relations de travail. On a évolué: en 1996 on a signé un contrat social avec nos syndicats et on a pris des engagements dans ce contrat social.

Le premier engagement, qui est important et qui guide ce qu'on doit faire, c'est de favoriser une force de travail interne performante. Alors tous les mots sont importants. Une force de travail interne, c'est une chose, mais il faut une force de travail interne performante. Ça, c'est primordial. Si notre force de travail interne est performante, on fait le travail à l'interne.

On favorise aussi le maintien et, le cas échéant, la création d'emplois, lors du développement des activités de l'entreprise. Alors comme notre entreprise est en expansion dans différents domaines d'activité, on favorise la création d'emplois. On ne favorise pas la création d'emplois toujours dans l'entreprise-mère comme telle, Hydro-Québec, mais on favorise beaucoup la création d'emplois à l'intérieur de certaines filiales spécialisées ou de co-entreprises. On est présentement à créer une co-entreprise avec une grande compagnie de télécommunication. Parce qu'on a un réseau de télécommunication à l'interne, on fait une co-entreprise avec une grande entreprise pour vendre nos services au monde industriel. Donc ça, on fait ça à l'intérieur d'une filiale ou d'une co-entreprise. Alors la création d'emplois, on la fait à l'interne, mais on la fait aussi à l'intérieur de filiales quand ce n'est pas la mission de base de l'entreprise en termes d'activités.

On veut développer une vision globale avec nos syndicats des enjeux commerciaux et des marchés. On trouve important que nos syndicats comprennent quels sont les enjeux commerciaux, quels sont les marchés qu'on peut obtenir. On essaie de planifier les impacts sur la main d'oeuvre et la charge de travail du développement de notre entreprise. Et on développe des modes d'organisation et des conditions favorables à de nouvelles activités, de nouveaux produits et de nouveaux services.

On s'engage aussi à maintenir le savoir-faire de notre personnel et, si jamais il y a décroissance, à minimiser les impacts, autant que faire se peut, sur la main d'oeuvre, et finalement, à établir des mécanismes efficaces de communication.

Ce sont les engagements que nous avons pris envers nos syndicats dans ce contrat social là et, évidemment, ça impacte beaucoup notre règle de sous-traitance.

On peut maintenant passer à la règle comme telle, de façon très synthétisée.

Le mode de fonctionnement est le suivant. On choisit une activité où on veut exercer, où on veut faire jouer la règle de comparaison. Théoriquement l'employeur peut la choisir seul, mais en pratique on essaie de faire consensus avec les syndicats pour identifier une activité. Par exemple -- et on est en train de faire le travail ces temps-ci -- quand on doit faire la réfection d'une centrale hydro-électrique. Cette activité-là est une activité où l'on est en train de mesurer, de comparer, à savoir si c'est plus intéressant de le faire à l'interne ou à l'externe. Donc on choisit, dans un premier temps, une activité.

Une fois qu'on a choisi notre activité, la deuxième étape, il s'agit d'établir les exigences de réalisation de l'activité, quels sont les devis, quels sont les contrats qui sont reliés à cette activité. On doit les décrire le plus objectivement possible, sur la base des faits, sur la base de la réalité.

Une fois qu'on a établi les exigences de l'activité, on établit et on compare les coûts de l'activité, internes et externes, alors vraiment on dresse une comparaison entre les coûts de main d'oeuvre, les coûts d'équipement, les coûts d'encadrement. On ne fait pas seulement les coûts de main d'oeuvre, on fait les coûts complets de comparaison des coûts de l'activité. Ça nous donne un prix pour l'interne et ça nous donne un prix pour l'externe.

Compte tenu qu'on a un préjugé favorable envers nos employés, si le coût à l'externe est meilleur qu'à l'interne, on travaille avec le syndicat pour essayer d'optimiser nos façons de faire à l'interne -- revoir l'organisation de travail, revoir les conditions de travail, s'il y a lieu. Puis l'on refait l'exercice et on revalide si l'interne ou l'externe est plus avantageux.

Finalement, on prend la décision de confier l'activité à l'interne ou à l'externe, selon le résultat du deuxième exercice.

La base de notre règle de comparaison, c'est la compétitivité. Et c'est ce qu'ont accepté les syndicats de faire, c'est-à-dire de déterminer si une activité va à l'interne ou à l'externe sur la base de la compétitivité, basé le plus possible sur les faits, sur la réalité, et non pas sur une épreuve de force ou un rapport de force.

On fait, évidemment, cet exercice-là de façon continue. On est à nos premières expériences. Ce qu'il faut dire, c'est que quand on choisit une activité, on ne s'empêche pas de continuer à fonctionner pendant le temps où on fait un exercice de comparaison. On continue à fonctionner, on continue, si c'est à l'interne ou à l'externe, à le laisser à l'interne ou à l'externe. C'est à la fin de l'exercice qu'on fait le changement, s'il y a lieu. On ne fait jamais le changement au début de l'exercice, donc on n'empêche pas l'entreprise de fonctionner, d'être productive, pendant qu'on fait un exercice de comparaison.

En conclusion, maintenant, la décision d'impartir des activités à Hydro-Québec est fonction des résultats d'application de la règle de sous-traitance qui a été convenue entre les parties. Cette règle est en application depuis maintenant 1997, donc depuis deux ans. On a quelques exercices de fait. On a choisi volontairement d'aller doucement dans cette méthode de fonctionnement là. On a attaqué quelques activités, au moment où on se parle. Les premiers résultats ont permis aux syndicats de conserver les activités à l'interne, parce que plus compétitif qu'à l'externe, mais on a d'autres activités qui sont sous observation et on verra ce que ça va donner.

Ce qui est intéressant, c'est que depuis qu'on a adopté cette règle on n'a plus aucun conflit de travail sur la sous-traitance. Les conflits sont pratiquement inexistants.

Ce qu'il faut aussi mentionner, et qui est primordial, c'est que le pré-requis au bon fonctionnement d'une règle comme celle-là, ou d'une méthode de fonctionnement en coopération comme celle-là, c'est évidemment une relation de confiance et de collaboration entre les parties. Si cette relation-là, qui est toujours fragile -- en relations de travail, tout est toujours fragile -- si cette relation-là se détériore, il est évident que la règle de comparaison va devenir rapidement inefficace parce que c'est vraiment un travail où il faut qu'on se fasse confiance et qu'on établisse les choses sur la base des faits, donc on se donne vraiment une capacité de travail où les rapports de force n'entrent pas en jeu.

Évidemment, tout n'est pas à l'externe et ça ne veut pas dire qu'on a une règle de comparaison qui nous permet de tout donner à l'interne ou à l'externe. On a déjà des choix qui sont faits et qui ne sont pas contestés. Par exemple, les travaux de construction de centrales, de barrages, de réseaux de transport, on fait faire ça par l'externe. De toute façon, il y a des lois au Québec qui nous obligent à donner ça au monde de la construction.

Il y a certains entretiens de véhicules.-- c'est un peu comme la Ville de Gatineau.-- il y a certains entretiens de véhicules simples qu'on fait faire à l'externe. Mais l'entretien spécialisé, on le fait faire par nos mécaniciens.

Le travail de maintenance dans nos édifices est toujours donné à l'externe.

Il y a donc plusieurs domaines qui sont à l'externe, et le syndicat ne demande même pas de faire l'exercice de comparaison parce qu'il sait très bien que ce serait très difficile d'être aussi compétitif.

Évidemment quand il y a des surcroîts de travail, ou quand il y a des verglas comme on a eu l'an passé, on ne se gêne pas pour faire de la sous-traitance. L'an passé, on en a même fait beaucoup au Canada, beaucoup aux États-Unis. En fait, tous les monteurs-distribution qui étaient disponibles un peu partout en Amérique du Nord, on les a récupérés. Évidemment dans des situations comme celle-là, personne ne pose la question, on a la marge de manoeuvre nécessaire.

Quand on a besoin d'une expertise très spécialisée dans un domaine, là aussi on a toute la marge de manoeuvre pour faire ce qu'il faut.

Mais notre engagement -- et c'est ce qui est important -- envers les syndicats, c'est d'essayer de favoriser l'interne. On travaille avec eux à développer leur capacité d'être compétitifs.

Je vous remercie.

MS WEBER: Merci, Monsieur Cadieux.

Before I open the floor to questions, I would like to try and do my part here to sum up, in terms of at least my perspective, on what I have learned out of this session.

I will start with what we know about contracting out, a very broad and general question.

Señor Flores said that the evidence from Mexico reflects no consensus. I would argue that, similarly, the evidence from Canada and the U.S. demonstrates no real consensus. To a large extent, this makes sense, given the various purposes for which firms use contracting out and the multitudes of different types of services that are contracted for and the many different forms that the contracts take.

There is a literature in the information technology area that looks fairly extensively at contracting out, or more extensively than we have in any other area, and they have formulated some general rules and principles about what organizations should be looking at, what they should be doing when they think about contracting out their IT services. A lot of those rules apply generally and can be used to sum up the things that we have heard today.

Primarily, the message is that contractors are not strategic partners in business, but, rather, firms are buying services from contractors and need to carefully construct those contracts and monitor those contracts so that they get the services that they want. When one does not take care with those contracts and is not vigilant or plans contracts that are perhaps too long, then the firm encounters some difficulties, usually, or experiences some sort of liability in the partnership.

The importance of managing these contracts comes through all of these presentations, whether one is in a unionized or a non unionized environment. The example that Mr. Cadieux gave us of the partnership with the union, and examples that we heard yesterday, as well, about partnership, emphasize this point.

Yesterday we heard arguments about the importance of business centrality with respect to contracting out, and that contracting out should only be allowed when the services that are being contracted for are not central to the core competencies or core strategy of the business. I do not think that that argument holds very well or makes sense to me, given that businesses are truly dynamic and are not static, so the sense of a business' core competencies, or even core activities, changes over time and if we start to try to define what those core competencies are and then limit contracting out around those core competencies, I think you very quickly get into difficulties in terms of the limits that are put on businesses.

Firms grow and shrink. They change their central activities. Telephone companies, 10 years from now, are going to be Internet providers, probably. You do not know exactly where the business is going to be or what it is going to be doing.

The examples, again, here are examples both from Mr. Hogg and Mr. Blacow, examples of firms contracting out for services that are quite important to their core function, quite important to their core business. Mr. Hogg tells us they could not have got their global system up and running without the use of contract labour.

This idea of defining contracting out in the context of the central business function, I think, is something that needs to be examined a little more carefully.

So, why are we worried about contracting out? If businesses do it for various reasons and businesses are dynamic organizations that need to grow and shrink, why are we so worried about this?

Well, of course we are worried about it for the social impacts that it may be having. I think we should also be worried about it to the extent that fads in human resources tend to pervade the business environment and we see organizations doing things not always for reasons that, perhaps, make sense.

In sociology there are ideas about institutional theory that talk about mimetic processes, where organizations adopt particular practices to look like successful firms, to look like the leaders in the field. I think that we should look, say, to downsizing in terms of trying to understand this. It is also important to look at downsizing, because I think that these two things have been connected, so we have seen organizations who downsized, perhaps because it was popular to do it and you could make the firm look good in the short turn, and then turned right around and contracted out those same employees, usually for a higher wage rate, which may have made sense in the short run, again, but I think oftentimes in the long run it has not made sense.

We do not want to legislate against, perhaps, stupid management decisions. These things happen sometimes and I do not think we want to control that. But I think the more important issue is, looking at the social impact.

The presentation that we had from Ms. Cohany of the BLS yesterday, emphasizes the importance of definitions, which of course is something we have been struggling with all along here. But what we need to highlight is that different employees with different skill sets and different labour market power have different outcomes with respect to contracting out.

Those distinctions, I think, are critical in terms of our understandings around what are the impacts of contracting out and, perhaps, thinking about the policy implications of contracting out.

With those last words, I would like to open up the microphones for any questions from the floor to our panellists. I would also like to encourage you to use the microphones, so that we can have the translation service, and to please identify yourselves before beginning your question.

MME SOPHIE DUFOUR: Mon nom est Sophie Dufour. Je suis professeure de droit à la Faculté de droit à l'Université de Sherbrooke.

C'est essentiellement un commentaire que j'ai à faire, qui tient compte à la fois des discussions qui ont eu lieu hier et des conférenciers qui ont présenté leurs allocutions ce matin.

En particulier, je vais me centrer sur le cas d'Hydro-Québec puisque ça a été le dernier cas qui a été présenté.

De ce qu'on a compris, c'est qu'au niveau d'Hydro-Québec on a cherché, essentiellement depuis 1993, à établir une meilleure entente avec les syndicats au niveau de la sous-traitance et que c'est par le biais de cette règle de la comparaison qu'on a fait ce changement dans les relations patronales-syndicales.

Je crois que c'est à partir de maintenant que mon questionnement se pose davantage. Cette règle de comparaison, elle est fondée -- vous l'avez mentionné, Monsieur Cadieux -- sur l'objectif de compétitivité, cet objectif qui, depuis hier, n'a jamais été remis en question en termes de légitimité ou d'illégitimité. Pour moi c'est extrêmement difficile d'admettre qu'on a pris pour acquis cet objectif comme étant fondamentalement bon, qu'il avait aucun impact dans notre ère actuelle; et à cet égard-là, Madame Weber a émis un commentaire qui en dit long. Toute la question de la dimension sociale a, effectivement, été ignorée. Évidemment certains vont me dire qu'on en a fait état, mais on en a fait état de quelle manière? Évidemment lorsqu'on fait référence aux travailleurs internes, ceux qui font partie de cette force de travail interne, pour la plupart des cas qui nous ont été soumis depuis hier et ce matin, ce sont des travailleurs qui sont syndiqués, qui sont protégés, qui, pour la plupart, sont presque assurés que si jamais il y a des mises à pied, qu'il y ait d'excellentes compensations, mais que de toute façon, on a, tant bien que mal, évité, par le biais des conventions collectives, d'envisager la mise à pied si jamais on opte pour la sous-traitance.

Mais qu'en est-il de l'autre côté, le revers de la médaille? Qu'est-ce qui se passe de ceux qui doivent, faute de mieux, accepter cette sous-traitance, c'est-à-dire ce sont des travailleurs autonomes, ce sont des entrepreneurs autonomes, mais qui n'ont, pour la plupart, jamais fait le choix de le devenir? Ils ont, pour la plupart, été mis à pied et, compte tenu qu'ils ne voulaient pas se retrouver au chômage, ils se sont déclarés entrepreneurs autonomes ou travailleurs autonomes.

Ce sont eux qui, véritablement, devraient faire l'objet de nos réflexions depuis deux jours, parce que ce sont ces gens-là qui n'ont aucun bénéfice marginal, qui ne sont pas protégés par des conventions, qui n'ont aucune force de frappe individuellement. Très curieusement et je ne sais pas pourquoi, mais hier, comme aujourd'hui, on n'a jamais fait état de la dimension sociale que vivent ces gens-là dans une situation où, très clairement, ils n'ont aucun pouvoir.

J'aimerais avoir des commentaires de la part des conférenciers à ce sujet-là.

Je vous remercie.

M. CADIEUX: Un bref commentaire. Je ne veux pas faire le discours sur les hauts et les bas de la société. Ce que je peux vous dire de façon claire, notre objectif ce n'est pas la compétitivité, dans un premier temps. Je pense qu'il faut remettre les choses en place.

On essaie de travailler pour satisfaire le client. C'est la première chose qui nous occupe, et c'est la chose qui nous intéresse particulièrement.

Notre expérience à nous, c'est qu'on a essayé, quand on a à faire le choix de la sous-traitance, de se donner une règle qui soit la plus objective possible pour permettre aux gens de pouvoir être compétitifs et pour pouvoir soit obtenir des contrats ou soit ne pas les obtenir.

Pour ce qui est du reste, pour ce qui est des travailleurs qui sont autonomes, qui n'ont pas de protection sociale, moi je pense que ça, c'est un débat qui est plus un débat social, que moi je n'ai pas l'intention de faire ici aujourd'hui.

MS WEBER: For my part, I guess I will say absolument. I think it is one area -- as a good researcher, I can say we should look at this area and it is one thing that we have not adequately addressed here at the conference over the last two days. It is a big topic. We did try to get a number of different perspectives and we missed this one.

MR. ROD HIEBERT: Rod Hiebert, Telecommunication Workers Union.

I am becoming increasingly concerned about the workers in the high-tech field. I recently sat on a panel in British Columbia. It was a high-tech professionals committee, reviewing the Labour Code. We had a lot of corporations making submissions about how these high-tech workers should be exempted from the Labour Code. There were a lot of things -- when you sit on a panel like that and you start putting things together, we were told that they should be exempted from the Code because we pay them good money, $30,000 to $40,000 a year; then, later on, they would say well, they are expected to work 60 to 70 hours a week. You start figuring out and that gets down to the range of $8 or $9 an hour.

These kids, they go through university, they are highly trained and then they hit the street and they go out and work for a company like this. You wonder, are we really creating a high-tech ghetto for those people?

You think $30,000 to $40,000 a year, they have no pensions, they have no medical care, no dental, any of these things. Some of them, I believe, are really being used. Then they get into this telework and all this sort of stuff, individual contracts, and they do not even know who they are working with. I am really concerned for those workers.

MR. BLACOW: I would have to say that I agree with that. I have only ever been on the front lines, I have never really been involved in policy. I do not understand how people think they can control all of the various factors that go on in working and trying to build a profit, a profitable company, trying to keep people alive.

In Canada, our social fabric is being torn apart. There is money being pulled out of everything. This is what is happening and it is really important to investigate how these contract workers are treated.

For my part, whenever I have been a contract worker and I did not like what was happening, I simply left. I went somewhere else and found another opportunity. Now, not everyone can do that, I understand that. I have been fortunate in that way.

I think these are questions we have to deal with. In Collingwood, when the shipyard went under, all these people needed help and training, but there was nobody there to help them. Training came in and everybody wanted to make them into entrepreneurs suddenly. These are people who had had jobs for 20 years and had skills, but their skills were no longer needed, so they were encouraged to become desktop publishers. There are a lot of gaps, for sure.

MR. HOGG: I would like to, perhaps, echo similar sentiments. I think that your point is most valid and we certainly see in today's world a new work attitude, if you will, particularly among the young labour force.

At the same time, what I have seen in the last several years is, with this new young workforce, with all of this technical high power that they bring, there is still an underlying concern on their part. What I see is the young worker who comes in and is interested in making all they can, while they can, and thinking later in terms of establishing themselves in a more secure role.

We have perfect examples at Iridium, where individuals have come in right out of school, have made exceptionally good money, but after four years -- I have been there five now -- these individuals have said I have had enough contracting, I want to settle down, I want to think in terms of the long-term benefit. They think in terms of their total compensation packages not just being dollars, they think in terms of the benefits that are being offered. They think in terms of the options that companies have now started to utilize as a part of the total compensation package. So I am not necessarily of the belief that we are creating any kind of ghetto for high-tech personnel, but individuals who not only have a focus on what they do from a work standpoint, but also what they do in preparation for their futures.

SR FLORES: Yo coincido plenamente con los comentarios de las dos personas que han participado ahora en este momento y parte de lo que comentaba al final de mi exposición va en ese sentido, exactamente, el mercado está modificándose aceleradamente. Hay muchas más personas que están trabajando por cuenta propia. Nuestras estructuras de protección social están más orientadas hacia el trabajo asalariado. En mucho casos el trabajo asalariado, o sea, el trabajador asalariado frente a los trabajadores por cuenta propia, y aún los pequeños patrones de unos cuantos trabajadores, dos o tres trabajadores, tampoco tienen condiciones de trabajo y de protección social digamos que a veces pueden ser mayores a los trabajadores asalariados. Creo que hemos tenido sociedades protectoras del trabajo asalariado y sabemos, y esto está cambiando y es a lo que yo me refería. Tenemos que buscar formas de protección social en la cual tomemos ya clara conciencia de que este tipo de trabajadores, que este tipo de personas que prestan sus servicios sin protección social, no sabiendo si tendrán trabajo la próxima semana o el próximo mes, sujetos a la incertidumbre que da su participación aislada en el mercado, es algo que tenemos que reflexionar y buscar alternativas como sociedad entre empresarios y trabajadores. Y por eso volví a hacer el señalamiento: tenemos que buscar un nuevo esquema de organización social en donde, quizás en el pasado las leyes del mercado eran una transfiguración de la ley de la selva. Actualmente tenemos que buscar que las leyes del mercado no sean las leyes de la selva, sino que sean formas de inter-relacionarnos socialmente como empresas, como personas, como trabajadores y que nos permitan interactuar socialmente. Y que tengamos los beneficios de esta participación social. Si competitividad, mejores formas de organización de las empresas, implica humanizar el trabajo que hace 50 años no lo teníamos en forma de organización muy estandarizadas, deshumanizadas y competitividad quiere decir ahora humanizar nuevamente el trabajo, darle al trabajador la posibilidad de interactuar, de decidir, de participar en la empresa, pues, bienvenida la competitividad. Pero no podemos dejarla solamente en los esquemas de las empresas en donde se da esta relación laboral. Es una preocupación el incremento de las personas que están fuera del trabajo asalariado. En México ha habido una reducción en los últimos años del trabajo asalariado y un incremento importante de trabajadores por cuenta propia y me imagino que en Estados Unidos y en Canadá, como en Europa, esta registrándose eso. Y realmente es preocupante. Y lo que mucho preocupa es que seguimos discutiendo aspectos concentrados en la relación subordinada asalariada, y por eso comentaba que en los próximos veinte años, qué tipo de mercado vamos a tener y qué estamos haciendo en esa dirección. Retomo esa preocupación y creo que una de las partes que yo rescato, de mucha importancia en este seminario, es hacer, tomar información y compartir una preocupación que yo creo que es de todos. A nadie creo que pase inadvertido que eso está sucediendo y nos preocupa mucho que en nuestros mercados laborales esté sucediendo eso. Mucha gente que actualmente tiene un trabajo asalariado, no sabemos si lo va a tener dentro de diez años y qué tipo de participación va a tener en el mercado y qué tipo de protección y creo que no estamos haciendo lo suficiente para proteger a esas personas.

MS WEBER: If there are no further questions and before I release you for your coffee break, asking you to be back here by 11:00 o'clock, I would ask you to join me in thanking our panellists for a very excellent and stimulating morning.

--- Short recess

--- Upon resuming

THE CHAIRPERSON (May Morpaw): We are running about 15 minutes late, which I think is a tremendous achievement, but, also, I think it is worthwhile since the discussion around the break has been interesting and there was quite a lot of lively discussion going on out there. Let me begin by thanking Caroline Weber for moderating the last session. I thought it was extremely stimulating and provoked a lot of thinking for me and for others.

The moderator for the next session, which is a Business and Labour Panel Discussion, is Alessandro Rubio Magaña from the Mexican National Administrative Office.

Mr. Rubio has a law degree from la Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and an M.A. in international law from the Washington College of Law.

He has worked for various parts of the government and the Legislative Assembly in Mexico City and will be moderating the next panel.

He has quite a task since he has more speakers than on the other panels. His task is to have the panel presentations finished by about noon or so and then a discussion period.

We have not really scripted this session in the sense that it is called a labour and business panel discussion on the issues. I believe each of the speakers will be making a statement; then, if there is time, some discussion amongst them or picking up points that they may want to come back to after hearing the others, and then opening to the floor.

Mr. Rubio may now step up and tell me what he thinks the format is.

SEÑOR ALESSANDRO RUBIO MAGAÑA (Secretaria del Trabajo y Previsión Social, México, Moderator): Thank you, May.

Good morning, buenos días, bonjour.

Estaré hablando en esta ocasión en español por lo cual si quieren utilizar sus traductores aquellos que no hablen español. Como lo mencionaba May, este panel es especialmente complejo ya que tenemos seis especialistas en la materia que estarán participando, por lo cual tenemos representantes del sector laboral y del sector patronal. Ellos comentarán sobre los casos de estudio del día de ayer y del día de hoy por la mañana y darán la perspectiva por parte de los grupos que ellos representan. Como mencionaba May, tendremos alrededor de 45 minutos para que ellos expongan y posiblemente después abriremos un periodo de preguntas y respuestas para todos los asistentes. Para mi resulta un gran honor compartir esta mesa con todos ellos; son seis especialistas que procederé a presentar.

Primero que nada, a mi mano izquierda, encabezando la mesa, el Sr. Donald Dowling, quien trabaja en el grupo jurídico de Hewitt Asociados, que es una compañía consultora internacional en el campo de empleo internacional y beneficios sociales a empleados, es presidente del Comite Internacional sobre derecho laboral de la Asociación Americana. Anteriormente, fue profesor adjunto a la Facultad de Derecho a la Universidad de Cincinnati, ha publicado diversos artículos y ocupará el cargo de presidente de la Conferencia sobre derecho laboral internacional que se realizará en Austria en marzo de 1999.

Posteriormente, a su mano izquierda, está el Sr. Brent Garren quien es abogado general, principal y asociado del Sindicato de empleados de la aguja, industriales y textiles UNITE. Se graduó en la universidad estatal de Wayne y en la Facultad de Derecho de dicha universidad en Detroit. Representó a la Federación americana del trabajo en el Congreso de organizaciones industriales en los últimos cuatro años, integrando los comites técnicos que se ocupan de la protección de los trabajadores a domicilio y el trabajo en régimen de subcontratación. Fue representante de la UNITE en la Asociación de la industria de la vestimenta.

Posteriormente, a su mano izquierda, tenemos al Sr. Andrew Finlay, quien es abogado principal del grupo de derecho laboral del departamento jurídico general del Banco de Nueva Escocia. Durante doce años ha colaborado en el Comite de la Asociacion canadiense de banqueros en temas relativos al empleo y a las políticas laborales públicas. Desde hace tres años integra la delegación del Consejo de empleadores canadienses a la Conferencia internacional del trabajo, en la cual se ha concentrado en el área del trabajo en el régimen de subcontratación.

Tenemos a su izquierda, a la Sra. Susan Spratt, quien es representante, a nivel nacional, del C.A.W., sindicato canadiense de trabajadores de la industria del automóvil, al cual se integró en 1986. La Sra. Spratt se encarga de negociar acuerdos colectivos para el C.A.W. en los sectores de telecomunicaciones y autopartes y, desde 1988, viene participando muy activamente en aspectos económicos derivados del Tratado de libre comercio.

A su mano izquierda, tenemos al Sr. Octavio Manuel Carvajal Trillo, que es licenciado en Derecho por la Universidad La Salle, tiene estudios de maestría sobre derecho corporativo empresarial y normas internacionales del trabajo. También cursó estudios de derecho laboral comparado. Entre sus trabajos de investigación se encuentra el estudio comparado de los efectos de la globalización en el trabajo, investigación sobre aspectos legales y laborales de trabajadores con SIDA. Fue profesor de Introducción al estudio del derecho, derecho laboral y seguridad social. Ha sido, además, consultor en recursos humanos y capacitación empresarial y, actualmente, se desempeña en el despacho laboral Carvajal, Bustamante y Trillo.

Finalmente, tenemos al Sr. Ramón Gilberto Ramírez Alarcón, quien es licenciado en derecho por el Centro sindical de estudios superiores de la Confederación general de trabajadores de México. Cursó estudios en ciencias políticas y administración pública; actualmente, es director académico de dicho centro, es catedrático investigador en el área de derecho. Fue asesor, apoderado legal y secretario del trabajo del Comite nacional del sindicato de trabajadores de la industria de productos alimenticios, similares y conexos a la C.T.M. y ha organizado y participado en seminarios nacionales sobre temas laborales, jurídicos, económicos y sociales.

Debido a lo breve del tiempo y a lo sucinto de sus intervenciones, me sujetaré únicamente a moderar la reunión y no haré mayores comentarios ni participaciones. Así, tendrán ellos un poco de tiempo extra.

Cedo el micrófono al Sr. Don Dowling.

SEÑOR DON DOWLING (Hewitt Associates, U.S.A.): Gracias, Alessandro.

Me gustaría mucho hablar en español, pero como representante de los Estados Unidos voy a seguir en inglés.

Bonjour. Pardonnez-moi, je ne parle pas le français.

Perhaps starting out now, where we are reflecting back on the ground we have covered in the last day and a half, it might make sense to come up with, or at le7ast to explore, the idea of a definition of what we are talking about with contracting out, because I am not sure we are even working with a consistent idea.

I think when we talk about contracting out or outsourcing, both contain the phrase "out", but I think they also contain a concept of being backward looking, in that we are talking about something that used to be done inside. One example I thought of is my college. When I got there, the college bookstore was run by a regular bookstore that they had contracted to. Perhaps at one point in the college's history they had run their own bookstore, I do not know, but when I went there, they used an outside bookstore but they had all inside food service. Now I know that at least some of the college dining areas are run by outside restaurants too. So clearly, from my perspective, the dining has been outsourced, but the bookstore really never was a college bookstore, it was always this outside bookstore.

So, part of it depends on almost the history of what we are looking at, because selling books is not really a function of a college, so I do not think it strikes anyone as unnatural that a college would not be in the business of selling books. It could be, but if it isn't, I do not think that necessarily would be considered outsourcing unless it had been before.

I have heard three types of outsourcing or contracting out in the last day and a half. One is the employee as an independent contractor, kind of the Microsoft model where Microsoft has these people who show up for work but they are not regular employees. That would also include the cab driver model we heard about yesterday, where one day the cab driver is a cab driver and the next day the cab driver is told he is an independent contractor. And in each case, it is just an individual person who is legally, or at least legally held to be, an independent contractor, he or she.

Another model, which I think is substantially different, is the use of a viable outside business that is up and running already, doing services that the company contracting with that viable business could have done, or used to do, itself. An example would be the food service at the college, where there is an existing restaurant or catering business that they bring in. Or perhaps a company that uses a construction contractor firm to put up a building. Or office cleaning. Some big companies probably have their own office cleaners, and others use office cleaning services that come in but that are genuine outside businesses.

A third type, besides the individual and the service business, would be purchasing a part, getting out of the service area and looking at hard goods, purchasing a part or a product that was previously manufactured.

I know someone who works at Inland Steel, which was always one of the major U.S. steel companies, and they have just recently -- in the last few months, I think -- gone to where they no longer produce an ounce of steel anywhere in the world. They just have turned from a steel manufacturing company to a steel distribution company, where they buy steel from all over and then resell it. They are still in business and you can still buy steel from Inland Steel, but they have effectively outsourced the entire production of steel.

Another example -- I happen to know about this from a prior experience, it is no secret -- is that Baldwin Pianos, which is the biggest piano company in the States, their grand piano is made by Samick which is a big piano manufacturer in Korea. If you buy a Baldwin piano that is anything other than a big grand, you are buying a Baldwin piano that is made in the U.S. -- with some input from Mexico, by the way. If you buy their grand, it will say Baldwin on it, but it actually comes from an otherwise totally competitive piano company.

Those would be examples of outsourcing. Those are almost extreme examples, but there are others where there would just be a component part, that perhaps used to be or could be made by the manufacturer, that is now outsourced.

It seems to me that the social debate about the fact that outsourcing or contracting out is perhaps problematic or can become a problem, somehow seems tied to the union rates. In the U.S., the non government sector, the statistic, I understand, that is current is 11 per cent of the non government sector in the U.S. is unionized. I think that socially, this contracting out problem is perhaps -- I do not want to minimize it in the other two NAFTA countries, but I think it may be perhaps an even more divisive issue in the U.S., perhaps because the union rate is so low, which means when a company contracts out, particularly one that is unionized, it is statistically more likely that the work is going to be going to non union workers.

In Canada, the statistic is somewhere in the 30 per cent range. There it is equally a problem, but perhaps somewhat less; at least that is the sense I got from Mr. Hiebert yesterday, in that it seemed to be, to his union, less of an issue.

In Mexico, again I do not want to minimize the issue -- and there are lots of complexities with Mexican labour law -- but I get the sense that contracting out is not quite as high on their list of issues as it is here because in Mexico, at least in the large production, pretty much in large companies, it is almost universally unionized, although in some shops there are in-house unions that are not national unions, but there is much less of a concern, I think, of the work ending up with a non union company.

One last point is that, coming in Sunday on the plane I was reading the Sunday New York Times. In the business section, there is a job column, where people write in and ask questions about career advice. A person wrote in. It was in the high-tech industry and he said that he works as a contractor employee. He said his boss has come to him and asked him to become an employee, but that would require him to have a pay cut because he would get all the benefits that come with that, but he would actually earn less. He said I want to continue as an independent contractor, but I want to stay around for a long time and I do not want to send the signal to my boss that I am a short timer, because I want a good career track but I do not want to come on the regular payroll.

They had some good advice on how to do it, how to approach it, diplomatically. But I think the point is, as a social issue, we cannot assume that everybody who is not on the payroll of a company wants to be there, because there are benefits and there are people out there who prefer, in this new era of work, to have a non traditional type work environment.

Thank you.

MR. BRENT GARREN (Union of Needle Trades, Industrial and Textile Employees, U.S.A.): Good morning. Bonjour. Buenos días.

In trying to sum up where we are, my experience, in part, having gone through trying to draft an international treaty at the International Labour Organization concerning contract labour -- and some of the comments I want to make flow from that experience -- the difference between commercial law, the law between an independent contractor and a company, and labour law, the relationship between an employee and a company, is that commercial law is based on a model of equality of bargaining power, you have two equals and they just have to have rules so they can treat each other fairly.

Labour law, and the protection of labour law, is based on the idea of an inequality of bargaining power, that a worker, an employee, isolated by himself, is in no position to bargain with an employer. On the one hand, certain standards have to be written into law; and on the other hand, the right to collective bargaining has to be assured so that workers can collectively bargain with equality.

The key issue that underlines that is, inequality of bargaining power and a question of economic dependence. When we look at categorizing both the problem of contract labour and the problem of contracting out, that is the independent contractor problem and contracting out, to me the key concept is economic dependence. Whether or not a particular firm in the past performed a particular function is less important to me than what is the nature of the relationship that exists; is it a relationship based on equality of bargaining power, or it is a relationship based on an inequality of bargaining power, in which case we need labour law protections.

I think that, most clearly, when we are looking at, given a taxi driver, a cleaner or a software program writer, is that person an employee or is that person an independent contractor? We want to look at that relationship. Is it a relationship in which the worker is, under all the circumstances of the case, economically dependent on the user company, in which case that person needs the protection of labour law.

I think it is also what we want to be looking at in contracting out. Again, to take the example from the garment industry, the contractor with 20 employees and no capital, no access to markets, no access to the retailers, no design facility, all this company does is provide sewing machines and workers and act as a foreman over those workers, that kind of company is totally economically dependent upon the giant retailers and branded label manufacturers such as Nike.

Where you have that degree of economic dependence, then those workers, the workers in the contracting shop, have to have rights and recourse against the user enterprise, the one that is making the economic decisions, that determines whether they are working, what their rates of pay are, what their conditions are. Those are all determined by the user enterprise, not the contractor.

So that where you have that kind of economic dependence, or dependence on the one side, economic domination and power on the part of the user enterprise, that enterprise has to be held responsible for the conditions in the contracting shop. That means responsible in terms of rights of collective bargaining, that the employees in the contracting shop have a right to bargain directly with the user enterprise, a right for the workers in the contracting shop to use economic pressure against the user enterprise, whether that is strikes or boycotts or other forms of what is now, in the United States at any rate, considered secondary activity, and it means responsibility for the user enterprise for compliance with basic labour law protections, such as minimum wage, non discrimination, and occupational health and safety laws.

I think if we look to the defining questions to be economic dependency on the one hand, the result of that being responsibility, that is the basis for elaborating a social policy that can accomplish two goals.

It is the goal of encouraging and permitting competition based on innovation, skills, training, higher productivity, but discouraging competition based on wage cutting, union avoidance, and reducing benefits.

In the United States, we have extreme labour flexibility. Contracting labour and the spread of independent contractors are two manifestations of a generally extremely flexible labour market. The result of that flexibility certainly has been the creation of jobs, but it has also been the creation of enormous economic inequality, pushing down the living standards of unskilled workers, depriving tens of millions of working families of health care and pensions, and it is that enormous inequality that we need to address, we need to change. Extending responsibility to the firms that control, make the economic decisions, have the economic domination, is essential to doing that.

Thank you.

MR. ANDREW FINLAY (Bank of Nova Scotia, Canada): I had the honour of also being in Geneva the last few years on the topic of contract labour, as part of the employer delegation from Canada. I would like to touch on that during my brief comments.

To start with, I would like to look back to yesterday morning when the first moderator, Mr. Serge Brault from Canada, tried to frame what he thought the questions should be over these two days. I think he caught the questions quite accurately. He stated that over the next two days we should ask ourselves: Do we have a common reality and do we have common problems?

It was interesting. I made a note that he raised those two questions about commonality after restating contract labour, using about three or four different expressions of contracting out, subcontracting and outsourcing, which I think was telling in itself.

I think over the last two days those questions have been asked. They have been answered, to a large extent, but if some of us feel confusion, I think we have good reason for that.

We heard yesterday that contracting out is an attempt to dismantle a system of protections, a return to the past. Mr. Garren echoed some of this when he pointed to home-based garment workers being denied minimum protections and described it as a 75-year-old problem. In that sense, contracting out is an old problem. He pointed to taxi drivers and cleaners in the U.S. Again, that is a problem that has been unresolved in some jurisdictions for decades. In Canada, we have dealt with it largely through the notion of dependent contractor. Again, I will touch on that shortly.

So we see that there are some old issues happening here. At the same time, Terry Hoopes mentioned that recent trends in contracting out and recent trends within independent contractors are being driven by tax and benefit laws which are fairly recent.

Sharon Cohany described independent contractors that today are choosing this status, not having it foisted upon them, I would guess partly due to tax reasons, partly due to the desire for independence.

Mr. Garren yesterday mentioned firms contracting out to avoid legal obligations, while Mr. Roque from Hewitt Associates described firms leasing back employees in order to extend benefits not otherwise affordable.

From all of this we have learned that contracting out is a new issue, it is also a very old issue. It is a good thing, and it is a bad thing. There is, I think, from this, a clear indication that there is no common reality. That is the answer.

I do not think there is a common problem, because in many instances that are being described, there is no problem at all.

Another way of putting the question, and I think it is implicit in what Mr. Brault said, is: Are there common issues?

In Canada, one of the issues is the treatment of what we call a dependent contractor. That dependent contractor is an independent entrepreneur with employment-like attributes and for purposes of labour relations, they are being treated as employees. For the purposes of labour relations, not employment standards, not human rights, not health and safety, for the purposes of collective bargaining. So, in Canada, we have this notion of a dependent contractor.

In the U.S., what seems to be a very current issue is independent contractors and the tax treatment, the social security issues around that. In fact, one of the issues that I see happening in the U.S. is one of enforcement being a big problem. Here we have Microsoft with, supposedly, all these employees that are being called independent contractors. Now, through the enforcement mechanisms, they are being treated as employees. So, it is enforcement that is the issue.

In Mexico, the notion of intermediaries has been a historical issue which makes their system very distinct from what we have in Canada and the U.S., and in three years at the ILO, I have come to a number of realizations, one being that I cannot wrap my mind around the notion of intermediaries. I have given up.

So, common issues, I do not think so. I do not think that this is a negative at all. For two years the International Labour Conference worked on an international convention on contract labour. I think at one time, a number of years ago, this was seen as a sexy issue. I think it still is. I do not know how that translates.

But the instrument did not address just one topic. It addressed outsourcing, it addressed independent entrepreneurs, it addressed triangular relationships where the user of the labour was not the employer, but some thought it should be. And then, within these, there were a number of variations, shocking by their scope and number when you got into different systems, whether it was the Japanese system -- the Spanish-speaking South American countries had a number of distinctions. It was quite surprising.

What we had with that convention was an omnibus solution. It is great having an omnibus solution. Unfortunately, it was to undefined problems, or poorly defined problems. There are some very serious issues that have been identified, where employees are being abused through the systems of contracting out and through being treated forcibly as independent contractors. There are a number of problems. But this was trying to get at all these problems in a very undefined way. It was just unsuccessful. It was the first time, I think, in the history of the ILO that an instrument that was being sought was not achieved. The ILO is 78 or 79 years old now. That is quite telling.

Where do we go from here? Discussions like this should, hopefully, define the problems, find out if tools already exist for resolving some of the issues being raised, such as through proper enforcement. I think we have to be very careful not to be sloppy in defining a broad range of issues with a term like "contract labour". "Contract labour" should be struck from our vocabulary, because it means too many things to too many people. It is a poorly defined, ill-defined concept. Even calling it a concept is probably overstating the point.

Finally, we have to look at solutions that protect workers that need protection, while not limiting the opportunities for workers that do not need protection, those independent entrepreneurs that choose to work the way they work.

Lastly, one comment from what Brent Garren stated. He made the distinction between commercial contracts and employment contracts. That was a distinction, I think, lost on a great many participants in Geneva. There was an effort, I think inadvertent effort, that would have resulted in labour contracts or labour relations standards being imposed on commercial relationships. I do not think that that was fully understood there. I think it is something that we have to be sensitive to.

Thank you.

MS SUSAN SPRATT (Canadian Auto Workers, Canada): Good morning.

Whoever thought that the Canadian Auto Workers and the Bank of Nova Scotia would be coming from the same place? I too just returned from an ILO conference in September, where we talked about contracting out, outsourcing, flexibility in the workplace, et cetera.

What I would like to say today is that we believe that everything we do in the Canadian Auto Workers is rooted in politics and it is rooted in an analysis, both economic and political analysis, of what the reality is for the workers, the over 200,000 workers that we represent, in manufacturing, all the way from being fishers, airline workers, railway workers, auto parts, brewery workers and, ultimately, at the Big Three: Ford, Chrysler and General Motors.

In fact, one of the things that arose out of international conferences is the diametrically -- in some cases -- opposed positions between labour and the business community.

I can say that the last tripartite conference that I attended in the ILO was enlightening for me because of the political shift in Europe and because of the concept of things like contracting out or outsourcing changing and being rooted in more of a regulatory fashion and less of, sort of, the free trade NAFTA concepts. I think we should look at those concepts and we should develop concepts.

What I would like to do is just talk to you about why I think, and why the Canadian Auto Workers think in fact, this whole idea with respect to flexibility, outsourcing, et cetera, is occurring. I will try to be brief. I know we are asked not to speak quickly so the translators can keep up with us, but give a trade unionist seven minutes and she will try to jam in as much as she can. I am used to deadline bargaining, that is what I get paid to do, so I have to get it in as quickly as I can.

Then I would like to talk about what the Canadian Auto Workers does in relation to putting legislation in collective agreements. That is something we started doing three years ago, under this government, around social issues, around issues of employment equity, pay equity, things that were taken away, workplace health and safety, workers' compensation. We put that into our collective agreements and we have dealt specifically with contracting out, contracting in, and outsourcing.

I agree with my friend from the Bank of Nova Scotia: let's stop using the terms because it means -- to everybody in this room, if there was a survey done at the end of this conference to define it, we would all say something different. I think that has been a big hangup at international conferences that have been held.

We believe, in the Canadian Auto Workers, that part of the goal around all these issues is, moving towards new social policy, which to us, because we are now part of the NAFTA and free trade, is a move towards flexible labour markets. The range of legal and institutional structures that govern labour market practices and outcomes is seen as the next big target for the neo-liberal economic policy, now that the deficit and inflation dragons have been slain. Both trade unions and whatever remnants of social programs are left remaining are considered major barriers to the effort and in conferences that I go to, we hear about social programs as being barriers around the issues of flexibility, around the issues of contracting and contracting out.

Of course it is a myth that Canada's labour market is somehow inflexible, just as it was a myth that social programs caused our deficit. In fact, our labour market is hyper-flexible. Thanks to a shortage of work and the erosion of social programs, Canadians are desperate to find and hold onto work, which means they now go to incredible lengths to fold and bend themselves into whatever shape the employers want them to take.

We have contract workers, contingent workers, part-time workers, overtime workers, seasonal workers, and so-called self-employed workers. It is now relatively rare to find someone who works 40 hours a week, 52 weeks per year, for the same employer. In short, Canada has a just-in-time workforce. Workers are available whenever and wherever their employer wants them, and can be discarded the moment their employer no longer wants them. Wages have stagnated, employment turmoil remains intense, and intersectoral and interregional labour mobility is extremely high by any international standard.

In reality, to the Canadian Auto Workers and trade unionists and social organizations in Canada the term "flexibility" is a code word for labour market deregulation. Employers want any constraint removed that stands in their way of hiring labour at a minimum cost, with minimum health or social requirements, and then extracting the maximum productivity from those workers by whatever means necessary. Perhaps for the 39 per cent of trade unionists in the country, we do regulate that. For the people that are not regulated, it creates the conundrum that has been raised by a number of speakers, today and yesterday, at this conference.

Even the term "deregulation" is a bit of a misnomer for the approach to labour market policies and even as governments step back from efforts to regulate wages and working conditions at the micro level, they keep a firm grip on the bigger regulatory club of high interest rates and high unemployment tied together, which creates captive workers in a national state.

These programs, and how it is perceived, at least here, is that in many ways such social policies which give workers more scope to reject low-wage exploitation are a barrier to flexibility. That is what we hear. So obviously, our unions, we also hear that. I heard it as I walked down the hall, from employer reps that are here, about the fact that unions are a barrier. I think that is something that we need to cooperatively sit down and talk about more, that we take a look at the universal declaration of rights.

I went to a very interesting conference about two weeks ago, where a professor from Harvard said: "Why can't every employer in Canada and the United States and Mexico identify with the fact that every worker has the right to free association? And why don't we move towards every workplace being unionized and use that as a preface for a conference? It would be very interesting to see whether in fact unions are considered barriers."

I would like to talk to you briefly about what we have done in CAW with respect to outsourcing, contracting out, et cetera.

At General Motors, you all know that there was a major strike. The issue was outsourcing, the issue was about jobs. Now the language in the GM contract is that there will not be any outsourcing that creates layoffs, there will be no outsourcing for any skilled trades positions at General Motors. In fact, next year when we go into bargaining, our effort is to make sure that all the jobs that are outsourced go to union shops only.

In new bargaining units, temporary workers we deal with at the Ontario Labour Relations Board and they should be encompassed by the certification. We have seen that this is created for two-tiering, and two-tiering only. That has been our experience.

With respect to auto parts, we would like to say that prior to unionization, we see a high use of temporary workers, contract workers. Once unionized, they are captured in because in fact they are doing the exact same job as the person standing next to them, they are just getting paid at 60 or 50 per cent less.

I would like to thank you for your time. I would like you to consider, when you talk about these issues, that not everybody is in a high-tech job, not everybody is getting paid $40,000, and it is almost at every bargaining table over the last two or three years that we have heard about contracting, contracting out, for workers that are making anywhere from $7.50 to $11.50 an hour, to create two-tiering, which is a whole different realm. When we start talking on that, we start talking about those issues for you to consider.

Thank you.

Octavio Carvajal Trillo (Carvajal, Bustamante y Trillo Asesores): Es bueno estar aquí sin la presencia de la computadora.

Lo que yo quisiera destacar, de lo que me deja la participación de los paneles anteriores, han sido las siguientes ideas:

Me llama mucho la atención la exposición del Sr. Hogg de Iridium el día de hoy, y me hace pensar en cuanto a que la subcontratación debe ser inteligente si podemos apelar a ese concepto. Pero inteligente no quiere decir mesquino.

Being intelligent is not being greedy.

La subcontratación debe responder a necesidades reales de operación y no exclusivamente a la búsqueda de minorizar o abaratar el costo de la mano de obra en el proceso productivo. Exige supervisión, control, evaluación permanente, y nos hace pensar que la empresa que subcontrata debe estar más cuidadosa, más pendiente de lo que realiza aquella subcontratada, que los mismos trabajadores de casa, porque les estamos dando hacia afuera parte de la riqueza de la creatividad de nuestra empresa.

Olvidamos otro aspecto dentro de la conferencia que me gustaría destacar, que es el otro lado de la moneda. El auto-empleo se nos presenta, sobre todo a las sociedades como México, como una opción futurista en favor al combate al desempleo y la disminución de riesgos en el trabajo y en el tránsito de trabajo en ciudades como México, Guadalajara, Monterrey. Y esto puede redundar en el futuro en un mejor aprovechamiento de los recursos para todos bajo un principio de todos ganan.

La conferencia de la OIT hace tres años en la memoria del director general expresó un principio : adaptarse al cambio preservando los valores. La subcontratación y otras modalidades de la división del trabajo son una realidad que responde a las exigencias de este nuevo mundo globalizado. Los retos de esta economía mundial nos invitan a todos, empresas, sindicatos, gobiernos a no resistir al cambio sino a ser creativos y propositivos para no caer en una parálisis paradigmática puesto que, como dijera Copérnico, a pesar de todo, sin embargo, este mundo se mueve. Desde luego, en cuanto se plantea así la subcontratación debe darse en actividades centrales o periféricas de la empresa que lo hace. Estimo que no puede haber una regla mágica para esto, no puede darse el mismo principio para todos. Creo que depende de las estrategias y de los business plans que en cada empresa se determine aplicar, pero sobre las bases de esta subcontratación inteligente a la que me he referido.

Finalmente, sobre el cuestionamiento de si compartimos una realidad, de si tenemos un problema en común, coincido con que no lo tenemos. Uds. en Estados Unidos y Canadá ponderan ahora los problemas prácticos de la subcontratación. Nosotros en México vivimos una realidad diferente; en México tenemos una ley federal, es decir, de aplicación en toda la República, que data de 1970, está a punto de cumplir 30 años, y México en 30 años es muy diferente. El mundo en 30 años es muy diferente. Nos peleamos todavía con los conceptos interpretativos de las figuras del intermediario, del patrón final, del beneficiario; tenemos jurisprudencia que data de 1956 y que ha sido ratificada en 1996, que no nos ha permitido avanzar. Yo no diría que los sindicatos mexicanos han sido un factor de elusión o de conflicto en materia de la subcontratación, al contrario. Nuestro problema ha sido interpretativo de la ley; caemos en los esquemas de quién es el responsable final de la relación laboral y todas las negociaciones laborales se enfocan en ese punto, y creo que estamos perdiendo lo más interesante, nos vamos a perder lo más por lo menos. Hoy en día, estamos sentados empresas, sindicatos y gobiernos tratando de darnos a México una nueva ley del trabajo, en donde se contemplen esquemas de flexibilización en la contratación que redunden en una mayor productividad y en un mejor nivel de vida para nuestros trabajadores.

El haber compartido con Uds. estos dos días me hace guardar en la maleta de regreso a México una serie de principios y de ideas muy ricas y que trataré de compartir con mi sector y con mis paisanos para trabajar en nuevos esquemas que nos permitan ser más competitivos.

Muchas gracias.

Ramón Gilberto Ramírez Alarcón (Confederación de Trabajadores Mexicanos): Buenos días.

Aunque me acabo de incorporar prácticamente al desarrollo de estos trabajos, ha sido bastante ilustrativa la primera de estas exposiciones para poder formar un criterio sobre lo que se está analizando y, desde luego, hay varios puntos de coincidencias en los que nosotros hemos, como trabajadores organizados en México, ya también puesto en práctica muchos de estos procesos de reflexión.

Si me lo permiten trataré de conciliar dos aspectos, campos, en los que me he tratado de desenvolver, sindical y profesionalmente, el del académico y el de la propia acción sindical.

Desde el punto de vista teórico, se ha considerado que la subcontratación es una relación comercial o laboral derivada de un contrato base. Nunca va a estar por arriba de lo que este contrato base establece y, desde luego, también se considera como una relación accesoria tanto para el aspecto comercial y, desde luego, para el laboral. En México, y un poco para aclarar los conceptos y la propia apreciación que se tiene de nuestro marco legal, la intermediación se considera como una figura jurídica hasta antes de establecer la relación de trabajo, es decir, el intermediario va a ser un puente, un canal que vincula a los demandantes de empleo con los oferentes de propio empleo. Pasando de esa relación y adoptando la actividad con los recursos, con los medios propios que está intermediando entonces se constituye ya en una relación de trabajo perfectamente clara que tipifica nuestra propia legislación. Es cierto que el problema, a veces, se presenta al momento de interpretar hasta dónde se establecen esas obligaciones y esas responsabilidades de carácter legal desde el punto de vista laboral. Creo que en la medida en que esta propia legislación establece responsabilidades directas y responsabilidades solidarias se puede de mejor modo precisar este tipo de deslinde de lo que corresponde a cada uno de los que participan en esta relación laboral.

La legislación en México pues, quizás, también para poder tener la referencia, pues ha sido producto de un proceso largo, proceso histórico, un proceso que ha llevado a conquistas que nosotros consideramos de contenido social y, desde luego, de este proyecto histórico en donde, bueno, nosotros, a través de los largos años en donde se han establecido esos propios principios, esas propias normas y las instituciones de derechos del trabajo, pues las valoramos por lo que ha implicado alcanzarlas, ¿no?, entonces quizás el planteamiento sea en sentido de que la propia legislación laboral tiene características de tutela, tiene características de economía procesal, tiene características y principios de justicia social y eso, pues nosotros lo aquilatamos porque ha sido producto de todo un largo proceso histórico y reinvicativo. Quizás los problemas comunes que se proponen aquí presentar y de los que nosotros formamos, quizás también, una parte conjunta con lo que se ha expuesto, es en el sentido en que estas figuras jurídicas en el momento en que pierden su esencia, es decir cuando se empiezan a desvirtuar, es en donde se generan propiamente los conflictos debe aceptar o no lo que implica la subcontratación. Es decir, creo que si nosotros partimos de que cuando al sindicato no se le toma en cuenta para establecer una subcontratación, no solamente sentimos una agresión en términos de consideración mínima para establecer objetivos y acuerdos comunes, sino que también forma parte de un desplazamiento, de una marginación y eso pone al sindicato en alerta. Sobre todo, para dos intereses principales; el primero, el futuro inmediato que puede tener el derecho ya establecido por la vía contractual; segundo, la estabilidad en el empleo, el riesgo de esa estabilidad en el empleo y, finalmente, vale también tener presente que en mucho de esto que se analiza de cómo se desvirtúa una relación de trabajo a través de la subcontratación, pues está en duda el futuro que puede tener la posibilidad de compartir con la empresa los beneficios que genere su propia productividad. Es decir, que pueda servir también como un vehículo, como una vía para desviar lo que, en términos productivos, se pueden alcanzar para la propia unidad económica.

Esas reflexiones son las que tenemos presentes. Conceptualmente también hemos considerado que definir una figura de este tipo nosotros hemos encontrado solamente dos caminos, una de manera incluyente, es decir, todo lo que está alrededor de las actividades que se consideran de subcontratación o, de forma excluyente, es decir, todas las formas de las relaciones de trabajo que están fuera de lo que una relación normal, que está considerada por el propio contrato colectivo, de la propia afiliación al sindicato, el propio registro, la propia actividad productiva, forma parte, entonces, de lo que sería una contratación externa.

Finalmente, en esta participación, quisiera yo señalar que la etapa histórica, esa etapa de fin de siglo nos está señalando, nos impone nuevos retos, nuevos desafíos en los que con madurez y con ética, los factores de la producción podemos encontrar soluciones a problemas y compartir objetivos comunes para esta solución negociada, justa, democrática e integradora para resolver esas controversias.

Muchas gracias.

SEÑOR Rubio: Bueno, quisiera agradecer el esfuerzo de síntesis de todos los expositores de circunscribirse a sus 7 minutos. No se si alguien tuviera alguna pregunta del público.

Some questions?

MR. JOHN DAVIS: John Davis. I work with the Education Improvement Commission here in Ontario.

I was actually quite taken by Andrew Finlay's statement about no common reality and no common problem. I wonder whether that is because we have, in fact, come at this from a fairly technical kind of point of view, in terms of legal sides, contractual sides, the public policy side.

I wonder, perhaps, if we had come at this question from the social justice side, whether in fact we might have defined more issues in common. I think particularly, for example, of coming at the question of outsourcing from the point of view, for example, of the role and participation of women in the workforce, coming at it from the point of view of the role and participation of young people and children in the workplace, or the challenges faced by those older workers. I wonder if we actually had come at it in a different balanced perspective -- and I do not mean to imply by this that all issues related to the participation and role of women and children are problems related to the question of outsourcing. I wonder if there might be some agreement that, had we come at it more from the social justice point of view, we might have found more in common.

MR. FINLAY: That is exactly what I am saying. If we had come at it from that point of view, we would be focusing now on some very serious issues. But I can almost guarantee I am going to go out on a limb on this. I can almost guarantee that we would not have somebody saying: "I know how to solve it. Let's limit contracting out."

That is not going to be the answer. Those are very complex issues and they are complex answers, so by coming at it with this very narrow solution we will never get back to where the real problems are.

So, I agree. That is probably the better way to approach those issues.

M. RENÉ ROY: René Roy, FTQ, Québec.

C'est aux Mexicains que je veux poser la question.

Vous avez parlé d'une loi fédérale. Est-ce que vous faites référence à une loi fédérale qui obligerait les employeurs à consulter les syndicats en cas de sous-traitance? Est-ce que c'est ça que j'ai compris?

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: Bueno, la legislación laboral en México, se señalaba que era de competencia federal, que se respeta, se cumple, se administra en toda la República. No, lo que señalábamos, bueno, por mi parte, por lo menos, era en el sentido de que para resolver las consecuencias negativas que pudiera tener una práctica de subcontratar, para eliminar ese estado de incertidumbre y de malestar de las organizaciones, que se puede correr el riesgo de que subcontratar implique una medida unilateral, una medida en donde tenga o ponga en riesgo la vigencia de la propia contratación colectiva de la estabilidad en el empleo, entonces pues sería muy recomendable poder establecer ese vínculo de análisis, de consulta conjunta porque al final de cuentas, se pueden establecer objetivos que se comparten entre empleador y sindicato.

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: Yo creo que hay que precisar en este punto. La ley federal del trabajo establece una serie de principios, pero no es casuística. La ley federal del trabajo nos dice cuándo hay substitución patronal, cuándo hay patrón final o responsable final de la relación laboral, pero, como se ha expuesto a lo largo de estos dos días, en México no tenemos, cuando menos legalmente conceptualizado, el término subcontratación.

En las relaciones colectivas está muy claro que los sindicatos no deben, no pueden intervenir en cuestiones de la administración de la empresa como las empresas no intervienen en cuestiones internas de los sindicatos. Si la decisión de subcontratar implica una decisión administrativa que no afecte las estructuras de la relación colectiva con el sindicato y con los trabajadores, los trabajadores de acuerdo a mi punto de vista, y el sindicato, no tienen cabida en esa decisión. En el momento que la estructura, los compromisos establecidos en el contrato colectivo de trabajo se pudieran ver de algún modo afectados, es conveniente, en aras de una buena relación entre empresa y sindicato y los trabajadores sí entrar a un aspecto de consulta y, quizás, de un análisis más profundo.

Gracias.

MR. ROGER HARLEY: Roger Harley, from the Province of New Brunswick.

I am particularly impressed by this particular discussion during this panel. I have some practical considerations and I would like some advice from you.

First of all, we are going to accept the notion, perhaps, that we are not going to get a lot of headway by concentrating on excluding certain forms of contracting. You will note that I did not say "out" or "in" or wherever it is, just "contracting".

What are we asking of public policy? Are we asking for different regulation? Are we asking for different legislation, different policy? Because we are concerned that in many cases, this cannot be resolved purely through collective bargaining, there are a whole lot of people out there who are not covered by that.

What advice do you have to give to jurisdictions in respect of obtaining, or at least protecting, the social dimensions that we seem to detect throughout the operation of this phenomenon?

MR. DOWLING: I will take a first step at one response.

In my personal opinion, I think that this issue -- we have heard so many speakers say we cannot even define it. I think it is so big, or at least it is so intricately intertwined with the economy and we are talking about so many different types of situations, that if we try to legislate from a social policy, it would be too easy for people to get around the legislation. However we articulated it, it would not cover so many instances, that I think we need to focus, from the social side, just on social legislation as social legislation, in other words, unemployment protections, for example, retraining, things like that. But when we try to make it too specific to contracting, I do not think it will ever work.

Labour unions themselves contract out. There are labour unions who use law firms. Our company, Hewitt Associates, uses -- we have clients who are labour unions, who have pension funds, that we help put their pension funds together. I think there is nothing wrong with the fact that labour unions contract out legal services, consulting services, on pensions.

I am sure there are plenty of other examples. The point is, it is an economic reality that you just cannot get around.

One example, that I have thought of in the last day or two because of the Venezuelan election on Sunday, when the Venezuelans in the seventies were the highest flying country in South America because of their oil and now, with the dip in oil prices, they are unfortunately one of the economically toughest countries, they just elected a communist president on Sunday who is instilling a lot of fear in certain sectors of Venezuela, certainly, but the society in Venezuela is having social problems now because of the low oil prices. I am sure everyone in this room has gone to the gas pumps and looked for the cheaper gas, and not gone to full service but gone to self service to save money on gas and, literally, we are causing social problems in Venezuela. If we had all paid a lot more for gas the way we did back in the seventies, Venezuela would have been doing a lot better and they would not have just elected a president who might radically change their whole society.

My point is I think contracting out -- although that might seem like a silly example, I think it is somewhat related to the oil prices and the social effect of them. There is nothing we can do about that. In my opinion, we have to look at the social problems separate from the contracting out problems, as a legislative issue.

MS SPRATT: It is a very interesting question, understanding the conundrums of New Brunswick and the economic reality of New Brunswick. I say that respectfully, because I think it is very different on the east coast, because of transfer payments, et cetera, from the federal government and all of those issues. But do I think that we have to separate? Absolutely not. It has to be seen as integral, in relationship to flexibility issues in the workplace which include contracting out, whatever we want to call it.

There are social implications with respect to unemployment levels, social benefit coverage, welfare levels. All of those issues are a reality and there is enough empirical data to talk about what happens -- and New Brunswick is well aware of this, as are other provinces -- in relationship to closures, et cetera.

I think we need to work in partnerships with government. We need to sit down with governments and business and we need to discuss how social programming and lobbying, et cetera, can be taken into account. Because, you are right, a lot of people are not covered by collective agreements. So, what happens to them? They come to you, or they come to governments, saying: "What are we going to do?"

I think we have to work together and we have to have forums that actually deal with what the repercussions are. If we analyze the U.S. experience and we analyze the Mexican experience, there are lots of empirical data in relationship to what has happened to wages and what has happened to social programs. I think we need to develop that.

We also need to look at European models, especially on the east coast we need to look at some European modelling, and work together to see how we can have infrastructures that support populations that are going through change, due to technology, due to new ideas. And sometimes we can agree to say: "It is not working."

It may be a wave, as Caroline Weber said this morning about the concept of downsizing -- or "right sizing", as some people call it -- and plant closures. We have to have those discussions, on an ongoing basis, because things are moving rapidly.

MR. GARREN: First, I would like to say, I guess in disagreement with some of the other speakers, I think there is a common problem. It takes different forms, but there is a common problem. And the common problem is that changing forms of work have deprived millions of workers of the social safety net and social protections and unions and collective bargaining that they need and deserve.

The exact way that that has happened in different countries, it has happened differently. The legislative framework in which it has happened is different, but that underlying reality, that millions of workers have been deprived of social protections that we as societies believe they should have, and we certainly as unionists believe they should have, that is a fundamental problem that is common to our three countries and, I think, is a global phenomenon common to the whole world.

That is point number one.

Point number two in response to the question, I think that strengthening social programs, such as health care, such as training and education, which we understand is a big problem in terms of contracting out, who wants to absorb those costs, unemployment insurance, making those programs fit a model in which a worker's life -- he works for many different people at many different times and can be formally employed by somebody who does not control the terms of his employment. All those laws and programs have to be re-examined so that the protection is delivered to people even though they are working for a temporary agency, even though they are not considered an employee, even though they go through four, five, six employers in a year, and seasonal employment and so on.

Those programs have been based on a model of continuous employment with one employer. That model does not apply to millions and millions of workers, and we need to solve those problems, particularly in the United States, talking about health care, from a social point of view, because we cannot get employers to pay for it when the employee works for that employer for a few months and then moves on, or works for a contractor who does not have the resources. The problem cannot be solved on a firm level, but has to be solved on a social level.

That is point two.

Point three is that the definition of "employee" has to be changed, our legal definition, to meet the reality of today, so we can cut through problems like Microsoft and Time Warner and more difficult problems. Again I would suggest that the essential concept there is economic dependence, rather than the concept of subordination which is the old common law tradition that looked at issues like where do you work, do you work in the employer's premises. The changing nature of work has made those criteria of subordination less determinative. We have to be looking at economic dependency.

Finally, I would suggest that we have -- the labour movement in the United States has been successful in obtaining from some municipalities, legislation that when work is contracted out that had been done by public employees, that the contract and the workforce has to go with the work, that workers have the right to then bid and be taken on those jobs with no loss in their standards. I would suggest that as something that is appropriate.

SR. RAMÓN RAMIREZ ALARCON: Quiero retomar un planteamiento que hace Susan en el sentido en que este fenómeno, ese aspecto de la subcontratación no es un fenómeno aislado. Esta vinculado, se relaciona con algo más amplio, más complejo en relación a las modificaciones que las propias actividades económicas, las propias estrategias empresariales, la propia tendencia a flexibilizar, la propia idea, incluso de lo que ahora significan ya no las empresas tradicionales que todavía nos han tocado observar que se han desenvuelta en la última etapa, sobre todo de la posguerra. Quizás, el que parte desde un análisis de las empresas red en donde su propia articulación más horizontal da una pauta generadora de que se presenten esos procesos tendientes a la flexibilidad y tendientes también a ser, desde luego, mucho más proclives a adoptar las medidas de subcontratar. No necesariamente se establece como una medida estratégica para reducir costos, una manera de articular y, en buena medida, también en sentido positivo para tener esos márgenes de ganancia y de competitividad. Lo lamentable es que cuando se excluye la otra parte importante que integra la propia unidad económica que son los trabajadores, pues se generan los problemas y los conflictos.

En el sentido de lo que planteaba y preguntaba, vale señalar que en la intervención y en el comentario que formula, nosotros consideramos, por lo menos desde el punto de vista de los trabajadores, que la idea que los procesos de incorporación del sector femenil, de los jóvenes, de los trabajadores de la tercera edad, se vea como una prioridad, es decir, la fuerza de trabajo, el propio sector laboral, debe ampliar su propia expectativa y verlo también a corto plazo porque los procesos son acelerados, son muy inmediatos, muy dinámicos y lo que pasa es que antes se podía planear hacia un futuro, medios plazos, 15, 20 años, mientras que ahora se puede prever de manera muy corta. Nada menos que al tener información de que aquí, en Canadá, se acaba de resolver un problema de huelga que duró 9 meses y que, a través de la contratación colectiva, limita, prohíbe prácticamente el que se utilice la subcontratación. Y la otra medida que se adopta también, de muy corto plazo, para corregir esas desviaciones, es lo que la propia compañera Susan ha planteado de la General Motors, en el sentido de que se ven, a través de los derechos colectivos vigentes la posibilidad de corregir esas irregularidades.

SR. OCTACIO CARVAJAL: En cuanto a qué deberíamos aspirar en una política pública, yo quisiera abordar el tema desde dos puntos de vista. En México proliferan hoy en día una serie de empresas que se identifican como manpower, que ofrecen a los patrones o a los empresarios el que se olviden de sus problemas laborales y ellos contratan al personal, el personal se presenta a laborar en las empresas y, el empresario, que está recibiendo los servicios del trabajador en su empresa, aparentemente, no tiene ninguna relación laboral. Y nos cuestionamos, ¿cómo es posible que esto se de? Y Uds. los abogados no se habían dado cuenta de algo tan maravilloso como esto? Y la realidad es que esas empresas están engañado tanto a los trabajadores como a los empresarios. Imagínense Uds. que este trabajador va a laborar a una empresa de fundición en donde el nivel de riesgo amparado por el seguro social es, digamos, de 10, en una escala del 0 al 10, y el nivel de riego amparado por el seguro social de la empresa intermediaria es de 1. Entonces, este trabajador está expuesto a un riesgo de 10, pero contratado bajo un esquema de 1. Por el otro lado, desde el punto de vista empresarial, cuando un grupo de inversionistas está desarrollando una estrategia para abordar un problema de estructuras superativas y productivas, no tienen una clara definición del alcance de sus responsabilidades dado que las disposiciones de los artículo 12 a 15 de la Ley federal del trabajo lo dejan a la interpretación de los tribunales en un esquema realmente de inseguridad. Dice un dicho en México: "cuando veas algo que camine como pato, haga como pato, y si huele como un pato, seguramente será un pato". El problema es que, bajo este esquema, nada más existe el pato. No hay pollo, ni pavo, ni ganso. Y lo que queremos es que, el que quiera pollo, coma pollo y el que quiera pato, coma pato. Pero dentro de un esquema que nos de una seguridad, la inversión del empresario; pero, al mismo tiempo, que la regla sea tan clara, que al trabajador no se le explote, no se le ponga en situaciones de riesgo como en el primer caso que cito; que haya un equilibrio a través de la una transparencia y claridad en la ley, que creo que es a lo que ahora aspiramos y en donde nos falta en esta ley actual, con la que tenemos que vernos todos los días.

MR. FINLAY: Just two very quick points.

First of all, we keep hearing about Microsoft as an example of where things have gone wrong. I think a lot of people would argue that Microsoft is an example that the definition of "employee" is working. It went on for a few years, where they pretended they were not employees. Now the enforcers are saying they are employees, so we have ducks, Microsoft ducks. So on that basis, the definition of "duck" works.

Secondly, if we are going to turn this into a discussion of the applicability of social programs, which I think a lot of people here agree is an issue in the employment context, we need a much bigger room.

Thank you.

SR RUBIO: Gracias, de nada.

Bueno pues, me parece que terminamos la sesión por esta tarde. Me parece que May quiere hacer algún aviso de la comida. Quiero agradecerles a todos los miembros del panel la exposición tan interesante que hicieron y creo que esto deja abierto el debate para continuar más tarde, después de la comida.

Muchas gracias, y les pido un aplauso por todos.

THE CHAIRPERSON (May Morpaw): Thank you very much, Alessandro, for moderating this panel. Thank you to all the participants. We had hoped this would be a provocative discussion, and I hope it does provoke more discussion and exchange over lunch.

In terms of public policy and the challenge of whether there is a common reality here, I do not want to pronounce on that right now, but I think the fact alone that we saw the interest in raising the issue as a theme that all three countries and ministers in all three countries thought worth pursuing, gives you some indication that we think it must be discussed by the partners in tripartite fora.

When you look at the question of globalization and the question of internal policy and politics, I think we have had a lot to reflect on in terms of how those can be meshed together. And where it leaves us is where most discussions bring me back to, is the role of the state, the traditional role and the future role, and how that role can or cannot evolve in the face of globalization and where does globalization, international institutions, and the role of the state come together, faced with individualism and collective responses.

I do not have any answers for that. I want to pursue as many paths as possible, but I think those are the issues we are really looking at.

--- Luncheon adjournment

--- Upon resuming

SEÑOR ROBERTO FLORES LIMA (Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social, Mexico, Moderator): Buenas tardes. Good afternoon.

Hoy por la tarde tenemos la última sesión y abordaremos el trabajo en régimen de subcontratación, contratación externa, pero básicamente orientado a los expositores, a exponer cómo funcionan desde su punto de vista y hacia dónde se dirige la subcontratación, cuál sería el futuro de la subcontratación y todo lo que este implica en términos del mercado de trabajo.

Tenemos el tiempo justo. Las exposiciones, yo les pediría a mis compañeros de la mesa, que pueden utilizar 12 minutos para su exposición cada uno y dejar para la sesión de preguntas y darles la posibilidad de participar a todas las personas que están en este salón.

Nuestra primera expositora es la Srta. Susan Houseman. Ella es economista principal del Instituto Upjohn para la investigación del empleo y profesora adjunta de la Universidad de Western Michigan. Antes de ingresar al Instituto Upjohn, era profesora asociada en la escuela de asuntos públicos de la Universidad de Maryland y especialista visitante del Instituto Brookings. Es doctorada en economía de la Universidad de Harvard, donde recibió el premio Wells por su extraordinaria disertación en esa materia y es autora de dos libros y numerosos artículos sobre asuntos laborales en Estados Unidos, Japón y Europa.

Le cedo el micrófono y el uso de la palabra a Susan Houseman dándole la bienvenida.

MS SUSAN HOUSEMAN (The Upjohn Institute, U.S.A.): In my remarks this afternoon I am going to talk briefly about: first, what we know about in terms of the magnitude of, and trends in, contract labour and contracting out in the United States; second, the implications for workers' wages, benefits and job security; and finally, the coverage of contract workers by labour standards.

Let me begin by clarifying at least what I mean by contract labour and contracting out.

Broadly speaking, contract labour or contracting out is involved when a company uses workers who are not its employees to do its work. In some cases, the workers' work is performed at the client company's establishment. Examples of this type of labour are temporary help agency workers, contract company workers, leased employees and, if they work on the client company's premises, independent contractors. Some people refer to this situation as contracting in.

Alternatively, the work may be performed outside the company's premises by employees of another company or by self-employed independent contractors. Some people refer to this situation as contracting out.

The reason I am making this distinction, right up front, between contracting in and contracting out is because we know a fair amount in the United States about the number of workers, the wages and the working conditions of the former, that is people who are involved in what I am calling contracting in. But we know very little about the latter, people who are involved in what I have just termed contracting out. When I say that we know very little, I do not mean to say that there aren't individuals, including many individuals in this room, who know a lot about what goes on in a particular company or what goes on in a particular industry, but what I mean is that we do not know, in the aggregate, how many people are involved.

Much of what we know about contract labour in the United States comes from two special government surveys conducted in 1995 and 1997. Sharon Cohany of the Bureau of Labor Statistics talked in some detail about these yesterday.

According to these surveys, agency temporaries and contract company workers account for 2 to 3 per cent of the workforce in the United States. In addition, individuals identifying themselves as independent contractors or freelancers account for almost 7 per cent of the workforce. This being status data, I should note on the side that independent contractors do not necessarily work at the client firm's site. So together, agency temporaries, contractor company workers, and independent contractors, account for 9 to 10 per cent of the workforce in the United States.

We know also that contracting out work to other companies is very common. For example, in a national representative survey of private sector businesses conducted by the Upjohn Institute, where I work, we found that 44 per cent of establishments reported contracting out some of their work. However, it is not known how many workers are affected and, as other people have discussed today and yesterday, nor is this, really, an easy concept to define or measure.

Turning to trends in these types of work arrangements, there is evidence to suggest that the amount of contracting in and contracting out has grown over the last decade or so. However, there is very little in the way of hard data on trends in these staffing arrangements. I think that is an important thing to keep in mind.

Apart from agency temporaries, no data on employment has been routinely collected in U.S. government statistics on these staffing arrangements. Agency temporaries grew from about half a percent of paid employment in the United States in 1982, to over 2 per cent today, and that is a substantial rise, but they still account for a relatively small proportion of the workforce.

We think we know, from evidence from case studies and business surveys, these all suggest that other types of contract labour and contracting out have also grown. For example, in the Upjohn Institute survey, 17 per cent of businesses reported contracting out work previously done in house, just in the last five years. That is quite a large number. The number of workers affected by such contracting out is unknown, though.

Just to recap what I have said briefly, a substantial number of U.S. workers are not employees of the companies where they work. In addition, contracting in and contracting out appear to have grown over the last decade or so, though we do not really know by how much.

Let me turn now to the implications of such developments for workers. Some worry that such developments spell low wages, fewer benefits and less job security for workers. When a company contracts work to another company offsite, it may be doing so to save on wages and benefits costs, especially if the work is going from a unionized establishment to a non union employer. We heard yesterday the case of the garment industry from Brent Garren, where this seemed to be what was basically going on.

Alternatively, the company may contract out work to capitalize on the contractor's special expertise, or because the work is expected to be temporary. The Iridium example presented by Dale Hogg this morning was, I think, a good example of that type of reason why a company was contracting out.

We simply do not know, in the aggregate, how often work is transferred to less highly compensated workers who have less job security. There is, though, more concrete evidence on agency temporaries, contract company workers, and independent contractors. Several studies show that agency temporaries and contract company workers, which are examples of what I am calling contracting in, earn lower wages and receive far fewer benefits than regular workers, even after you take into account differences in individual and job characteristics. So, for example, agency temporaries and contract company workers tend to be younger, less educated, more likely to be female and minority. Even if you take into account these differences, they earn a lot less and receive fewer benefits.

Agency temporaries and contract company workers also have less job security than regular workers. Specifically, they are much more likely to change employers, become unemployed, or drop out of the labour force involuntarily, in the sense that they still state that they would prefer to be working.

Interestingly, though, independent contractors, as they are defined in U.S. statistics, although they are much less likely to have benefits like health insurance or pension benefit coverage than regular workers, they do not earn less money and they do not exhibit less job stability than do regular workers. This may have something to do with the way they are defined in the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It is really quite a broad group of workers who may or may not be working at the client's site, but it actually is quite striking. The only sense in which these, at least in the aggregate, appear to be disadvantaged in these data is that they tend not to be covered by benefits. That is an important factor, but still, they do not seem to accept less job security or lower wages.

Let me conclude with a few remarks on public policy. It is often alleged that companies contract in or contract out work in part to circumvent federal and state labour standards governing conditions of employment, such as health, safety, wages and benefits.

Yesterday we heard about contracting out in the garment industry in the United States, and large respectable employers contract out work to sweatshops that do not pay minimum wages and violate numerous other labour standards. The labour standards that are in place in the United States would usually apply to these workers. The policy problem is one of enforcement.

A whole separate set of issues is raised in instances of contracting in. Whether and how a worker is covered by a particular labour standard turns on who is regarded as an employee or who is the employer. In the case of independent contractors, agency temporaries, leased employees and contract company workers, there is much ambiguity on these basic issues in the United States, as some other people have pointed out.

For example, independent contractors are, technically, self-employed. Because they are not employees, their client firms have no obligations to them under various labour standards. But clearly, a company cannot simply call a worker an independent contractor in order to shed its responsibilities under various labour standards. But exactly who is an independent contractor under the law is often unclear.

Similarly, when a company uses agency temporaries, leased employees or contract company workers, it may have some obligations to these workers under various labour and employment laws. Even though they are not the employer, legally they may have so-called joint employer status. However, most relevant statutes, perhaps I think because they were written many years ago when the nature of the employment relationship was of little concern, are not clear about who is the employee and who is the employer, and no single standard for defining these relationships has emerged. For instance, it is possible to be regarded as an independent contractor for tax purposes under the Internal Revenue Service laws, but as an employee under anti-discrimination laws, disputes over a worker or an employer's status are resolved by the courts often in conflicting ways in the United States.

A couple of years ago, the Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations, commonly known as the Dunlop Commission, recommended that in the United States we develop a single standard for defining who is an employee and who is the employer, for the purposes of labour, employment and tax law. In the current situation, arguably neither business nor labour is happy with the status quo and, thus, there may be some broad support for policy reform here.

Thank you.

SEÑOR ROBERTO FLORES LIMA: Muchas gracias, Susan.

Ahora, le cedemos el uso de la palabra a Richard MacDowell.

Richard MacDowell es abogado, especializado en derecho laboral y, en el mundo de las relaciones industriales, es un profesional neutral que ha ocupado diversos cargos en el Consejo de relaciones laborales de Ontario. Abogado principal, vicepresidente, presidente suplente desde 1986 a 1995 y presidente desde 1995 hasta la fecha. Es un mediador y árbitro experimentado, tanto en el sector público como en el privado y ha desempeñado una larga labor docente en la Universidad de Toronto. En todos estos años ha escrito publicaciones, pronunciado discursos sobre una gran variedad de temas relativos al derecho laboral y las políticas públicas. Y es muy conocido en el medio de las relaciones laborales.

Le damos, pues, la bienvenida, a Richard MacDowell.

MR. RICHARD MacDOWELL (Ontario Labour Relations Board, Canada): I am going to be a bit parochial, perhaps a bit provocative, and maybe just a little bit rhetorical, so like the lawyer that I am, I shall start off with a disclaimer: The views that I am about to express are not necessarily my own and they are certainly not those of the Ontario Government who is, in a sense, my employer.

My starting point is that justice and employment rights are really a basic expectation in a liberal democracy. Labour is not an article of commerce or a commodity like any other. It is a bit surprising to hear that debated, because those phrases are found in the 1914 Clayton Act of the United States, and labour has a social value which goes beyond its mere place as a factor of production. So there is a political component here that I do not think we can forget. Workers and their families, vote workers, protest workers, strike workers, the physical well-being of workers as such, has been a matter of public policy consideration. That brings into play politics and then the focus is on the worker as a citizen, the worker as a person, and not the worker as a factor of production. This perspective is actually quite important to keep in mind from a public policy point of view. If you will permit just a brief digression, let me illustrate why perspective might matter.

Suppose this institution contracted out the cleaning services that clean the floors, and suppose I as a participant in this conference tripped over the broom of a contracted out cleaner, I would work very, very hard in order to recover the damages that I might be owed for the injury I sustained to try to, somehow, sue this hotel, as well as the contract cleaner, and a court would actually be quite sympathetic to that, focusing on my particular needs, not the labour needs of the hotel, to save some money or otherwise, to contract out, so perspective matters. I actually suspect that the most vociferous proponent of contracting out would share my views, at least in this context.

It depends upon a matter of perspective, as was said by some of the speakers this morning. With that in mind, let me start -- dare I say it, for those Canadians in the audience, we have to start with the Canadian Constitution. Because when one talks about public policy in the area of labour relations, safety, worker rights, even education, those are matters which are constitutionally dealt with, and the prerogative of, provincial, not federal, governments.

I do not want to be disrespectful to my hosts, but the federal jurisdiction comprises about 9 per cent of the total workforce. And one might say, after much discussion of the ILO convention, well what about treaties? The federal government has the unambiguous authority to negotiate treaties. The fact of the matter is a treaty has no legal force and effect unless there is corresponding provincial legislation. Why? Because our Constitution says so and the leading authority in this area actually happens to do with federal legislation on hours of work and minimum wages which was enacted in order to bring, it was hoped, the country into compliance with ILO conventions. I do not suggest that this is logical, but that is the way it is.

Obviously, market forces are pressing in another direction, but quite frankly, and without getting into yet another debate, there are regional and political forces which help support the constitutional scheme of things.

Terry Hoopes has actually done a really good job of identifying the legal issues which our countries share, at least Canada and the United States do. Is this individual an employee or an independent contractor? It depends, really, on elements of control or who is that person, what organization are they part of. The answer to the question, "is the person an employee or an independent contractor?", really determines entitlement to certain benefits.

The second related question is: Who is the employer, anyway? Is it the hotel, as in the example I gave you, or is it somebody else? The terminology of contract labour is a terminology without content; one really cannot say without looking at the particular facts.

I will say nothing about the competitive or economic consequences of these choices. Let me just say a little bit about this question of flexibility, because the success, or otherwise, in achieving the flexibility that was spoken about and which often means relief from various statutory strictures, depends upon an analysis of the legal components of the relationship and not the economic ones.

Let's look at contracting out, first of all. So far as I am aware, there is no provincial legislation anywhere which prohibits contracting out as such. The most legislation -- and there is legislation in virtually every province about this -- the most it does is it requires notice that you are going to do so, sometimes provide severance pay, sometimes retraining allowances and so forth, which means that the distinction between employees who are already there, and then some changes and employees who are not there, might be quite significant. Of course these restrictions on economic change are a matter of some debate.

The Canadian scene shows exactly the same issues as in the Microsoft case, exactly the same kind of questions. Microsoft is not a surprising result from a Canadian perspective, and the result would be a dead cinch if the legislation in question weren't tax or commercial legislation, but were rather health and safety or worker protective legislation. So those issues are familiar.

There are two differences, though, that are worthwhile mentioning quickly. The first is, it is uniformly recognized in all provincial jurisdictions that there is something called a dependent contractor, which is somewhere between a pure independent contractor and an employee and, depending upon what statute you look at, dependent contractors are recognized as a subject of specific regulation.

The second thing I might observe is that there is some notion implicit in all of this that you can only have one employer. Why is that -- it is a common law or contractual notion -- when in fact you can have multiple employers and the National Labor Relations Board, in fact, under the National Labor Relations Act in the United States, has recognized both common employer and joint employer kinds of concepts, so that if you had two enterprises working under the same roof in close cooperation, you might call them a subcontractor. But if they are in fact an economic partnership, just as tax law can somehow pierce these corporate relationships and affix liability, sometimes the legislation can, as well, and there are specific provisions in various bits of labour legislation, in Ontario and elsewhere, which allow you to take entities that are engaged in related business activities and call them one for labour law purposes.

With respect to collective bargaining per se, that, of course, is a provincial matter. Generally speaking, there is nothing in collective bargaining legislation about contracting out as such, although our duty to bargain, unlike the United States, encompasses that as a mandatory subject of bargaining. And not only that, because it is a mandatory subject of bargaining, our statutory duty to bargain in good faith obliges employers to tell workers that they are thinking about doing this if the course of the thinking is sufficiently far advanced that it may have some impact during the life of the collective agreement. But again, unlike the United States, our collective agreements, once you sign them, are a peace pact and you cannot open them up in the middle except for some exceptions that I will not get into.

So to that extent, there is a similarity, but some differences, with the United States. The two other aspects I should say about collective bargaining policy, if you transfer not only the work, the right to collect garbage in the City of Toronto, plus the means to do it, the garbage trucks, to a third party, that is probably a successorship within the meaning of most legislation, federal and provincial, for the 8 or 9 per cent of the workforce who are covered by federal legislation, so the collective agreement will flow through and that is something that business planners have to take into account. If it is really not an arm's length relationship, we will probably, in the flick of an eye, put the two enterprises together as one.

If you blatantly contract out in order to avoid a trade union, you are probably engaging in an unfair labour practice and we have a remedy problem, but not a liability one. So there are a few things in the Labour Relations Act which can deal with these things.

Most restrictions on contracting out are found in collective agreements. I was rather surprised to find that 40 per cent of collective agreements in the last group of statistics I could look at, had at least something about contracting out in them. Only 1.2 per cent had anything that was actually prohibiting contracting out. I say the last statistics that I was able to look at because the Ministry of Labour does not do this anymore, they have contracted it out, so I cannot get more recent numbers than about 1995.

Some of the protections are as weak as just notice that we are going to do it. Others are income maintenance kinds of arrangements. Sometimes there are actual restrictions, you cannot contract out if it will create layoffs within the workplace. These things depend, of course, upon bargaining power, so they are bits and pieces, and quite different depending upon what you are looking at. So you will find, in the automobile industry and some parts of the steel industry, much more significant protection on contracting out than you will find in other places.

These are matters of private contract, if you like, but there is a connection between the penetration of the labour movement, the availability of collective bargaining, the extent to which trade unions can organize and bargain collectively, and the concrete outcome on control over these kinds of behaviour, assuming you want that outcome to happen.

I think I will end on this note. The one contract labourer that a business really wants to have onboard is a lawyer, because these are legal questions and, as Terry showed yesterday, they are the subject of quite a bit of debate in both our jurisdictions.

On that note I will stop. Thank you.

SEÑOR ROBERTO FLORES LIMA: Muchas gracias a Richard por su exposición.

Ahora, en el programa de Uds. encontrarán a Jaime Guerrero Romero, como el siguiente expositor de parte de la Delegación mexicana. Sin embargo, nos pidió que le disculpáramos, él es el Director general de programación y presupuesto de la Secretaría del trabajo y previsión social y, como Uds. sabrán imaginar en estos días de cierre presupuestal y de presentación del nuevo presupuesto que se está discutiendo en la Cámara, pues realmente fue muy difícil pata él venir a esta reunión, como hubiera sido su deseo. No obstante, nuestro compañero Alessandro Rubio Magaña será la persona que se encargue de esta exposición con base en el documento elaborado para Jaime Guerrero.

Alessandro Rubio Magaña es licenciado en derecho de la Universidad Iberoamericana en México y también ha estudiado estudios de maestría en el Colegio de la Universidad de Washington. El fue asistente del procurador de justicia del Distrito Federal y también fue asesor del procurador. Actualmente es director de cooperación laboral en la oficina administrativa nacional en la Secretaría del Trabajo.

Alessandro, te agradecería que hicieras uso de la palabra.

SEÑOR ALESSANDRO RUBIO MAGAÑA (Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social, México): Como mencionaron, procederé a dar lectura, con un breve preámbulo, al documento que realizó el Licenciado Jaime Guerrero.

Trataré de darle una lectura un poco más despacio de lo común para que los traductores tengan oportunidad de traducir esto al inglés para que tengan Uds. un entendimiento pleno del texto que se preparó, ya que ésta es una exposición compleja que busca reflejar el punto de vista del gobierno y las acciones que este mismo está realizando para encaminar, regular y utilizar esta realidad laboral que constituye el día de hoy la subcontratación y la contratación externa en beneficio de la planta productiva y de los trabajadores de México. Siendo así, una de las principales preocupaciones del gobierno del Presidente Zedillo fue plasmar en el Plan nacional de desarrollo 1995-2000, en donde se establece como objetivo fundamental lograr un crecimiento económico sostenido para que la economía absorba a la población que se incorpora a la actividad productiva año con año. Un dato promisorio en relación a esto es que la tasa de desempleo abierto para los primeros nueve meses del presente año fue del 3.3 por ciento que se compara favorablemente con la tasa de desempleo del 3.9 por ciento registrada en el mismo periodo en el año anterior en México. La participación del gobierno está orientada a propiciar que los trabajadores cuenten con elementos suficientes para hacer frente a los cambios previstos en el entorno laboral.

Se pretende que la clase trabajadora se beneficie con estos cambios mediante el desarrollo de acciones tendientes a incrementar sus habilidades, su capacidad para desarrollar diversas tareas, y asumir mayores niveles de responsabilidad, lo que les permitirá elevar su productividad y sus remuneraciones.

Recientemente, el Secretario del trabajo de México destacó la importancia de los procesos de la nueva globalidad y de integración económica. Subrayó que México está obligado a sumarse y deberá competir necesariamente con nuevos mercados. En esta exigencia, concurre el esquema de subcontratación, concepto amplio que abarca la subcontratación de personal en las empresas por medio de un intermediario hasta el trabajo realizado por proveedores y maquiladores con los que las empresas contratantes mantienen algún tipo de ingerencia con el subcontratista para vigilar la calidad del producto y del proceso productivo propiamente.

Los elemento básicos del concepto de subcontratación industrial en México son, primeramente, el rompimiento o la no existencia de una relación laboral formal entre el empleador y la empresa contratante y los trabajadores de las empresas subcontratadas. Y segundo, la existencia entre ambas empresas de una estrecha relación de tipo tecnológico y de mercado más allá de una relación tradicional como la que se sostendría con proveedores.

En cuanto a las políticas del gobierno, se observa un cambio al considerar como uno de sus ejes centrales el desarrollo económico, el fomento de la propia subcontratación en el mercado laboral y el fomento de la subcontratación para la generación de líneas de producción horizontales. Lo anterior, con el fin de fortalecer el sistema de relaciones inter e intra-industriales como base de la competitividad.

El enfoque de la subcontratación industrial en México está considerado como un instrumento de cooperación nacional e internacional entre empresas de diferentes tamaños que permiten a una compañía oferente contar con capacidad disponible y con alguna especialización para fabricar productos, piezas o sub-ensambles, que cumple con los compromisos de productos solicitados por la empresa demandante que, en este caso, es una contratista.

La subcontratación se define como todos aquellos trabajos que le empresa ejecuta mediante la contratación de un tercero que domina la especialidad y que cuenta con los recursos materiales, financieros y humanos suficientes para llevar a buen término los trabajos encomendados. En México se ha creado el Consejo mexicano de subcontratación, que es una asociación civil, que tiene como objeto coordinar los esfuerzos de las bolsas de subcontratación y la de los centros de desarrollo de proveedores ubicados en todo el país. Esta estructura optimiza la capacidad de producción disponible de las empresas afiliadas a cada bolsa de trabajo y a cada centro de desarrollo de proveedores. El Consejo mexicano de la subcontratación utiliza los mecanismos propios de la subcontratación dentro de los programas impulsados por el propio gobierno federal y estatal. En esta tarea, diversas instituciones internacionales, empresas y organismos empresariales han decido unir sus esfuerzos para establecer el sistema de subcontratación industrial. Este sistema de subcontratación industrial ofrece una red de proveedores nacionales que busca satisfacer, básicamente, seis campos de acción. El primero es contar con alternativas para completar procesos de producción, apoyar para su integración las cadenas productivas, disminuir de manera importante la necesidad de importaciones, desarrollar a los proveedores locales, disminuir los costos de inventarios y abatir los costos de producción. Este sistema de subcontratación industrial se ha fortalecido con una red de información de procesos productivos y productos finales que ofrecen los subcontratistas, el cual es consultado vía Internet por demandantes de procesos, productos y servicios a nivel nacional e, inclusive, a nivel internacional. El sistema opera con una base de datos confiable en la que se presenta información específica de procesos industriales disponibles para su utilización, los cuales han sido validados por consultores de prestigio en México, quienes realizan evaluaciones permanentes sobre los requisitos que den cumplir las empresas que soliciten su incorporación a dicho sistema. Es conveniente destacar que la empresa oferente de procesos industriales debe contar con el 20 por ciento de la capacidad disponible en ese momento para subcontratar.

Los principales objetivos del sistema de subcontratación que opera en México son los siguientes:

Vincular los sistemas de negocios entre contratistas y subcontratistas;

Aprovechar la capacidad instalada disponible;

Difundir a nivel nacional e internacional la capacidad instalada disponible, su nivel de automatización, tecnología y la calidad de la infraestructura industrial con la que cuenta la empresa;

Exponer su proyección de crecimiento y desarrollo mediante el acceso a nuevas tecnologías y mercados y desarrollar el mercado de especialización y de diversificación productiva.

Actualmente, el servicio de subcontratación tiene registradas 545 empresas pertenecientes a los sectores metal-mecánico, plástico, eléctrico, de alimentos, fármaco-químicos, electrónico, textil, confección, calzado y muebles de madera.

La Secretaría del trabajo y previsión social, a partir del año 87, en el marco del proyecto de capacitación de mano de obra y de modernización de los mercados de trabajo, estableció un proyecto co-financiado con el Banco Mundial para crear el programa de calidad integral y modernización, conocido en México como CIMO orientado a la capacitación de mano de obra industrial en activo, con el propósito de contribuir a la reconversión del personal para adaptarlo a la estructura ocupacional de las empresas. En este programa, participan las asociaciones empresariales mexicanas que aportan infraestructura a través de 62 unidades promotoras de capacitación en todo el país. Los responsables de cada unidad enlazan empresas con la oferta local de capacitación y consultoría. Además, proporcionan asistencia técnica para elaborar los programas. En 1997, se realizaron en México, casi 49.000 cursos de capacitación que beneficiaron a más de medio millón de trabajadores.

En síntesis, este programa de calidad integral y modernización orienta y promueve la incorporación de las empresas mexicanas al sistema de subcontratación industrial a través de un apoyo que cubre parte de los costos de verificación de las empresas visitadas en empresas elegibles para participar en dicho programa.

Otro aspecto fundamental en la subcontratación es el punto de vista estrictamente laboral que hasta ahora primordialmente se ha abordado. En este sentido, la figura de la subcontratación ha sido motivo de polémica inclusive dentro del propio derecho mexicano, ya que la propia terminología es motivo de confusiones. Es la legislación mexicana la que utiliza el término de intermediación o intermediario, por lo que se debe poner especial énfasis en el concepto con el fin de evitar confusiones.

En las relaciones de trabajo, podemos hablar de dos tipos de subcontratación. Cuando hablamos de un sindicato, como conexión en la relación laboral, y cuando hablamos de un intermediario, en estricto sentido, puede ser una persona física o moral. En cuanto a la intervención de los sindicatos como subcontratistas, la Ley federal del trabajo en su capítulo tercero, contempla esta figura. El contrato colectivo es el que da origen a esta función del sindicato como intermediario. El contrato colectivo que es el convenio celebrado entre uno o varios sindicatos de trabajadores y uno o varios patrones con objeto de establecer las condiciones según las cuales debe prestarse el trabajo en una o más empresas. En este sentido, el artículo 395 de dicho ordenamiento establece que en el contrato colectivo podrá establecerse, que el patrón admitirá exclusivamente como trabajadores a quienes sean miembros del sindicato contratante. Aquí es claro que estamos hablando de un intermediario, ya que ésta prohíbe expresamente que el patrón contrate trabajadores que no figuren dentro de los contemplados en el contrato colectivo celebrado con el sindicato. Esto significa que será el mismo sindicato el que, a petición del patrón, proporcionará a éste, los trabajadores que solicite. Se ha cuestionado la naturaleza de esta triangulación en cuanto a las responsabilidades derivadas de la relación laboral. Al respecto, la Suprema Corte de Justicia de México ha sentado jurisprudencia. Ya he dicho que los empresarios están obligados a responder de los acciones de trabajo aunque no hayan contratado directamente con el trabajador sino con el sindicato, al que el mismo pertenece, puesto que el trabajo no puede ser llevado a cabo por la persona moral del sindicato, sino mediante el trabajo personal de determinados individuos. Esta hipótesis representa un gran problema porque las funciones y naturaleza del sindicato estan claramente definidas en la Ley federal del trabajo, por lo que sería imposible confundirlo con la figura del patrón.

Sin embargo, esto no sucede con el intermediario en el estricto sentido que no es un sindicato que no puede llegar a confundirse con el patrón. El intermediario, según el artículo 12 de la Ley federal del trabajo, es una persona que contrata o interviene en la contratación de otra u otras para que presten servicios a un patrón. Interpretando este artículo podemos afirmar que, en este caso, el intermediario siempre será la persona que no se beneficie con los trabajos que se le prestan a otra por quien contrata. Por lo que serán responsables frente a los trabajadores que se aprovechan del trabajo contratado por intermediación. Esa interpretación se traduce en la realidad que viven actualmente los tribunales laborales mexicanos al plantearse la interrogante de quien es el patrón y, consecuentemente, sobre quién recae las responsabilidades patronales. La Suprema Corte ha establecido jurisprudencia firme en interpretar y en responder a estas interrogantes, lo que permite identificar los casos en los que hablamos de un intermediario. Estos dos elementos, son el lugar de la prestación del servicio y recursos con los que se presta el servicio. Estos dos elementos son esenciales para identificar, distinguir y describir a un intermediario. El lugar de trabajo ha sido medular en la determinación de los criterios de la Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación.

Desde hace algunos años en México, se ha planteado la necesidad de llevar a cabo una reforma amplia sobre esta figura del intermediario, ya que la cantidad de juicios que se ventilan ha hecho imposible el adecuado desempeño de las relaciones obrero-patronales. En este sentido, el gobierno de México identifica los siguientes aspectos de relevancia sobre la subcontratación. Las ventajas son la convergencia en el mercado productivo de procesos industriales, la substitución de inversiones por procesos de subcontratación, el mejoramiento en la calidad de productos y servicios ofrecidos por las empresas, la generación de esquemas de desarrollo, la optimización en la utilización de capacidad disponible de las empresas, el fomento de la especialización de las empresas en la fabricación de productos y la generación de una mayor transferencia de tecnología. Y, como desventajas, se ubican la falta de interés y fusión y promoción de los sistemas de subcontratación, la falta de conocimiento de los mercados, la baja calidad de los productos de algunos de los subcontratistas y la falta de financiamiento.

Para concluir esta intervención, quiero expresarles que, en México, estamos conscientes que la verdadera modernidad política de una sociedad empieza en la ley. Por esta razón, en el ámbito laboral, el sentido del trabajo necesita mucha reflexión y mucha imaginación. Los procesos productivos se transforman ante la competencia y la globalización y, en México, hacemos un gran esfuerzo para mantener los principios que se lograron por la justicia social en un ambiente de libertad y de competencia.

Gracias.

SR FLORES: Gracias, Alessandro.

Ahora, cederemos el uso de la palabra a François Carré. Ella es directora de programas de investigación de Radcliffe Policy Institute, donde está a cargo de poner en práctica el plan de investigación del principal proyecto en curso, la nueva ecuación económica, redefinir la economía, el lugar de trabajo y la familia. Otros proyectos incluyen estudios sobre temas laborales y familiares para profesionales de compañías de biotecnología. Hizo una licenciatura en Wellesley College y un doctorado en el departamento de estudios urbanos del Instituto tecnológico de Massachussets. Fue investigadora social en la Universidad de Massachussets y en el Instituto Gaston para el desarrollo de la comunidad latina y las políticas públicas. Ha escrito diversas publicaciones sobre la transformación del empleo y sus consecuencias para los trabajadores. En particular, ha preparado estudios acerca del crecimiento del empleo temporal y de plazo corto en los EE. UU. y, en Francia, acerca de las reacciones y tendencia reflejadas en políticas técnicas y sindicatos. Ha realizado diversas investigaciones comparativas de las respuestas políticas del crecimiento del empleo inestable en Francia y en Canadá y ha realizado un sinnúmero de informes y publicaciones que tratan sobre el empleo temporal y otros arreglos de tipos laborales poco tradicionales.

Invitamos, pues, a la Srta. Carré a hacer uso de la palabra.

MS FRANÇOISE CARRÉ (The Radcliffe Public Policy Institute, U.S.A.): Thank you.

I want to thank our Canadian hosts and conference organizers. Je veux remercier nos hôtes canadiens et les participants à cette conférence. Il me fait grand plaisir d'être ici aujourd'hui. Je m'excuse de ne pas pouvoir m'exprimer en espagnol. I will present in English.

Contracting out practices and the use of contract labour manifest themselves in a range of employment arrangements in the United States. We call these non standard employment arrangements. I am going to talk specifically, of course, about the contract workers, that is those that are employed by companies providing services to another company under contract. I will talk also about on-call workers and independent contractors, or the self-employed.

The conditions facing contract workers and others in non standard arrangements underscore the limitations of the current U.S. system of employer-based social protection and of work-site-based worker representation. These workforces often find themselves standing outside the traditional employment relationship upon which the framework of employment and labour law was built. Partly as a result, they suffer from a number of problems that Susan talked about, lower wages and lower benefits, problems of employment security, and they have extremely low rates of union representation, which leaves them ill-equipped to address those problems. So the legal framework in the U.S. needs to adapt.

I will remind us first of some of the peculiarities of the U.S. system that have implications for our discussion.

First, U.S. employment relations have very few terms set by law, therefore many terms of the employment relationship are set in personnel policy and in union contracts in the minority of workplaces that are unionized.

Second, the U.S. regulated few terms at the federal level. More terms of employment are set at the state level and that results in a great deal of variation across the country.

Third, the social protection function, that is the provision of key benefits like health insurance, pension, sick days, and holiday pay even, that is tied to formal attachment to a particular employer.

Fourth, we have a system of worker representation that is work-site-based. Except for a handful of outliers, unions must win recognition by vote in one workplace at a time. Coverage under a union contract comes from being a member of a particular union local.

Now, this context has clear consequences for the workers in arrangements that result from contracting out.

I am going to briefly cover the gaps in coverage from existing employment and labour law and I am going to focus particularly on labour law issues, since Susan covered a bit on employment law and labour standards. I will detail some of the changes that would remedy these gaps in coverage.

Let's start with the gaps. Currently the law falls short by restricting access to union representation for contract workers and for the others in non standard arrangements. The National Labor Relations Act was designed primarily for workers that were employed steadily, usually full time, by a single employer in a fixed location.

There are four primary gaps of coverage that limit the protective effects of labour law for the non standard workers.

First, the federal government establishes the bargaining units that define who will be in a given union, and when that happens, non standard workers are often excluded.

Second, current laws are ill equipped to handle joint employment.

Third, the subcontracting of public sector jobs creates a grey area between public and private employment.

And finally, current labour laws are often inadequate for high turnover workforces.

Let's start with the first, exclusion. The National Labor Relations Board which administers the National Labor Relations Act plays the major role in determining the appropriate bargaining unit in the absence of voluntary employer recognition, that is when a board election must be held. The NLRB defines the group of workers among whom the election is held. So far, the NLRB has issued inconsistent rulings as to whether non standard workers, particularly the part-time, the short-time hires, the direct hires, should be covered by the same contract as the regular employees.

The second issue is that of joint employers. Workers with joint employers can often also be excluded from union representation, because the NLRB rarely recognizes the role of the client company in controlling employment conditions. As we know and we have talked about a lot in the past couple of days, two parties, the client company and the intermediary subcontractor or the temp agency, are involved in controlling the work conditions and the wages. The client company determines the duration of the contractual relationship with the subcontractor and thus controls the employment of the workers often on its site. It also controls the terms of the contract which have a direct bearing on the wage level and the benefit provision, while the contractor, as you know, exercises the direct supervision of the employees.

The NLRB rarely finds a joint employee primary relationship. That is, it rarely recognizes the employer-like role played by the client firm. Under current labour law, the NLRB uses a narrow right to control test to determine joint employer status. The test ignores the underlying economic reality of the client-contractor relationship. It focuses instead on whether employers "share or co-determine those matters governing the essential terms and conditions of employment".

Now, even in cases when the client is extensively involved in work assignments and supervision, the Board has failed to recognize joint employer liability. As a result, remedies against unfair labour practices by client firms under the NLRA are not available. For example, a building owner or a client, somebody who purchases janitorial services, can legally terminate a building service contract in retaliation for union activities, without any sanction. And no NLRA provision requires a successive contractor to hire the previous contractor's workforce or to accept that previous employer's collective bargaining contract. Furthermore, the client company is protected from economic retaliation under current labour law. It is treated as "a neutral secondary employer insulated from collective economic action, such as picketing or striking, in the event of a labor dispute".

The third issue is the public/ private issue. When public sector work is contracted out to the private sector, the workers find themselves between public and private employers, leaving them outside both the NLRA and public sector collective bargaining laws. For example, in Michigan, 15 Southern Group homeworkers that perform services for the state, working for numerous private providers under state contract, these workers, in the early nineties one union tried to organize those workers. The NLRB denied representation on the grounds that they were state employees not covered by NLRA. When the union approached the Michigan Employment Relations Commission, which is the public sector commission, the State successfully argued that the workers were private employees and the Commission denied the union representation on that basis.

The fourth issue is that of short job tenures. Essentially, much of existing labour law in the United States at this point is poorly designed for dealing with situations where employers, as well as workers, turn over frequently and where employment and contracts can be of short duration, except, of course, for the two exceptions of construction and garment trades where we have different provisions.

What about changes in labour law? I will now suggest four areas of labour law reforms to strengthen the representation rights of contract workers and for others in non standard arrangements.

First, existing labour law protections should be extended to workers who are currently excluded.

Second, permitting pre-hire agreements between employers and unions would allow the latter to bargain for non standard workers.

Third, instituting multi-employer bargaining would greatly facilitate representation in industries where workers move frequently across many firms and many small firms.

And last, it would help to have more extensive use -- more use, or any use, of sectoral bargaining, in which the government extends a union negotiated floor of protection to all workers in an industry in a particular area.

Let's start with the first issue of extending labour protections. As the various forms of non standard work grow and proliferate in their variety, it becomes increasingly important for the National Labor Relations Board to broaden definitions of bargaining units and include short-time hires, part-time hires, and others in non standard arrangements, as an integral part of the workforce. Without such broadening definitions, employers may have an incentive to hire non standard workers to avoid complying with union contract provisions, as well as to avoid providing benefits.

In addition, employees that are deliberately misclassified as independent contractors by their employers and should be wage workers, those employees should be brought under NLRA coverage. In fact, the concepts of employer and employee require modernizing.

As Susan Houseman already mentioned, in 1994 the U.S. Labor Law Reform Commission did call for Congress to adopt a single coherent concept of "employee" and apply it across the board in employment and labour law. That Commission, the 1994 Commission, also recommended that the NLRA adopt a broader approach to who is and who is not an independent contractor and that that approach should go beyond questions of day-to-day supervision and control and consider the underlying economic realities of the client and contractor relationship in determining whether a worker is an independent contractor or not; and that same consideration of the underlying economic realities could also be applied in determining the issue of joint employers.

Now, to pull the public sector contract workers out of that public/private sector limbo that I mentioned earlier, one solution is to extend the NLRA coverage to public employees in those states that do not currently have a public sector bargaining law. We actually, in the U.S., have only about 23 states that have a public sector bargaining law. Others just don't. Also, the administration of the public bargaining law and the private sector bargaining law should be coordinated and they are not right now.

The second area for change is the pre-hire agreements. In drafting the NLRA, Congress recognized the uniqueness of unstable and transient employment patterns in the construction and the garment trades. Legislators permitted these two industries to continue their established practice of pre-hire agreements, in which the union and the employer agreed to hire only union referred workers. In addition, unions in these sectors administer health and pension pools that are funded through employer payroll contributions and operate across employers.

Today, the subcontracting and transience have expanded through other sectors of the economy. Permitting pre-hire agreements in other sectors would greatly enhance the protective impact of labour law. Pre-hire agreements would enable unions to offer training and job referral services to workers in non standard arrangements. In higher turnover settings, these agreements would allow workers to retain union membership and associated protections as they move from job to job. These agreements also prevent an employer from ousting a union by simply hiring a new crop of workers.

Now, even without these changes in law, some unions are already experimenting with labour referral systems that operate as quasi hiring halls. They are matching union preferred temporary workers and contract workers with employers in their industry. But without explicit legal recognition, these experiments are in jeopardy.

The third area of change is multi-employer bargaining. Many of the obstacles to organizing and bargaining that contract workers and other workers in non standard arrangements face, result from a labour law framework that fixes organizing and collective bargaining around an individual employer and a specific work site. This framework fails in an economy where workers with different employers and different employment arrangements work side by side in the same site, while workers in scattered locations are employed by the same firm. Once again, construction and garment trade offers some useful insights. In those sectors, the workers are organized by occupational lines and sometimes they are organized across lines regionally. The union locals are grouped in union federations that bargain directly with employer associations, and the contract enforcement takes place at the establishment level.

Extending labour laws to accommodate occupational and regional unions in other industries would give non standard workers the latitude of some forms of representation that reflect their patterns of employment. The National Labor Relations Board could be involved in determining the boundaries of their relevant multi-employer labour market, which could then be expanded beyond the worksites to include multiple worksites or entire geographic areas for a particular range of occupations, let's say janitors in San Francisco -- and we do have an example of that. Alternatively, a less regulatory approach would allow the parties to negotiate the boundaries of the labour market that is relevant for the collective bargaining agreement.

The fourth area of change is sectoral bargaining. That is a potentially more powerful instrument for improving the terms of employment for workers that shift across worksites and employers. Under sectoral bargaining, unions initially bargain a model agreement, either with an industry-wide employer association or with a substantial subset of employers in a given industry and geographic area. The government, whether it is local, regional or national, then extends the terms of the contract to all employers in that industry and area. Thus, even if a worker moves from one employer to another, she or he is consistently assured of continued coverage under the union contract.

Government support of sectoral bargaining in some industries would greatly enhance worker protection, particularly in those industries where an intermediary employer is involved and a worker shifts across assignments, for example, like services to buildings.

This approach could also create the basis for organizing temporary workers as employees of temporary agencies, rather than as employees of the client companies. This is essentially the approach that the French government took since the mid-eighties for the temporary help workers, that sectoral bargaining combined with regulation of some parts of the temp industry.

I want to end with a few more remarks.

In addition to changes in labour law, workers in contracted and other non standard arrangements will require union innovation in organizing and bargaining. To represent these workers, unions often must reach beyond their traditional domain to bargain in new areas, as for example in representing an in-house pool of temporaries at AT&T or helping create a union-management run subsidiary subcontractor to substitute for an outside non union subcontractor.

Unions must also move beyond the traditional terrain by devising new structures that reflect the economic and social reality of contract work.

A necessary complement to labour law reform and to innovative union approaches is employment laws that directly regulate conditions for contract work and other non standard arrangements. I will just give a few here.

The most effective short-term policy to boost wages and improve working conditions for these workers is to mandate wage and benefit parity between some contract employees and the permanent workforce in comparable positions of the firm in which they are assigned. This parity provides workers with significant benefits and it simultaneously reduces a firm's cost incentives to substitute contract workers for regular workers.

Also, whether workers choose non standard employment or not, they are going to need policy support. Key benefits in the future will need to be socially guaranteed. Universal health coverage is the single, most important piece of this package for the United States and a logical next step will be a portable pension system with a guaranteed minimum.

In sum, for these workers, improving access to union representation is badly needed as a means to address their employment difficulties. But in addition, because of their vulnerable position in the labour market, at least for some of them -- for many of them -- workers in contracted arrangements need more explicit support from public policy mechanisms and greater protections than workers in regular arrangements.

Thank you.

SEÑOR ROBERTO FLORES LIMA: Le damos las gracias a François y cedemos ahora el uso de la palabra a Jean-Yves Brière. El es abogado desde 1978, se ha especializado en derecho laboral, es encargado de diversos cursos en la Universidad de Montréal y en la Universidad de Québec en Montréal. Además, es responsable del sector de derecho público y administrativo de la Escuela de abogacía de Québec. El señor Brière es autor de numerosas obras sobre derecho laboral, la última de ellas titulada "El derecho laboral en Québec".

Le agradeceremos, por favor, si hace uso de la palabra.

M. JEAN-YVES BRIÈRE (Brière Caron, Québec, Canada): Bonjour. Si vous voulez bien, je vais faire ma présentation en français.

Il me fait plaisir d'être ici cet après-midi avec vous pour traiter un peu d'avenir, faire un peu de prospective, si vous voulez bien. Vous admettrez avec moi qu'en dix minutes c'est un vaste programme, mais on va tenter, du moins essayer de tenter de tirer quelques pistes de solution.

Cependant, avant d'aborder le sujet comme tel, je pense qu'il est important, comme certains collègues l'ont fait, de faire un retour en arrière et de voir quels sont les piliers ou les fondements mêmes du corpus législatif qui régissent les rapports collectifs du travail. Dans le fond ce n'est pas inutile. Pour savoir où on s'en va, il faut peut-être regarder un peu d'où l'on vient.

Au Québec, il faut attendre 1944 pour que la première législation sur les rapports collectifs du travail intervienne, et le législateur intervenait pour adopter la Loi sur les relations ouvrières qui prévoyait principalement deux obligations pour l'employeur. D'abord, celle de reconnaître comme représentants collectifs les salariés, l'association de salariés qui regroupe au moins 60 pour cent des individus. Et deuxièmement, l'obligation de négocier de bonne foi avec cette association de salariés.

Toute l'organisation des rapports collectifs du travail au Québec, qui est largement inspirée, pour ne pas dire copiée, de ce qui prévalait à l'époque aux États-Unis, repose sur ce qu'on a appelé la règle des trois unités.

D'abord, l'unité de lieu, c'est-à-dire que l'accréditation ne peut viser qu'une seule entreprise.

Unité de personnes, c'est-à-dire un seul syndicat pour représenter, seul et à l'exclusion de tout autre, tous les salariés, actuels et futurs, de l'unité d'accréditation.

Et une unité de temps, c'est-à-dire une seule convention collective pour régir les rapports applicables entre les salariés et l'employeur pour une période déterminée.

Ces fondements ou cette règle des trois unités, visait à assurer trois qualités au régime. D'abord, un régime qui soit sain, qui soit stable, et qui soit sécuritaire pour les parties. Cependant, on l'a vu, toutes nos législations se sont inspirées au même creuset, et d'ailleurs notre Code civil du Québec, qui est le fondement de toutes les lois du Québec, a été adopté en 1994 et prévoit que le contrat de travail est celui par lequel une personne, le salarié, s'oblige, pour un temps limité et moyennant rémunération, à effectuer un travail sous la direction et le contrôle d'une autre personne, l'employeur.

On voit donc que les lois du travail reposent sur certains concepts de base qui semblent quelque peu, pour ne pas dire beaucoup, anachroniques aujourd'hui. On n'a qu'à penser à la définition d'entreprise, qu'à celle de l'employeur et qu'à celle du salarié. Chacun des conférenciers y a fait allusion.

Ces notions de base qui ont permis d'échafauder notre corpus juridique ont subi des transmutations majeures. Vous me permettrez cinq exemples.

D'abord, la notion même d'entreprise n'a plus de domicile fixe. Les frontières s'estompent, elle oeuvre souvent au plan international, elle se doit d'être compétitive, et ce, non seulement face à des concurrents nationaux mais dorénavant au plan international. De ce fait, l'entreprise fait fréquemment appel, par le biais de l'impartition, à une main d'oeuvre qui provient de pays en voie de développement et ainsi lui permet d'abaisser ses coûts de production.

L'augmentation -- et on l'a vu -- l'augmentation phénoménale des nouvelles formes de relations d'emploi, travailleurs à temps partiel, travailleurs occasionnels, travailleurs autonomes, travailleurs pigistes, télé-travail et sous-traitance.

Troisièmement, la multiplication de la sous-traitance par laquelle l'entreprise confie des parcelles d'activité à d'autres entreprises ou, encore, à des travailleurs autonomes. Le recours au travail autonome minimise pour l'entreprise certain coûts, tels les frais de cotisation en matière d'accidents de travail, d'assurance-maladie et d'assurance-emploi.

Quatrièmement, la notion même d'employeur unique est mise à rude épreuve en raison des importantes restructurations, des fusions, des acquisitions et des offres publiques d'achat.

Cinquièmement, le recours à de nouvelles formes d'embauche, et particulièrement l'usage croissant des bureaux de placement. Ainsi, les nouvelles relations tripartites s'établissent et se multiplient, au risque de conflit car il n'est pas toujours très évident d'identifier correctement le véritable employeur.

Pour toutes ces raisons, le législateur est intervenu afin de pallier à certains effets pervers créés par ces nouvelles formes.

Les différents professeurs en ont parlé, et particulièrement le Professeur Bernier a parlé, au Québec, des Articles 45 et 46 du Code du travail qui visent à préserver la convention collective et l'accréditation en cas de fusions et d'aliénations d'entreprises.

Il y a également d'autres législations, un peu comme on nous l'a signalé au Mexique, qui visent à protéger la rémunération. La loi sur les normes, entre autres, vise à protéger la rémunération en cas de sous-traitance, par lequel on fait que l'employeur est solidairement responsable avec le sous-traitant en cas d'insolvabilité du sous-traitant.

Une fois qu'on a posé ces fondements ou qu'on a regardé ces pierres angulaires du régime, il convient peut-être de regarder un peu l'avenir. Bien que règle générale, les parties employeur et syndicat -- et on l'a vu au cours des deux dernières journées -- s'entendent pour dresser un constat d'inadaptabilité de nos lois de l'emploi à la réalité socio-économique actuelle, les pistes de solution divergent considérablement, pour ne pas dire qu'elles sont tout simplement antinomiques.

Au risque de caricaturer la position de chacun, nous esquissons à grands traits deux tendances.

D'abord, pour les entreprises, toutes ces mesures législatives sont souvent perçues comme des freins à la réalité moderne du commerce. Dans une économie mondiale, toutes les mesures de protection sont perçues comme autant de coûts indirects qui abaissent notre capacité à concurrencer les entreprises étrangères. Les entreprises souhaitent un plus grand libéralisme en matière de réglementation de l'emploi. Cette déréglementation aurait pour effet d'accroître le niveau d'emploi et d'assurer une plus grande prospérité économique à chacun.

D'autre part, pour les syndicats et les salariés, il faut se méfier de ce qu'ils disent être ces chansonnettes de sirène néolibérales. Il faut focaliser davantage la législation, non pas sur la protection du capital, mais plutôt sur l'humain. Il faut accroître les mesures législatives de manière à mieux protéger les travailleurs contre le chômage endémique et la précarité de l'emploi, qui sont les conséquences logiques et directes de l'impartition et de la sous-traitance.

Bien que chacun de ces points de vue ait du mérite, il convient plutôt, selon moi, d'adopter une troisième voie. Il serait néfaste, voire même dangereux, d'intervenir à la pièce sans plan directeur en cette matière. On ne peut se contenter de simples substituts. Nous devons éviter les mesures parcellaires qui s'inscriraient difficilement dans un cadre général trop exigu. Au contraire, il faut revoir les bases mêmes, voire les fondements, de notre droit de l'emploi. Il faut plutôt revoir et redéfinir notre entendement même du lien de travail et du lien d'emploi.

À cet égard, une réflexion profonde s'impose relativement à certaines notions de base, notamment l'accréditation, l'entreprise, l'employeur et le salarié. La montée sans cesse croissante des travailleurs à statut précaire nous conduit tout droit à un cul-de-sac. On ne peut à la fois exiger la loyauté, le dévouement, la disponibilité et l'esprit d'initiative, et du même souffle cultiver l'insécurité et la précarité. Les laissés-pour-compte de nos lois de l'emploi seront bientôt la majorité des travailleurs, et il convient de procéder de façon urgente à une mise à jour profonde et complète de nos lois de l'emploi afin de rechercher de nouvelles mesures susceptibles de répondre aux besoins de protection juridique des salariés atypiques et des sous-traitants. La nouvelle réalité et l'exigence d'un partage réel et efficace du travail nous obligent à renouveler le contrat social qui nous lie tous.

Ainsi, dans un contexte de changement profond, ne pourrions-nous pas revoir notre entendement collectif relativement à certaines notions?

Premièrement, à la notion ou la définition de salarié, de façon à y inclure toute personne placée en situation socio et professionnelle semblable, apparente ou assimilable à celle que connaît généralement le salarié typique.

Deuxièmement, à la notion d'employeur qui pourrait inclure l'entreprise-réseau, c'est-à-dire de manière à y comprendre ses composantes, ses sous-traitants intégrés et exclusifs, et ses entrepreneurs dépendants.

Troisièmement, au concept même d'accréditation, qui pourrait dépasser le cadre rigoriste de la règle des trois unités.

Quatrièmement, à la reconnaissance de l'association de salariés en fonction de secteurs ou de champs précis d'activité professionnelle, et non plus seulement à l'égard d'un employeur déterminé.

Comme on l'a vu au cours de ces deux journées, le consensus peut difficilement intervenir ou provenir des parties elles-mêmes. Les intérêts sont diamétralement opposés. Le législateur doit intervenir pour préserver et protéger le système et les salariés à statut précaire.

Plusieurs m'opposeront, que j'ai certainement une vision un peu utopique des choses. Pour ceux-là, je serais porté à leur citer Jules Vernes qui disait:

"Tout ce qu'un homme est capable d'imaginer, d'autres hommes seront capables de le réaliser."

Merci beaucoup.

SEÑOR ROBERTO FLORES LIMA: Muchas gracias a Jean-Yves por su exposición y, rápidamente le cedemos la palabra a Ramón Ramírez Alarcón de la Confederación de trabajadores de México. Ramón es licenciado en derecho por el Centro sindical de estudios superiores de la Confederación de trabajadores de México, la CTM; cursó estudios de ciencias políticas y de administración pública en la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; ha sido catedrático, investigador en la Universidad Aurora de la CTM en el área de derecho, especializado en derecho del trabajo, en historia del movimiento obrero, sociología jurídica y conformación de la sociedad mexicana. Fue asesor, apoderado legal y secretario de trabajo del Comite nacional del Sindicato nacional de trabajadores de la industria de productos alimenticios, similares y conejos de la CTM o la Confederación de trabajadores de México y ha organizado y participado en diversos seminarios nacionales sobre temas laborales, jurídicos, económicos y sociales.

Así que, Ramón, te pedimos, por favor, que hagas uso de la palabra.

SEÑOR RAMON GILBERTO RAMIREZ ALARCON (Confederación de Trabajadores Mexicanos): Buenos días.

Para hacer un planteamiento relativo al tema que nos ocupa, he preparado algunas notas que pongo a la consideración de Uds.

Consideramos que es particularmente importante reunirnos los representes de Canadá, Estados Unidos de Norteamérica y México para analizar en esta conferencia el fenómeno socio-laboral denominado contratación externa y subcontratación. Nos interesa compartir y asimilar experiencias en torno a este tema en virtud de que la subcontratación contiene implicaciones de muy diverso orden.

Es conveniente tener presente que en el caso de México, nuestro marco legal contempla disposiciones que tipifican una relación de trabajo vinculada con la subcontratación. Jurídicamente se la ha denominado en la ley del trabajo, intermediación. Bajo esos preceptos se establecen disposiciones que procuran evitar desfigurar tanto la contratación de trabajo como las responsabilidades laborales derivadas de la prestación de servicios.

Las relaciones de trabajo individuales y colectivas en México, en los últimos años, los 90, reflejan características plenamente unidas al cambio y los procesos productivos que también impactan algunas transformaciones en las condiciones de trabajo.

Por lo anterior, los trabajadores tenemos una apreciación muy especial sobre estos cambios, pues, en el proceso citado, en el periodo citado, para nosotros ha significado deterioro en el poder adquisitivo, riesgo en la estabilidad en el empleo y mucho esfuerzo por la recuperación en estos ámbitos. Esperamos que se pueda ampliar y multiplicar una inversión productiva realmente generadora de las necesarias ofertas de trabajo y con salarios remuneradores.

El sector empresarial, evidentemente, ha establecido prácticas estratégicas para dar respuesta a los fenómenos económicos de apertura comercial, contracción de la demanda interna, agotamiento y sub-utilización de la capacidad industrial instalada, requerimientos tecnológicos y cambios en las políticas públicas de gasto, ingreso, financiamiento y política cambiaria, entre otros.

Lo preocupante es que, hasta ahora, esas respuestas empresariales se han orientado principalmente a reducir costos fijos de producción en los que se incluyen los salarios y las prestaciones económicas de los trabajadores. En las situaciones más extremas, se han llegado a presentar los cierres de fuentes de empleo y reajustes de personal. Ante esta realidad, consideramos que existen alternativas incluyentes, justas, democráticas, y, sobre todo, acordes con los principios, las normas y las instituciones del derecho del trabajo.

Con base a las disposiciones legales vigentes, existen las normas para establecer la seguridad jurídica de que la intermediación y los derechos laborales de los trabajadores se puedan garantizar al fincar responsabilidades tanto de manera directa y solidaria con los beneficiarios de las obras o servicios que se les presten.

A través de esta figura de derecho también legalmente, los trabajadores en su régimen de intermediación están protegidos para gozar de los mismos derechos que corresponden a los trabajadores que realicen labores similares en las empresas o establecimientos que hayan acudido a la intermediación y, lógicamente, los intermediarios no podrán recibir ninguna retribución o con cargo a los salarios de los trabajadores.

El derecho mexicano del trabajo tiene previstos estos preceptos en materia de intermediación. Es conveniente aclarar que sobre este fenómeno nuestra preocupación está fincada en un vicio particular que, en términos de riesgo, se presenta al utilizar por las empresas a los intermediarios que se pueden prestar a un interés por desfigurar la contratación colectiva y vulnerar el derecho que existe en México a la participación de las utilidades en cada empresa.

Con este planteamiento general, podemos pasar al análisis de otros elementos que caracterizan el tema que nos ocupa: la intermediación y los derechos colectivos de trabajo.

Para los trabajadores es muy importante tener presente que el intermediario representa una figura de derecho siempre y cuando participe dentro de la fase previa a la celebración del contrato de trabajo. Y las responsabilidades laborales siempre estarán fincadas al patrón beneficiario del trabajo contratado.

Es un hecho que el intermediario existe y que actúa dentro de las relaciones de trabajo. En sentido positivo, favorecen al núcleo de trabajadores que vincula con el patrón que los contrata, pero el riesgo se corre en el momento en que dicho intermediario los llega a manipular como un medio para vulnerar derechos individuales y/o colectivos, que evitan la responsabilidad patronal en perjuicio de los trabajadores.

Las organizaciones sindicales, en términos generales, mantienen una apreciación de desconfianza cuando se recurre por las empresas a la subcontratación del trabajo. En principio, porque se sienten desplazados, lo toman como una medida unilateral de las empresas y, segundo, mantienen una legítima preocupación por el futuro inmediato del derecho al reparto inmediato de utilidades, a la estabilidad en el empleo y a los derechos, condiciones de trabajo y prestaciones económicas que ampara el contrato colectivo.

Esquemáticamente, y aquí lo aclaro, es una apreciación personal que trata de sintetizar lo que, de manera real se presenta sobre esta situación y este fenómeno.

Podemos ubicar tres distintas posiciones adoptadas por la representación sindical en algunas de las empresas que recurren a la subcontratación. Dichas posiciones son:

Primero, la pasiva, caracterizada por una poco o no nula respuesta a dicho fenómeno. En ocasiones, por falta de información, no entienden el alcance ni tampoco los límites que representa el que se subcontrate el trabajo. Esta posición, no necesariamente puede ser en perjuicio de los trabajadores, siempre y cuando se establezcan compromisos de muy corto plazo para que se llegue a utilizar este recurso de la subcontratación.

La segunda es la de confrontación; se caracteriza por un rechazo absoluto, a priorístico y de resistencia al propósito de subcontratar el trabajo. Se fundamenta en derechos preferenciales y de exclusión en la contratación. En el derecho establecido para determinar la jurisdicción del contrato colectivo se anteponen las experiencias negativas, propias y ajenas, para negar la posibilidad de subcontratar el trabajo. En ese proceso se da una relación muy conflictiva para atender el requerimiento que se pueda presentar de subcontratar.

La propositiva, sería la tercera, se caracteriza por analizar la posibilidad de subcontratar. Frecuentemente encuentra alternativas para mantener vigente el contrato colectivo de trabajo y conciliarlo con los auténticos y legítimos intereses de competitividad y productividad en la empresa. Basa su propuesta en acreditar un interes válido por desarrollar habilidades y capacidades de trabajo a través de la capacitación; se establecen y cumplen programas de trabajo para alcanzar topes de producción y niveles óptimos de calidad, se reducen tiempo muertos y ausentismo, se ahorran materiales y recursos y se sensibiliza a la base sindical para compartir objetivos comunes con la empresa.

En caso de que la única alternativa sea la de subcontratar, al intermediario patrón se le establecen las responsabilidades directas y solidarias derivadas de la relación de trabajo; se equiparan las condiciones, prestaciones y salarios de los trabajadores de la empresa con la que subcontrata; de manera estratégica, se procura temporalizar esta actividad para considerarla como de carácter extraordinario.

Impactos socio-laborales generados por la subcontratación.

Con base en las reflexiones anteriores es posible señalar que con seguridad jurídica, legalidad y convenciones legítimas de trabajo, la intermediación puede contribuir a la incorporación de mano de obra en el mercado laboral. Si consideramos que una prestación de servicio de esta naturaleza es accesoria a la actividad principal de una empresa, entonces podemos pensar que los trabajos subcontratados son derivados de su objeto social, que se refiere a trabajos especializados y/o calificados, lo que indica que es una actividad remunerada con categorías superiores al mínimo.

También es importante señalar que la autoridad laboral, sobre todo la de competencia federal, cuenta con facultades de inspección para evitar simulaciones, vicios y prácticas ilegales al amparo de la figura jurídica de intermediario. Podemos afirmar en tal sentido que el trabajador debe ser asistido legalmente, apoyado sindical y socialmente, para que sus derechos no tengan lesión alguna. Finalmente, voy a presentar las tendencias y alternativas en torno a la intermediación.

En la última década de este siglo, en el sector productivo, se han incorporado nuevos procesos y nuevas formas de organización del trabajo. Los requerimientos de productividad y competitividad han determinado el avance de dichas innovaciones. Se hace contundentemente claro que la creación de empresas red son el factor principal para generar la subcontratación, procurar la mayor flexibilidad productiva, un acelerado proceso de incorporación de paquetes tecnológicos y, desde luego, también la flexibilidad laboral.

La deuda social, la generación de bienes y servicios y el bienestar de las naciones deben ser los principales parámetros orientados a consolidar logros, impulsar proyectos positivos de desarrollo y para corregir irregularidades voluntarias o inherentes al propio requerimiento de productividad y competitividad.

Los trabajadores, en este contexto, revaloramos la importancia que tiene el estar organizado sindicalmente, el contar con normas jurídicas eficaces y, específicamente sobre el tema que analizamos, podemos afirmar que es prioritario incorporar al clausulario contractual el derecho intrínseco a la información de las empresas por se la mejor vía para desarrollar capacidades de interlocución y de respuesta.

El análisis de la subcontratación supera el planteamiento declarativo o conceptual. En sentido estricto, lo consideramos como fenómeno que tiene muy diversas implicaciones en el mundo del trabajo. Por sus propias características, de no ser atendido conveniente, oportuna y con estricto apego a derecho, es un factor de riesgo que fomenta irregularidades y genera vicios en las relaciones laborales.

Nuestros países, con historias, instituciones, tradiciones e idiosincrasias distintas nos hermanamos con aspiraciones comunes en favor de la paz, el desarrollo con justicia social, el respeto a los valores humanos, a la soberanía, a la autodeterminación y a la solución pacifica y negociada de las controversias.

En el caso de la subcontratación relacionada con la intermediación que tipifica la legislación laboral en México, a los trabajadores nos interesan principalmente los siguientes aspectos:

Primero, que este marco legal sea cada vez más eficaz, es decir, que sea cumplido y observado.

Segundo, ampliar la organización sindical de los trabajadores con una mayor tasa de sindicación y representatividad al incorporar nuevas y mejores demandas sociales.

Tercero, que se corrija, justa y convenientemente, cualquier irregularidad que vicie los preceptos laborales; hacer más eficaz el derecho a la participación de las utilidades, perfeccionar el derecho al empleo y a la capacitación y, sobre todo, fortalecer los derechos colectivos de los trabajadores.

Y por último, cuarto, que las autoridades competentes tengan mayor efectividad en su labor de inspección y de administración de la justicia para afianzar los atributos de validez, vigencia y eficacia en la normatividad laboral.

Muchas gracias.

SEÑOR ROBERTO FLORES LIMA: Le damos las gracias a Susan, a Rick, a Alejandro, a François, a Jean-Yves y a Ramón por sus comentarios y sus interesantes participaciones.

Por el curriculum de cada uno de ellos podemos saber que lo que han expuesto aquí, en breves minutos, siempre ahogados por el tiempo, es producto de una gran experiencia, un ejercicio profesional muy profundo y que han venido a resumir aquí y a compartir con nosotros sus conceptos y su visión sobre este tema que a todos nos preocupa.

Yo quiero ceder ahora los cinco minutos que tenemos para concluir esta sesión. Abrir un espacio para preguntas y dejarle nuevamente la palabra a mis compañeros de la mesa para poder atender alguna pregunta de Uds.

M. SERGE BRAULT: Mon intervention sera davantage un commentaire qu'une question, mais elle néanmoins comportera un élément de question qui s'adresse, en fait, à tous les panellistes.

Le sentiment que j'ai, c'est que l'impartition dont nous avons parlé depuis deux jours nous permet de constater l'apparition de différentes formes de travail atypique qui se manifestent, soit à l'intérieur de la sous-traitance ou autrement, et qu'à l'intérieur de cette application de nouvelles formes de travail on constate les limitations de celles avec lesquelles on est habitué de fonctionner. J'aimerais tout simplement en souligner quelques-unes.

Premièrement, on va s'entendre que la législation du travail dans nos pays respectifs a toujours une vocation sociale, plus ou moins étendue, de redistribution, entre autres, et de bon fonctionnement de l'économie. Alors on s'aperçoit que l'apparition de formes de travail atypique échappe à une partie de la législation sur laquelle on s'était toujours appuyé pour asseoir notre bon fonctionnement économique.

L'apparition de travailleurs à statut précaire qui échappent aux législations traditionnelles pose, en fait, une question qui est celle du rôle de l'état. Est-ce que l'état doit demeurer tout simplement témoin de ces changements, ou s'il doit avoir un rôle pro-actif pour chercher à encadrer cette activité de travail qui échappe à certains aspects de la législation, que ce soit au niveau des protections sociales ou au niveau de l'accès à la représentation syndicale?

Par exemple, on constate qu'au niveau des protections sociales, normalement les droits des travailleurs sont rattachés à l'entreprise: pour bénéficier de certaines protections, on doit avoir un employeur. Alors, dès lors que l'on dit que l'on a plusieurs employeurs ou que l'on est travailleur autonome, même si l'on est dans une situation très modeste, on s'aperçoit que l'on échappe à des protections sociales.

Donc une question qui est posée aux états, c'est de savoir si le rattachement des protections sociales peut se faire autrement que par un employeur ou des employeurs. Est-ce que ça ne pourrait pas être, par exemple, dès lors que l'on fournit une prestation de travail, peu importe la qualité de la relation que l'on a avec la personne qui achète notre travail, peu importe la façon dont il est rémunéré?

Une autre question, je crois, qui nous interpelle, c'est celle des définitions avec lesquelles nous travaillons. Maître Brière en a parlé plus tôt et je me demande si les panellistes auraient quelque chose à dire là-dessus.

Finalement, il y a la question de la portabilité des bénéfices, qui est, de toute évidence, mise en péril par la précarité de l'emploi.

Merci.

MS CARRÉ: Obviously, if you can make social protection be a citizenship right, you do not have a problem anymore, but that is very hard to achieve, in the U.S. context for sure. I will not speak about the other states.

There is quite a bit of innovation. I did not have time to talk about that. There is quite a bit of innovation in the U.S. around building benefit pools, building mechanisms that enable people to pool their contribution and have their benefit be portable, be it for health, be it for pension. Those things are particularly starting for the people that are independent contractors, that do not have an employer at all, do not have a structure. There are employee associations, things that are spinoffs of unions, starting to do that, so the structures are there.

What we do not have is a mechanism to tap into an employer contribution. As long as we have a benefit system that is tied to the employment relationship, the only employer that is compelled to pay into it is either a unionized employer under contract or the one that feels that it should do so to retain its workforce. We can come up with mechanisms -- and we have -- but we do not have a financing mechanism and that is the biggest issue on the table. If we are not going to do a national system, we can think of more flexible ways of doing it that are more decentralized. But there is still a question about how do you compel or encourage an employer contribution.

M. BRIERE: Peut-être juste un mot. Je pense que j'ai pris position dans le cadre de l'exposé, mais peut-être le réaffirmer. Je pense que oui, les états doivent jouer un rôle pro-actif et doivent intervenir, parce que les parties, pour l'instant, sont diamétralement opposées et à court terme il n'y aura pas de consensus entre les parties. Les états doivent jouer un rôle de tiers qui doit intervenir. Parce que sinon, il est trop facile politiquement, de se retrancher derrière le fait qu'il n'y a pas de consensus pour ne rien faire. Et ça, au Québec, on le vit depuis quelques années. Il n'y a pas beaucoup de consensus, et il n'y a pas d'intervention politique à cet égard-là, et les choses n'avancent pas, ne bougent pas. Si on veut que ça avance, si on veut que ça bouge, je pense que l'état devra intervenir.

SEÑOR ROBERTO FLORES LIMA: Si no hubiera alguna persona más que deseara hacer uso de la palabra.

Es muy difícil, realmente, comentar brevemente las intervenciones, son tan ricas.

Esta función de comentarista o de moderador es siempre muy ingrata, porque nunca andemos a la profundidad de los conceptos de los exponentes.

En relación con esto, el principio sería, esta marcado en el programa que vamos a pasar por una etapa de conclusiones y, la primera conclusión es, quizás, que no hay conclusión. Que tenemos muchas puertas abiertas, que tenemos muchos caminos hacia adelante y que, realmente, lo que hemos expuesto en estos días nos deja ver que puede haber muchos caminos para lograr lo que queremos. Esto es la protección del trabajador, el que desempeñemos nuestro trabajo en condiciones socialmente aceptables y que esto permita, también, contribuir al beneficio de las empresas y hacerlas más eficientes, rentables, competitivas en general.

Partimos de una preocupación. Es una preocupación de no tener, quizás, un camino, de tener varios y de tener la duda de saber si por el que estamos transitando es el más pertinente a nuestras necesidades, a nuestras circunstancias y a lo que habremos de enfrentar en el futuro.

También tenemos una idea muy clara de que el concepto de empleo deja de ser algo común, regulado, y el propio concepto se está transformando. Ya no esperamos tener los empleos que teníamos antes. Quizás el mundo del futuro sea un futuro con menos empleo pero con más trabajo, pero un trabajo sustancialmente diferente al que tenemos actualmente.

También tenemos una tendencia hacia incorporar más a los trabajadores, a todos nosotros como trabajadores en conjunto hacia una participación mucho más flexible, comprometida en las empresas. Un trabajo que involucre nuestra supervisión, de nuestra calidad, de nuestro trabajo en equipo, de nuestra responsabilidad para ser miembros de una empresa y del compromiso que tenemos que tener con ella.

Pero eso también implica, como lo vemos, una exigencia de parte de la empresa para poder atender las necesidades de los trabajadores, de la masa de trabajadores. Y en esta visión, quizás, en que debemos tal vez transitar, como lo comentaba François, quizás una utopía, pero en el futuro consideraremos el derecho a tener beneficios sociales y a estar protegidos socialmente por el sólo hecho de ser ciudadano.

Yo pienso que aunque sea una aspiración que podamos ver lejana, es hacia allá donde deberíamos enfocar nuestros esfuerzos.

También tenemos que ir cambiando ya la visión del empleo asalariado. Este concepto se vuelve cada vez más anacrónico, hacia esta nueva forma de entender el trabajo y la relación de trabajo que tenemos como personas físicas y personas morales. Y esta modificación del concepto del trabajo evidentemente nos lleva a una modificación en términos de los aspectos que regulan o que norman el concepto de trabajo.

Pretendemos que ya no se más fuerza de trabajo o mano de obra la que participa en las empresas; ese concepto está quizás más orientado hacia la idea que el trabajador era un insumo productivo de las empresas, era otro elemento más como factor de producción.

Creo que debemos transitar hacia una idea que ya no es más el trabajador como mano de obra sino que el trabajador es el recurso humano, el ser humano el que está involucrado en las organizaciones y tenemos que dejar quizás atrás conceptos que ya no son pertinentes a la nueva realidad.

También tenemos que modificar nuestra política, nuestra visión de confrontación entre los trabajadores y las empresas. Al final, todos somos trabajadores; al final todos estamos interesados en que nuestras unidades económicas funcionen bien, que sean pertinentes, que sean protectoras de la sociedad en que vivimos, que produzcan bienes y servicios que necesitamos.

Por lo tanto, quizás, también la visión de confrontación derivada de una idea de que el trabajador era un insumo productivo y que, por lo tanto, tenía que estar siempre viendo la forma en que negociaba con el empleador para ver cuál de los dos obtenía el mejor beneficio de esa relación. Ese tipo de relación tenemos también que transformarla hacia una relación de recuperar otra vez el concepto del ser humano que se involucra en las nuevas organizaciones.

Hay muchas reflexiones en torno a esto. Tenemos que dejar también la idea de responder a problemas individuales para atenderlos en una idea más social. El problema del ser, del individuo es el problema que tiene que resolverse en una relación con la empresa, sino es la sociedad la que tiene que atender y tomar en sus manos las responsabilidades del colectivo.

Hay muchas transformaciones que estas pláticas que hemos escuchado en estos días nos llevan a abrir estas puertas que les decía.

Tenemos también esta idea de la empresa individual a la red de empresas, a los sistemas de empresas que también transforman el mundo del trabajo y que también transforman la interacción entre las economías y la aspiración que todos tenemos y que tenemos la concepción, pero que no sabemos como vamos a llegar a ella, de la aldea global.

También tenemos, pues, un gran interés y tenemos la gran necesidad de hacer el esfuerzo por ajustar nuestras normas y nuestros marcos jurídicos a esta nueva realidad, una realidad que, algunos pensamos, puede ser una asechanza del futuro y, otros pensamos, que puede ser una oportunidad.

Como lo mencionaba Jean-Yves, yo creo que tenemos que imaginar, tenemos que ser muy creativos, tenemos que ser muy constructivos pensar en que está en nuestras manos el bajar a la realidad esa sociedad que queremos y tenemos que hacerlo ya, no tenemos más tiempo para hacerlo.

En México, siempre pensamos y tenemos una frase muy cercana en nuestra boca en las conversaciones. Siempre estamos muy preocupados por el tipo de hijos, por el tipo de país que queremos dejarles a nuestros hijos y dichas reflexiones más recientes nos llevan a pensar en qué tipo de hijos queremos dejarle a nuestros países y qué responsabilidades tienen que tener y debemos heradarlas para que sean capaces de continuar construyendo una sociedad mucho más igualitaria y que nos de una posibilidad de seguir conservándonos y construyéndonos como seres humanos.

Yo creo que, a mi en particular, yo agradezco mucho la invitación de los secretarios de ACLAN en los tres países por la invitación que me hicieron a participar en este seminario. Evidentemente les agradezco mucho a nuestros compañeros de Canadá por su calurosa recepción, por ser el espacio de conversar, por platicarles, por conocerlos a Uds., por saber cómo piensan, por saber que estamos todos comprometidos en un esfuerzo para transformar nuestras sociedades y con el mayor deseo de que esto sea en beneficio de todos.

Les agradezco nuevamente también a mis compañeros norteamericanos y mexicanos por esta oportunidad.

Y, como yo tuve mi espacio para conversar quiero dejar estas reflexiones, siempre como un camino a seguir y con todo el interés de seguir haciéndolo juntos como en este momento en que hemos compartido tantos deseos y también tantas oportunidades que tenemos hacia adelante.

Muchas gracias por todo. le cedo la palabra a May para que de por concluido este seminario.

Muchas gracias.

THE CHAIRPERSON (May Morpaw): Thank you, Roberto. Thank you to the panel.

I want to thank Roberto in particular for starting the panel on time when I was delayed elsewhere -- I appreciate that very much -- and also for his masterful summary here at the end of this panel.

I think this was a very interesting one, that left us with a lot of ideas. I am not going to pretend to build on that. I think we have had a very substantive discussion.

My primary conclusion is that we chose the right topic in that it gathered so many people here to discuss the issue. We also invited the right people, both to speak and to participate, given the participation we have had through the two days.

Let me thank a few people who have been instrumental in putting this together.

First of all, of course, the participants, which is all of you, but especially the steering committee. You have a green program in your package. The members of the steering committee are listed. A certain number of them are still here, others have left. They have all helped us a great deal in finding speakers and defining the topics and orienting the discussion for these few days.

I would like to ask Terry Hoopes to come up, and Rafael Aranda, on behalf of the other two countries. Irasema had to leave, so Terry is going to say a few closing words, and Rafael as well.

MR. HOOPES: Thank you, May.

Irasema Garza, the Secretary of the United States National Administrative Office, asked me to present her apologies for not being able to stay for the conclusion.

This has been a pleasurable and valuable exchange of information. We always welcome the opportunity to meet with our NAFTA partners and to learn more about each other's laws and institutions and how the government systems work.

We look forward to working in cooperation in the future, to improve and enforce the working conditions for all North American workers and to help make all North American firms more competitive and more productive.

On behalf of the U.S. delegation, again I would like to thank May Morpaw for helping to organize everything here, and for our Mexican counterparts as well, and for all of their staff for their hard work in coordinating this event.

I would personally like to thank Marc Rioux for his work in organizing the event.

Finally, I extend my sincere thanks to the speakers and the moderators for their knowledge and experiences. These programs are successful largely because of their willingness to share their time and talents to further our efforts under the North American Agreement on Labour Cooperation.

SEÑOR ARANDA: Bueno, para cerrar, muchas gracias a Canadá por su hospitalidad. Gracias a todos los participantes. Damos por cerrada la sesión.

--- Whereupon the Conference adjourned