Labour Relations
Amendment Act (Construction Industry), 2000,
Bill 69, Mr Stockwell / Loi modifiant la Loi sur
les relations de travail
(industrie de la construction), projet de loi 69, M.
Stockwell
International
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Construction Council of
Ontario
Mr Larry Lineham
Sheet Metal Workers'
International Association Local 504; Millwright District Council
of Ontario
Mr James Moffat
Mr Tom Whynott
Mr Michael Stewart
International
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1687
Mr Serge Ayotte
International
Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing
Iron Workers Local 786
Mr Jim Lajeunesse
United Brotherhood of
Carpenters and Joiners of America Local 2486; Provincial Building
and Construction Trades Council of Ontario
Mr Tom Cardinal
Mr Patrick Dillon
United Association of
Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting
Industry, Local 800; Labourers' International Union, Local
493
Mr Ron Laforest
Mr Art Adams
Electrical
Contractors Association of Northern Ontario
Mr Peter Bryant
Mr Wayne Gatien
Mr Cecil Burton
STANDING COMMITTEE ON
JUSTICE AND SOCIAL POLICY
Chair /
Présidente
Ms Marilyn Mushinski (Scarborough Centre / -Centre
PC)
Vice-Chair / Vice-Président
Mr Carl DeFaria (Mississauga East / -Est PC)
Mr Marcel Beaubien (Lambton-Kent-Middlesex PC)
Mr Michael Bryant (St Paul's L)
Mr Carl DeFaria (Mississauga East / -Est PC)
Mrs Brenda Elliott (Guelph-Wellington PC)
Mr Garry J. Guzzo (Ottawa West-Nepean / Ottawa-Ouest-Nepean
PC)
Mr Peter Kormos (Niagara Centre / -Centre ND)
Mrs Lyn McLeod (Thunder Bay-Atikokan L)
Ms Marilyn Mushinski (Scarborough Centre / -Centre
PC)
Substitutions / Membres remplaçants
Mr Rick Bartolucci (Sudbury L)
Mr David Christopherson (Hamilton West / -Ouest ND)
Mr Raminder Gill (Bramalea-Gore-Malton-Springdale PC)
Hon Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke Centre / -Centre PC)
Clerk / Greffière
Ms Susan Sourial
Staff / Personnel
Mr Avrum Fenson, research officer, Research and Information
Services
The committee met at
1105 in the Ambassador Hotel, Sudbury.
LABOUR RELATIONS AMENDMENT ACT (CONSTRUCTION
INDUSTRY), 2000 / LOI DE 2000 MODIFIANT LA LOI SUR LES RELATIONS
DE TRAVAIL (INDUSTRIE DE LA CONSTRUCTION)
Consideration of Bill 69, An
Act to amend the Labour Relations Act, 1995 in relation to the
construction industry / Projet de loi 69, Loi modifiant la Loi de
1995 sur les relations de travail en ce qui a trait à
l'industrie de la construction.
The Chair (Ms Marilyn
Mushinski): I think I'll get the meeting underway. Good
morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Marilyn Mushinski, Chair of
the standing committee on justice and social policy. I apologize
for being a little late this morning. Unfortunately, our flight
was somewhat delayed.
INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF ELECTRICAL WORKERS
CONSTRUCTION COUNCIL OF ONTARIO
The Chair:
This morning's meeting is to discuss Bill 69, An Act to
amend the Labour Relations Act, 1995 in relation to the
construction industry. Delegations will be allowed to address us
for 20 minutes; that includes questions from the committee. The
first speaker is Mr Larry Lineham, business manager of the
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Construction
Council of Ontario. Good morning.
Mr Rick Bartolucci
(Sudbury): Madam Chair, just before Larry Lineham
starts, I'd just like to welcome the committee and our guests to
Sudbury. Sudbury people are always used to starting on time and
all the Sudbury people were there but, you know what, Air Ontario
will have to be forgiven. No one else is to blame. Thanks, Madam
Chair, and welcome to Sudbury.
The Chair:
Thank you. It's funny, I thought I flew Air Canada.
Mr Larry
Lineham: As you stated, my name is Larry Lineham and I
work for the IBEW Construction Council of Ontario. I'm going to
skip the issues in the background-they're in the written
submissions-and I'm going to go right to page 3 because I'd like
to get a few things in before my time allotment is over.
I want to discuss the new
legislation, Bill 69, specifically the mandatory default hiring
hall provisions which allow employers mobility for up to 40% of
the total number of employees from any local or locals in the
province required for a project anywhere in Ontario. Further, the
employer will be able to select or name-hire 60% of the employees
from the local union in whose geographic jurisdiction the work is
performed.
For example, on a project in
Local 1687, Sudbury, requiring 100 electricians, 40 electricians
could come from one local or a combination of locals in the
province. Local 1687 would supply 60 electricians, of whom 60%,
or 36, would be name-hired from their out-of-work list. In total,
the employer could name-hire 76 out of the possible 100
electricians on the site.
The view of the IBEW CCO is
that this process gives the employer the right to name-hire the
same individuals for all of their projects across the province
and results in an unfair advantage of some members over others.
It will create two economic levels in the province-the haves and
the have-nots. It will pit member against member and local
against local. It will create an imbalance in hiring within the
province. Smaller communities and smaller locals will suffer the
most. Can you imagine a company taking 40% of a crew into an area
that has been in the grip of unemployment for a prolonged period
of time? How do you think the members in that geographic area are
going to react? How will older members, previously injured
members and members who have taken on the role steward and health
and safety representatives fare in this selective hiring process?
In our opinion, these individuals will be blackballed and
subsequently they will become a subclass who will never be
selected by an employer. The end result will be a system of
hiring that's based on favouritism and nepotism.
Section 163.2: This section
gives the employers the right to seek amendments to virtually
every clause in the collective agreement save statutorily
regulated holidays and hours of work. Employers can seek
exemption from clauses like wage rates, overtime pay and shift
differentials, benefits, travel, room and board allowance and
requirements respecting the ratio of apprentices employed by an
employer, to name a few.
A provincial employer
bargaining association, an EBA, and a designated regional
employers' association of
the bargaining agency may apply for amendments for all work
anywhere in Ontario providing at least some of their members
carry on business in that particular geographic area. For
example, a Toronto contractors' association may apply for
amendments to any local union appendix in the province provided
that some of its members perform work in that area.
The IBEW CCO's view is that
this section severely undermines the collective bargaining
process, as the employers have no incentive to bargain in good
faith as they have an avenue to seek changes to the collective
agreement outside of negotiations. In effect, this section of
Bill 69 renders the collective bargaining process meaningless. It
opens the door for an employer to coerce a local union into
accepting certain amendments or else face the threat of going to
final offer selector with the possibility of even greater
cuts.
Section 163.3: This section
of Bill 69 deals with a very complicated arbitration process. The
application by an employer for amending a local's collective
agreement must be responded to within seven days. If the local
does not agree within 14 days, the application may then be
referred by the employer to arbitration. Both parties-the union
and the employer-are entitled to put forward a final offer with
respect to the provisions of the collective agreement the
employer association wants to amend, along with written
submissions. Should an arbitrator not be agreed upon by both
parties, either party may make a written request to the Minister
of Labour to appoint an arbitrator. The appointed arbitrator is
not required to hold an oral or electronic hearing unless he or
she feels it is necessary to resolve an issue arising out of the
submissions. The only relevant factor the arbitrator is to
consider is whether or not the employer organization's members
are at a competitive disadvantage. The arbitrator must determine
if there is a competitive disadvantage and, if so, determine
whether that competitive disadvantage would be removed if the
collective agreement were amended in accordance with the
employer's application.
The view of the IBEW CCO is
that this section of Bill 69 is designed to force unions to
make concessions. There are no stipulated criteria as to what
constitutes a competitive disadvantage. Therefore, any or all
clauses in the collective agreement would be susceptible to an
arbitration. The issue of selection of an arbitrator is also of
grave concern to our organization. If an arbitrator is not agreed
to by the parties, either party may make a written request to the
Minister of Labour to appoint an arbitrator. Should an employer
organization purposely not agree to an arbitrator for whatever
reason, then the minister shall appoint. This raises the issue of
an arbitrator's experience, specifically in the construction
industry, their qualifications and neutrality. What further
taints this process is the Minister of Labour's apparent disdain
for current arbitrators, asserting that they are biased in favour
of the unions.
The process outlined in this
section of Bill 69 will be costly and time-consuming for both the
employer and the union, as it will require industry studies,
briefs and experts such as economists. There can be no doubt as
to what this arbitration process will do. By design, it will
lower the wages and working conditions of the union construction
worker in one form or another. That part of the arbitration
process is obvious.
Bill 69, section 126: This
deals with the related employer and the blood relations. I'm just
going to skip to the IBEW CCO's view. The view of the IBEW CCO is
that this section of Bill 69 now states that family relationship
cannot be a factor at all in determining an application. For
example, if an owner of one company sets up a second company and
puts it in his wife's, son's or daughter's name, the OLRB is not
even allowed to consider that fact. The "key person" referred to
in this bill has nothing to do with family relationship and
requires that the individual hold a formal management
position.
The effect on a union's
ability to win an application under this revised section of the
act will be dramatically curtailed. With the family relationship
being barred from consideration, there will never be common
ownership of the two companies by one person, as the second
company will be in the name of a family member. In the key-person
application, how will the union be able to substantiate that an
estimator is a key person? It can be argued that a superintendent
or an estimator does not occupy a formal management role. Thus,
while it was very difficult to win a key-person application
before, now it will be almost impossible.
Section 160.1: The view of
the IBEW COO is that this section of Bill 69 was created to allow
the general contractors, with the union's blessing, to abandon
their labour agreements. This section of the bill falls in step
with our understanding that the government is contemplating
exempting eight general contractors working outside of Toronto
and board area 8 from their province-wide collective agreements.
We are not in favour of automatically releasing the general
contractors in Ontario or in any specific locations in Ontario
from the existing collective agreements under which they
currently operate. We must clearly state our objections to any
government action that will release general contractors from the
signed collective agreements, whether it be inside of Toronto and
board area 8 or across the province. Taking this direction would
put the Ontario government in the position of nullifying existing
signed collective agreements, and we do not believe this is the
correct role for government.
Unionized electrical
contractors currently do about 10% of their work through the
eight large general contractors who are seeking release from the
province-wide collective agreements for work outside of Toronto
and board area 8. Currently, when contractors need workers beyond
their employees, they hire from the local union in the area
specified in the collective agreement.
Should these general
contractors be automatically released, the unionized electrical
subcontractors will likely suffer a loss of business as the
general contractors will attempt to make greater use of non-union
subtrades and workers. The result will be fewer employment
opportunities for
unionized electricians. This will in essence give an unfair
advantage to these already large general contractors, creating
hardships for smaller- and medium-size contractors.
If we continue down this
path, it is quite conceivable that a situation could be created
where the marketplace is controlled exclusively by eight or fewer
large general contractors. Eventually, it is quite conceivable
that the Ontario construction industry would be at the mercy of
three large general contractors, as is the case in Alberta.
The preceding were the views
of the IBEW CCO. I have some observations as the past business
manager of Local 1687, having 15 years' experience and having
been a construction worker since 1958. We are told the premise of
Bill 69 is to address the non-competitiveness concern of the
unionized subcontractors in Ontario. If this is the case, I do
not understand how allowing the eight general contractors to get
out of their contractual obligation to subcontract work only to
union subcontractors will make those subcontractors more
competitive.
This bill, with its mobility
provision, will not help the local economy of small communities
in northern Ontario. Because the majority of contractors who are
the successful bidders on all major projects in the north come
from southern Ontario, this mobility provision will only
exacerbate an already gloomy employment picture in northern
Ontario.
The name-hire provisions of
this legislation are a direct intrusion in collective agreements
and interfere with the union's rights and obligations under the
Ontario Labour Relations Act to distribute work to its members in
a fair and equitable manner. Even the employment insurance
commission, in numerous decisions of record, has referred to the
hiring-list system as a just manner of distributing work through
the hiring hall. Many briefs have alluded to the flaws in the
designated regional employers' organization provisions of Bill 69
and the problems with multiple final offers which may flow from
this.
This very serious problem can
only have a detrimental effect on labour relations stability in
Ontario. It is ironic, and I'm sure not missed by some of you,
that the Electrical Contractors Association of Ontario, which is
one of the proponents of the repeal of section 1(4), continues to
spend over $500,000 a year, with their partners, the
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, extolling the
virtues of the way we negotiate our collective agreements,
without the threat of a strike or lockout. This begs the
question: What are their motives in this exercise?
My concern is that Bill 69
will leave some union members unemployable and put a strain on
the programs the unions have developed for their members, such as
health plans and pension plans, which will cause the plans to
collapse. When this happens, the burden will be shifted to the
provincial welfare system and fuel the underground economy. I am
surprised that our local politicians, who continually criticize
the migration of our young people to southern locations, aren't
here berating this legislation, which will effectively give
northern jobs in northern locations to southern Ontario
workers.
On April 25, 2000, at the
Colony Hotel, Labour Minister Stockwell asked the broader labour
caucus, when he announced the language in Bill 69, "Do you
believe that an electrician from Wawa should make the same as an
electrician from Toronto?" Given the long winters, higher price
for gas, cars and food, the poor roads and, in some cases, the
lack of paved roads that we use to go to work, I would answer
that question today, "No, we should get more."
As a business manager of a
500-man local, I lost more members to traffic accidents going to
work than locals 12 times our size. Highway 144 is a good example
of what we use to get to work: two narrow lanes and no soft
shoulders.
But this statement by Mr
Stockwell, coupled with others by southern bureaucrats like the
one made to Gerry Lougheed on cancer travel grant inequities,
that that's the price you pay for living in places like
Kapuskasing, only stresses the disdain people have for northern
residents. For that reason, I would request that this committee
recommend not passing Bill 69 as it stands and would seriously
consider the recommendations coming from the labour partners for
amendments that would make this legislation more workable.
Respectfully submitted, and I
thank you very much for the time.
The Chair:
Thank you, Mr Lineham. We have about five minutes for questions,
and we'll start with Mr Bartolucci.
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Mr
Bartolucci: Thanks very much, Madam Chair. Larry, thanks
very much for your presentation. Certainly, I think you've
outlined the concerns of northerners with regard to the mobility
and the naming issues. You know the mechanics. You've been around
long enough to know that this is a Conservative majority
government. If they choose to pass Bill 69, they will. There has
been no hint that the government is going to withdraw this
bill.
If in fact they don't
withdraw it, what are the three major amendments that the
government has to include in the legislation to make it fairer
legislation for-in particular, because I'm from the
north-northern workers?
Mr Lineham:
The first major issue they have to deal with is the hiring
immobility. They refer to it as mobility, but it's not mobility;
it's actually hiring outside of the local. That's an issue that I
think has to be addressed. For local unions that rely on the list
system 100%, this is a drastic deviation from the way we do
business, to be allowed to name-hire 76% of their employees.
That's the issue that has to be addressed.
Another major issue that has
to be addressed is the open door to multiple final offers. I
believe the brief from the EBAs addresses that issue, where it
has to be restricted. In other words, designated regional
employer organizations-there only has to be one per area. There's
only one bargaining agency per area per trade, and I think that's
what has to be addressed.
With regard to what other
changes, I certainly think we have to look at opening the
collective agreements. This is an intrusion. I really think there could
have been more input from the north into the process, and I've
got to admit that I was part of the industry committee. I was one
person from the north and I was on the committee, but I can tell
you that there wasn't a lot of input that went into this
legislation from labour or from the north.
Hon Chris Stockwell
(Minister of Labour): I have a couple of quick
questions. One, set aside the legislation; let's presume it
doesn't get passed. Then do you think the status quo is
hunky-dory and everything's going fine and there's really no
trouble in the industry?
Mr Lineham:
Do I think there are no problems in the industry?
Hon Mr
Stockwell: That's my question, yes.
Mr Lineham:
There are problems in every industry. There are problems in
government. I don't know whether you're going to necessarily
legislate all of the problems out of the province of Ontario. I'm
just concerned about enacting legislation that will create more
problems as opposed to eliminating them.
Hon Mr
Stockwell: OK. The next one is, to put that quote in
context with respect to Wawa-not the question of whether or not
they should be paid as much, sure they should. But from an
economic point of view as far as winning tenders, winning jobs,
would you not at least concede that there may be some difficulty
because of the economic conditions in Wawa as opposed to Toronto
with respect to tendering, pay scales and so on and so forth?
Mr Lineham:
I'd like to point out, Minister Stockwell, with all due respect,
that there are differences in the wage rates in Toronto, northern
Ontario, London, Windsor, Hamilton. They're all different rates.
The highest rate in the province, by the way, is Toronto. There
was recognition given when provincial legislation was brought in
that addressed this issue.
I'd also like to say that
since 1985 I've been playing a leading role in provincial
negotiations, and at every set of negotiations, the contractors
have come and congratulated labour. Why would they do that if the
contracts are unfair, if the settlements are unfair? It's beyond
me.
Hon Mr
Stockwell: So, basically, there are differentials
now?
Mr Lineham:
There are differentials that exist today.
Hon Mr
Stockwell: So I was just stating the obvious.
Mr Lineham:
But I'll tell you something. It's no personal affront to you, but
the remark just reflects, as far as I'm concerned, the attitude
of people in the GTA towards northern Ontario.
The Chair:
Thank you, Mr Lineham. Thank you for coming this morning.
SHEET METAL WORKERS' INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION LOCAL
504 / MILLWRIGHT DISTRICT COUNCIL OF ONTARIO
The Chair:
The next speakers are Mr Whynott and Mr Stewart from the Sheet
Metal Workers' International Association and the Millwright
District Council of Ontario. Good morning.
Mr James
Moffat: Good morning, Madam Chair and committee members.
My names is James Moffat, from the Ontario Sheet Metal Workers'
and Roofers' Conference. To my far left is Michael Stewart, the
business manager of the millwrights' local union here, 1425, and
to my immediate left is Tom Whynott, the business manager of the
Sheet Metal Workers' International Association, Local 504.
Hopefully we'll have some time for questions after the
presentation. I'm going to hand it over to Tom. He's going to go
through the bill and the impact it's going to have on the local
area, and Mike has a position letter that I think the committee's
been given.
I just want to reiterate the
Ontario conference's position on this bill: We prefer that Bill
69 be withdrawn and not be replaced with the deletion of
subsection 1(4). We have, because of the impact and because of
the Conservative government majority, proposed some amendments as
well.
I'll hand it over to the
business manager from Sudbury, Tom Whynott.
Mr Tom
Whynott: I'm the business manager of the Sheet Metal
Workers' International, Local 504. My local represents over 200
sheet metal workers and roofers who live and work in the Sudbury
and Sault Ste Marie area. Mr Stewart is with us today. As
everyone knows, in construction, we don't always agree on
jurisdiction, but we're here today to oppose this piece of
legislation, and he will be reading a piece of information for
you.
We are here today not to
endorse this bill, but to tell this committee that it is a
terrible bill and to ask for amendments to lessen the damage it
will cause to Sudbury and Sault Ste Marie and to the people who
live and work in these cities.
Our first preference is that
Bill 69 be withdrawn in its entirety and not be replaced with the
repeal of subsection 1(4). We oppose the bill because it will
hurt all workers and unions in Ontario for the following
reasons:
First, Bill 69 is a race to
the bottom. This bill is about reducing the wages for all
workers. There is no doubt about that. In one address to the
building trades union, the Minister of Labour asked, "Why should
a worker in Wawa make the same amount of money as a worker in
Toronto?" Ask the people in Wawa if their workers should have
their wages cut. I agree with our conference when it says that
once unionized workers' wages are reduced to the non-union level,
the non-union wages will in turn be reduced even more. This is
inevitable. Wages will then go down and down and down.
Bill 69 is not necessary, as ICI collective
agreements today ensure that our companies are competitive. Our
sheet metal collective agreement presently contains separate
local appendices to allow for local unions to agree to changes in
wages where necessary. My local union, 504, has a stabilization
fund paid for by our members out of their wages, which our
contractors use to obtain contracts against non-union companies.
For example, the following 11 projects were obtained by our local
contractors using the stabilization fund without Bill 69:
Au-Chateau in Sturgeon Falls; Wal-Mart in North Bay; Inco, anode
casting; Strathcona mine, conveyor gallery siding; Inco,
Cantrell; John Rhodes pool, Sault Ste Marie; Famous Players
Theatre, Sudbury; Kashechewan school; E.B. Eddy, Espanola mill;
Inco flue stack repairs; and the YMCA in Sudbury.
Secondly, Bill 69 is an
attack on our hiring hall, and encourages favoritism and
discrimination. Section 163.5 of Bill 69 will destroy my hiring
hall by allowing employers to pick and choose. It allows
employers to import up to 40% of the workers needed for a project
from outside Sudbury. This means that 40% of the jobs in Sudbury,
which should be given to those people who live and work and raise
their families in Sudbury, will go to workers from outside the
area, workers who would rather work in their own hometowns but
who will be forced to travel by their employers. It allows
employers to name-hire up to 60% of the remaining 60% of workers
needed. Together, this gives the employers the right to name-hire
76% of the workers needed.
This is shameful. The hiring
hall is the heart and soul of my union. It is the protection of
my members' need to make sure the workers go to work based on how
long they were unemployed. The worker who has been out of work
the longest is on the top of the list. This makes sure that every
worker gets a chance to work. No one would dare say that this is
not fair, except this government. It wants to take that away and
give companies the right to pick the same people over and over
again. This guarantees that many people will not work. And who
will get picked? The company favourites. Who will be ignored? The
members of Local 504 who are on workers' compensation. We have
six of them right now. Do they not have the right to work? Who
will be ignored? The older members of Local 504. We have 36
members over 50 years old. Do they not have the right to
work?
1130
The worst part about this is
that it is not necessary. It is not necessary because all our
members are either certified journeymen with five years of
apprenticeship or registered apprentices supervised by a
journeyman. It is not necessary because article 25.1 of our sheet
metal collective agreement requires me to supply our contractors
with qualified workers. In the last 25 years we have never had a
grievance with respect to this issue. Why? Because we always
supply qualified workers.
Bill 69 is an attack on our
free collective bargaining. The members of Local 504 have elected
me to represent them in their dealings with their employers. They
have elected me to negotiate decent wages and welfare benefits
and pension plans on their behalf. They are being betrayed by
this government. If Bill 69 passes, they will have a union but no
right to have a say in their working lives.
Instead of democracy, Bill 69
says it is big government in Toronto and big employers from
Toronto who will decide who works in Sudbury and how much Sudbury
workers will receive. It is big government and big employers who
will decide where Sudbury workers will work, when they work, and
whether or not they get a pension.
While this bill attacks all
workers in Ontario, it especially hurts workers outside Toronto
for the following reasons:
First, subsection 163.5(1)
will allow employers to employ up to 40% of the total number of
employees required for a project from anywhere in Ontario.
Secondly, the government is
attempting to allow large general contractors such as Ellis-Don
and Van Bots Construction to operate non-union for some work, but
only outside Toronto.
Thirdly, section 163.2
enables companies from Toronto to seek reductions in wages and
benefits in communities throughout Ontario. Thus, Toronto
employers will be able to gut our Sudbury collective agreements
which were negotiated by local unions and local contractor
associations.
What does this mean for
Sudbury and many of its workers? It means unemployment and
poverty. Many workers in Sudbury stand to lose their jobs, jobs
with good wages which support them and their families.
This will occur for two
different reasons. Allowing employers to employ up to 40% of the
total number of employees required for a project from anywhere in
Ontario means that up to 40% of unionized workers in Sudbury will
lose their jobs. We have a lot of outside contractors, mostly
from Toronto, working in Sudbury. Right now they have to use our
members, but if Bill 69 is passed, these companies will not
employ Sudbury workers for Sudbury jobs. Instead, they will force
their own employees to travel to Sudbury. Bill 69 says to Sudbury
workers that we do not have a right to work in the very town
where we live and raise our families.
The following projects in
Sudbury were done by sheet metal companies from outside Sudbury:
Laurentian Hospital expansion; A&P, North Bay; call centre,
Sault Ste Marie; Inco S02 abatement program; E.B.
Eddy, Espanola; Ontario Hydro, Timmins; casino, Sault Ste Marie;
St Mary's Paper, Sault Ste Marie; Algoma Steel, Sault Ste Marie;
paper mill, Iroquois Falls. The total number of jobs was 115. If
Bill 69 had been passed earlier, 40%, or 46 Sudbury workers,
would have been unemployed.
The Minister of Labour has
stated that the collective agreement requirement to pay
accommodation and travel is protection for workers and ensures
that the 40% rule will not be abused by employers. This is not
true for two reasons. First, we have received a legal opinion
which states that section 163.4(4) removes that protection by
allowing arbitrators to
amend collective agreements with respect to accommodation and
travel. Secondly, our members travel all over the Sudbury and
Sault Ste Marie areas. Our agreement covers 35,000 square miles.
For example, our members travel to Blind River, Elliot Lake,
Chapleau, Kirkland Lake and Wawa. This means that any worker who
works in those towns will have to receive accommodation and
travel unless the arbitrator rules otherwise. Therefore, if
Toronto companies have to pay travel and accommodation, it is
obvious that they will use their own employees from Toronto and
not Sudbury.
As I said earlier, Bill 69,
section 160, if changed, will allow big Toronto-based general
contractors to decertify from the sheet metal workers' union and
other non-civil trade unions, but only outside Toronto.
Therefore, the government wants Ellis-Don to be union in Toronto
but not in Sudbury.
It is true that these general
contractors have not been in Sudbury for a long time, but we know
that if Bill 69 passes, they will be coming here in droves. Will
this provide employment and/or decent wages for Sudbury workers?
No. First, they will bring as many people as they can from
outside Sudbury. Secondly, if there are jobs left over for
Sudbury workers, they will be at low-end, non-union rates, with
little or no benefits and pensions. As our members lose their
jobs or are lucky enough to work at lower rates, this will have a
terrible effect on the town of Sudbury as it will see a reduction
in taxes paid to the city and a reduction in spending generally.
This will mean less money for public services, support for local
merchants and charities.
To lessen the damage which
will be caused to Sudbury and other smaller communities outside
Toronto, we request the following amendments. I also request that
the government accept the proposed amendments made by our
conference in its brief.
For the sake of the people in
Sudbury, we urge you to listen to what we have to say and
withdraw Bill 69, or at least make these amendments. Thank
you.
I'd like to present Mike
Stewart, business manager for the millwrights.
The Chair:
We have about six minutes left.
Mr Michael
Stewart: I just have a letter of support to read and I
won't take up much of the committee's time. You're going to be
hearing the same thing all day. I just want you to consider the
importance of it, rather than bore you all day with it.
"This is to advise that we
have read the brief put together by the Ontario Sheet Metal and
Roofers Conference that is to be presented to the Ontario
provincial government re ... Bill 1(4) at meetings in Windsor and
Sudbury next week.
"The Millwright Regional
Council of Ontario hereby requests that your association"-and I'm
speaking of the Sheet Metal and Roofers Conference-"append the
name of our organization to this brief and speak on behalf of our
affiliated local unions in the province of Ontario."
I represent about 175
members, millwrights here in northern Ontario. This bill would
just be devastating to our membership. That's all I have to say
on it. Mr Whynott has presented the brief and we're in full
support of it.
The Chair:
Thank you, Mr Stewart. Members of the committee, there are about
five minutes left, so I will ask each member to limit their
questions to about a minute and a half.
Ms Shelley Martel
(Nickel Belt): My colleague Dave Christopherson, who is
our labour critic, was due here. I gather there was trouble in
Toronto last night and that's why he's not here. I apologize for
that.
Let me just ask a couple of
questions. Because I don't understand it all that well, can you
explain to me how you use the stabilization fund for your members
to, in essence, help contractors obtain contracts?
Mr
Whynott: It's pretty simple. My members contribute $1 an
hour of their pay to a stabilization fund. The contractors will
come to me and say, "These non-union companies are bidding on
this job and we feel that in order to be competitive and get this
job we need a rate of around $18 an hour." I'll use that for an
example. Our rate is $26 an hour, so we would stabilize the job,
$8 per man-hour on that job, so that in essence the company is
paying $18 an hour and the members are paying the $8 an hour out
of their own pockets to themselves.
Ms Martel:
Clearly you've provided us with projects where that has all
worked and the contractors have then been able to get those
jobs.
Let me ask you a second
question, because you raised a number of concerns about the
name-hire. What's your real concern there, that people who are on
WCB, people who maybe are health and safety activists, are going
to go to the bottom of the list and will never be seen again?
Mr
Whynott: They won't go to the bottom of the list. With
this bill, the company just comes in and says, "I want this, this
and this," and they will get stepped over and left out, until I
have the-what is it?-24% that I can send to them, if it ever gets
that far.
Ms Martel:
As you said earlier, people are all very well qualified. There's
no question about that.
Mr
Whynott: Most certainly.
The Chair:
Minister Stockwell?
Hon Mr
Stockwell: No, I think I'll go to Rami.
Mr Raminder Gill
(Bramalea-Gore-Malton-Springdale): Carrying on a little
further to Ms Martel's question, this $8 per hour, is it the
workers actually putting in $8 or are they saying, "OK, I will
forgo the $8 and I'll be happy with $18"?
Mr
Whynott: No, they are actually putting in the $8. As I
said, all the workers are contributing $1 an hour for every hour
they work. It goes into a fund. The fund builds up and, as I
said, the contractor will come and say, "I need $8 an hour to get
this work." The contractor still pays my members the full wages
and benefits and pension. Once the job is over and he has X
amount of hours at $8 an hour, I give him the balance, I give him
the cheque. But it is paid for by the members.
1140
Mr Gill:
In the first amendment, it says, "...the bill be amended to
ensure that Sudbury companies must employ Sudbury workers
wherever they go."
Mr
Whynott: Yes.
Mr Gill:
So you're proposing that if they happen to be finding work in
Toronto or Hamilton, they take their workers.
Mr
Whynott: Sudbury workers.
Mr Gill: I
sympathize with you, but in a way, you're saying the Toronto
companies can't bring their workers here but Sudbury workers
should be able to go there. I think it shows the mobility. I
think it's a good thing. They take 40% with them and 60%
name-hire. So in essence that's exactly what you're saying. They
should be able to go there.
Mr Moffat:
I think what that amendment does is-what we're talking about is
that a large employer out of the Toronto area has the right to
choose workers from anywhere in the province and take them to a
project in Windsor or Sudbury. That's what we're talking about
here. If that employer is based in Toronto, he can choose workers
from anywhere in the province to work on a project outside of
Toronto. I think what we're saying here is that if the employer
is based in that location, then he should only be allowed to take
those employees with him, not pick and choose from all over the
province.
Mr
Bartolucci: Thanks, Tom and Mike, for your presentation.
I only wish you would have read your amendments into the record
because they're very good amendments which address the needs of
the north very clearly and very honestly.
I don't know who wants to
answer this. The sheet metalists are a compulsory certified
trade, if I'm not mistaken.
Mr
Whynott: Yes, they are.
Mr
Bartolucci: With regard to apprenticeships etc, how does
this legislation affect health and safety? I think we haven't
focused enough on health and safety in this whole discussion over
the course of the last four days and I'd like to highlight that a
little bit today.
Mr Moffat:
It wasn't too long ago that we sat in this very same room when
the government introduced some legislation on reforming the
Apprenticeship and Certification Act, Bill 55. In unison, the
construction industry-employers and labour-argued against the
bill. What the government wanted to do in the bill at that time
was eliminate the mandatory wage rates and the ratios. There are
some minimum standards that fall under the Apprenticeship and
Tradesmen's Qualification Act and part of that are the ratios.
Part of this bill allows the arbitrator to eliminate those
ratios.
We're a compulsory
certified trade and we do apprenticeship training. Our ratios are
set at 4 to 1, for example, and there's a reason for that. That's
to ensure that the apprentices receive the proper training from
their mentor and that these apprentices are trained properly
around health and safety issues. For example, this bill could go
as far as amending it where they could possibly have 10
apprentices to one journeyman. What that says to me is that it's
all about cheaper wages for the workers. I have no idea where
that came from in this bill but it certainly wasn't proposed by
the labour side to put the ratios issue on the table. It's
covered under another act and I think this government should
leave it alone.
The Chair:
Mr Moffat, Mr Whynott and Mr Stewart, thank you for taking the
time here this morning.
INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF ELECTRICAL WORKERS
LOCAL 1687
The Chair:
Next is Mr Serge Ayotte, business manager, International
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Good morning.
Mr Serge
Ayotte: Good morning, Madam Chairman, Mr Stockwell and
the panel. I'm not the business manager, I'm the business rep,
organizer, for IBEW Local 1687, northeastern Ontario.
The International
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, IBEW, Local 1687, represents
approximately 450 unionized electricians, linemen, apprentices
and communication electricians throughout northeastern
Ontario.
Bill 69, section 163.5(1),
mandatory default hiring provisions-I guess you're going to hear
a lot about the mobility issue, the 40%-in my view does a lot of
detrimental things. You have lost opportunities. Not only do our
journeymen lose in this scenario but also our apprentices. It's a
missed opportunity because 40% of the jobs are lost.
Also, as far as northern
Ontario is concerned, we would have a workforce coming from
outside that wouldn't contribute to paying taxes, buying homes
and clothing etc. So for our northern communities it would be a
lost monetary opportunity, which impacts on everyone
concerned.
Right now in northern
Ontario the construction industry is going through a very slow
period. We don't have the high employment in the construction
industry that you have down south. Right now we wouldn't have a
whole bunch of people coming from down south, but once the
opportunities down south become less and less and there's less
work down there, of course the big contractors are going to come
up north. Then the full impact of this mobility issue would be
felt in the north. Imagine coming from southern Ontario and
bringing 40% of the workforce to this area. How do you think our
members would feel? They're being displaced. They feel it's their
work, and I agree with them.
We're saying here that, by
this bill, 76% will be name-hired. It would cost a lot of jobs to
people who are strong union supporters, older members, past and
present shop stewards-and don't tell me that contractors have a
short memory; they don't; that's a fact-members who've been
injured and health and safety activists. We pride ourselves in
the unionized industry on having two and a half times fewer
accidents and incidents. It's because we have a health and
welfare program and people who are trained and people who will
voice their opinion. But if you are working where you have been name-hired
and selected, I think you will be handcuffed when it comes to
voicing an opinion, because the next time you won't be
name-hired. It's a simple fact.
Bill 69, section 163.2,
gives employers the right to seek amendments to virtually every
section of the collective agreement. How will competitiveness be
determined? Is competitiveness another word for less money?
That's the way I feel.
It would be very nice if we
could share the wealth in this province. We can't all buy
$250,000 houses. We can't all buy $30,000 or $40,000 cars. We're
not dot-com investors. We're just common people. We're tradesmen
trying to make a living. You don't pay into a pension plan. If
you're working for $18 and $20 an hour, there's no way you buy an
RRSP. You don't have a pension plan. You work for 30 years in
this trade and what do you have? Broken bones, a sore back, and
you're useless now in the eyes of the employer because you're old
and decrepit and the young people are going to take your place.
There's very little protection.
Going back to the 40%
name-hire, we have a health and welfare plan. That's 40% less
money going into the health and welfare plan. That will impact
our union members down the road, obviously. That's another amount
of money that is going to leave our area.
1150
Bill 69 also allows the
employer to apply to amend the ratio of apprentices to journeymen
employed by the employer. This clause is most likely unlawful as
it is in direct conflict with the Apprenticeship and Tradesmen's
Qualification Act, which governs ratios. If amendments to the
ratios are allowed, it will reduce employment for qualified
journeymen, who receive higher wages than apprentices. It will
also impact on the quality of work performed and health and
safety, as the ratios are in place to ensure the work is
performed by skilled and experienced tradesmen who know how to
work safely and perform quality work. You're only as good as what
you're exposed to, whether you're a hockey player or a
construction worker. If you play with the best or you work with
best, you benefit the most.
The statisticians predict
an ever-increasing shortage of skilled tradesmen-this at a time
when the government of the day is waging war on skilled trades.
How can we entice the very best of our young people to become
tradesmen when the government is lowering pay scales? What would
induce them to join a construction force, work like an idiot-work
hard, I should say-when you're easily displaced? Why would the
brightest minds, the best people, come into this industry? And we
need them. The whole industry has changed. We need better
educated and better skilled people.
Our trade union selects by
means of aptitude tests and oral interviews the very best
candidates for entry into our apprenticeship programs. It is by
no means a fluke that during the apprenticeship skills
competition in Kitchener just last week our union-trained IBEW
apprentices garnered the top three places. Why? Because they're
exposed to the best, that's why.
The Northern Ontario Joint
Apprenticeship Council, NOJAC as it's called, selects, assists
and monitors the progress of each apprentice. NOJAC was
established in the early 1970s through a joint effort between the
Electrical Contractors' Association of Northern Ontario and the
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 1687. Its
object was then, and is today, a dedication to the superior
development of electrical apprentices in northern Ontario. That's
what they do and they do it well.
Probationary apprentices
are schooled in accident prevention and education programs. We
don't just grab a young person and throw him on a job site, which
has been done in the non-union sector. I see it all the time.
They are trained before they go. They are trained also in the use
of the green handbook: The Occupational Health and Safety Act and
Regulations for Construction Projects. They don't go in there
green or they would be subject to injury and all the hazards of
construction.
Mr Stockwell has said this
competitiveness issue will be revisited in 18 months. This means
that once our new collective agreements are in effect, most
likely May 1, 2001, the employer groups will be applying for
amendments. This process takes 35 days. That leaves approximately
four to five months in which we could be working under an amended
or revised agreement. Then it will be revisited if the minister
hears from the employer groups that it's not working. There is a
fear that the minister could gut our collective agreement even
further than Bill 69 or, even worse, remove 1(4) from the
Ontario Labour Relations Act.
I'll go right to the
conclusion. It's a well-known fact that unionized construction
workers are the most skilled in their field and hold health and
safety in the forefront. They have two and a half times less
injury and incidents than their non-union counterparts. Unions
have always prided themselves on negotiating better wages, higher
standards of living, pensions and benefits for the members. Bill
69 takes away everything that unions have negotiated and worked
for since coming into existence. It's not progress. Bill 69 is
nothing more than union-busting which will dismantle unions
through substandard wages and working conditions. This means more
people living in poverty, more on welfare; no health or welfare
plans, no pension plans and no more unions.
It is obvious to us that
the majority of MPPs who would vote for such legislation have no
respect for the work done by a unionized worker. It is also
obvious that they don't understand what it is like to work in
this type of environment. This government is into tests and
testing. We would challenge the MPPs to test their mettle against
any of our brothers and sisters. The outcome to me is
obvious.
It is easy to legislate
measures that impact the livelihood of our unionized brothers and
sisters. This legislation does not impact the livelihood of the
MPPs; it does ours. Bill 69 is an affront to our union members.
There's nothing
constructive about this bill. This government should be taken to
task for proposing such an unworthy piece of legislation. There's
nothing good about this bill. It is a short-sighted and damaging
proposal that will certainly affect current relations that have
been established between employer and employee groups.
As a last comment, we would
like to quote the honourable Dave Christopherson, the NDP member
from Hamilton West: "The reality is that this government loaded
up their political gun with a bullet that removes section 1(4) of
the Ontario Labour Relations Act which, if that was done, would
have the effect of all but eliminating organized labour within
the industrial and construction side of our economy.... I don't
think for a moment that this is anything that anybody ought to be
rejoicing about, when you take that political gun and point it to
those labour leaders and say, `Now, either negotiate lower wages
and negotiate other changes, or we're going to fire this bullet
that will have the effect of eliminating the labour movement.'"
Thank you.
The Chair:
Thank you, Mr Ayotte. There's about five minutes left for
questions. Mr Gill.
Mr Gill:
Thank you for your presentation. I suppose what you're proposing
is the status quo, not to change anything. You think there's no
problems in the current situation?
Mr Ayotte:
There's always a problem in any kind of endeavour that you're in.
I don't think this really addresses the problem. I think it's a
money grab. I think a tradesman should have the dignity of
working for a wage that reflects his capabilities, reflects the
amount of training he's had. We have, over the years, set in
place a health and welfare system, we have safety on the jobs,
we're trained. It's a hazardous occupation. A lot of people are
hurt and mangled and killed every year. I personally had a
brother working for me years ago who died on the job. Maybe today
he wouldn't have died on the job because we have a different
system that's more stringent. It's applied. We have people out
there who will voice their opinion. By making it more
competitive-and when I use the word "competitive," I mean less
money-undoubtedly this will change.
Mr Gill:
You're saying, do nothing, or are you proposing any
amendments?
Mr Ayotte:
I've never really thought of proposing any amendments. I've
presented this brief. There are things that could be done. It's a
harsh step. There's nothing in it that's done by a small measure.
If you're going to correct this, it should be done in small
steps. Have the people all work together at it and try to address
these differences. Ramrodding a bill like this upsets the labour
relations we have with the employees and employer and I don't see
the benefit of it. There should be an ongoing talks or whatever
to try and sort out our problems. That would be beneficial. But
to have something of this magnitude just shoved down our throats
is unpalatable.
Mr
Bartolucci: The reality is that there have been all
kinds of amendments proposed. The brief we had earlier this
morning had amendments; the Building Trades Council had
amendments. We're going to hear amendments from the carpenters'
union in Sudbury, from the sheet metal workers. The reality is
we've heard all kinds of amendments over the course of the last
three and a half days of public hearings. Certainly, Serge would
agree with his own trades council and with the other members of
the trades council when we talk about amendments. I think what
Serge does, and I want to thank him for it, is he outlines very
clearly, very succinctly and very honestly the dilemma faced here
in the north. There is a problem.
I only have one question.
He referred to the 17.3% of people who live below the poverty
line in Sudbury. From a construction worker's point of view, will
this increase that percentage or will it decrease that
percentage? Will it allow more workers from Sudbury and the north
to work or fewer workers from Sudbury and the north to work in a
limited working environment?
1200
Mr Ayotte:
It's very clear to me that of course we will lose some work. I've
got members on the list who have been there for a year-good
people. In our local, in this geographic area, last year we had
40%, some 200-odd people right in the greater Sudbury district,
who were working; the other 60% were working in Windsor, Sarnia,
Toronto, Hamilton, wherever, or they were unemployed, or they
were working in another province. We already have a fantastic
problem, and this adds to that. This mobility clause, 76%
actually in name-hiring, adds to that problem. We have many
members who have exhausted their EI benefits. That's another
really sore point with me. What's the next step, welfare? When
there's all kinds of employment for a tradesman, welfare's a
possibility. There's something lacking here.
Mr
Bartolucci: Thanks very much for an excellent
presentation, Serge.
Ms Martel:
Thank you for coming today to make the presentation. I just want
to focus on the mobility provisions, if I might. Last week there
was an association of electrical contractors before us, and they
were of course supporting the mobility provisions. I raised my
concern that in this community in particular, with some major
construction going on, for example, at the hospital, what would
be the likely outcome if contractors were able to bring people
from Toronto to come and work on some of those projects and why
would I ever want to support something where local people who are
going to be asked to financially support that project wouldn't be
able to work on it? Their argument was that it was OK because
contractors in Sudbury, for example, would be able to go and work
in Chalk River and bring 40% of Sudbury workers to Chalk River,
so that in the end this would all balance out and people would be
able to work regardless and continue to contribute. I just wanted
to know if you'd like to comment on the way they have looked at
it in terms of trying to justify why it should be supported.
Mr Ayotte:
They're looking at things on strictly an economic level. We're
humans. We have families. We have children. We'd like to be home
every now and again.
Construction is hard on married life. My answer to that is, of
course people who live in Sudbury and pay taxes in Sudbury would
want to work in Sudbury. The opportunity to go and work in Chalk
River is fine if there's no other work, but by and large our
membership would rather work in Sudbury, live in Sudbury and pay
taxes here; raise our children, go golfing, enjoy life here. I've
got members who have left for a one-day call in the Soo-one day's
employment. They left North Bay and Sudbury and they went to the
Soo for one day's work. The cost of going there and accommodation
etc, it didn't pay them, but they went. I have members who have
gone lately to Windsor from North Bay and Sudbury and the Soo for
two days of work. This is the way it is here in our area. Bill 69
would make it worse, a ton worse.
The Chair:
Thank you for coming, Mr Ayotte.
INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF BRIDGE, STRUCTURAL,
ORNAMENTAL AND REINFORCING IRON WORKERS LOCAL 786
The Chair:
The next speaker is Mr Jim Lajeunesse, business manager of the
International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and
Reinforcing Iron Workers. Hello, Mr Lajeunesse.
Mr Jim
Lajeunesse: Good morning. My name is Jim Lajeunesse. I'm
the business manager of the iron workers' union Local 786 in
Sudbury. I thank you for giving me this time to voice my concerns
on Bill 69. We share a lot of concerns with our fellow
tradespeople, and we have a few of our own.
Our trade is a little
unique in a way because Bill 69, some of the amendments or the
bill itself, I believe has been part of our collective agreement,
especially in regard to hiring and mobility. On the hiring
clause, we've had 50-50 hiring since 1973. In fact, at that time
we went on strike for it. We didn't like it. It didn't work out
too well for a long time because most of our contractors that
came in to work in this area came from the Toronto, Hamilton and
Windsor area, and they would bring in their key people,
supposedly, I guess not realizing that we had good tradespeople
in this area as well. It took quite a few years to convince
everybody that we do have people here who are capable of doing
the job and it was cheaper for them in the long run to hire
locally than it was to bring people from out of town.
But to go beyond that, what
the bill suggests is going a little bit overboard on the mobility
and especially on the hiring end of things, where we would only
get a small percentage of people coming off our out-of-work list,
and of course there would be people who would never get to see a
job site, some of them because of their age. They're not
incapable of performing the services; it's just that some
contractors prefer a younger person. I think that discriminates.
The way we have it set up now, we have an equal opportunity for
everybody to go to work. That's our objection to that portion of
the bill anyway.
We strongly object to being
here. We believe that in northern Ontario we're a little bit
different than they are anywhere else in the province because of
our geographical makeup and industry. We don't have the turnover
of work that you have everywhere else. The way the bill is laid
out affects us more than anyone else. In my opinion, it's an
offer we can't refuse, the way it's presented to us, and we don't
dare to because of the alternative. The government's threat to
remove section 1(4) from the construction industry drove us to a
point where the government is calling it a compromise bill that
only addresses unions and union contractors and it doesn't apply
to non-union in the same respect. There are rules for us and
there are no rules for them.
I don't know if you're
aware of the playing field here in this area that you supposedly
addressed; I don't think you have, because a non-union contractor
has the opportunity of obtaining our collective agreements. Our
wage rates, travel conditions and board money are all laid out in
there, and it is very easy for these people to obtain a copy of
this. They can go into any job site and successfully keep under
our rates at any given time. What the ministry is suggesting in
regard to the even playing field is almost like a gas war:
There's no end in sight to it. We were suggesting that if we had
an opportunity to know what the other guy was bidding on work, we
would have an equal opportunity to fight back. But the bill
doesn't help us in any way because it doesn't restrict the
non-union guy in any shape or form. That's one of the points we
wanted to make clear.
1210
We don't believe the
government is going to win any friends with this bill. It's
certainly not something that we are looking forward to, because
of the situation we're in in this area, especially with guys
coming in from out of town and taking our jobs. If you talk about
mobility and take Sudbury, for example, it's a free zone in the
area that I service. Contractors are not required to pay room,
board and travel here, so we don't get too much of a problem
here. But when you get in areas like Timmins and Wawa or any
other area that's full board zone, then contractors will be
bringing in people from out of town because he has to pay board
money in most cases. I have good tradespeople in every area of
this province I service, and I believe the bill will jeopardize
their well-being in that respect. Like I said, they'll bring in
their friends and everybody else. I'll have good tradespeople
sitting at home and some guy from who knows where will be doing
the job that the local guy is quite capable of doing. The fellows
from the other areas of the province don't pay taxes there, don't
buy anything there other than just lodging, and then they're gone
on the weekends, and they don't add anything to the
community.
The type of mobility we
have with our contractors is in our collective agreement with the
OEA. The ironworkers, like I said, have lived with this for some
time, and I know it's not shared by the other trades. It will
probably affect other tradespeople more than us, because they
don't have anything at all in their agreements. That's 100% for them, not
50-50-well, not 100%, but darn close to it-from where they're
sitting today.
In regard to an arbitrator
coming in to suggest what we should be compromising for, to give
a contractor an even playing field for successful bidding, we'd
like to make sure that there's an arbitrator in place who fully
understands our situation, and we'd like to have the opportunity
of jointly making the choice of who that should be.
We endorse proposals to the
act that were proposed by the sheet metal workers. I think they
proposed them at one of your meetings in Toronto. It's lengthy,
and I don't know if you want me to go through them all or not,
but I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. It's very much in
line with our way of thinking, and we support them on their
proposals to amend the act.
That's about all I have to
say about Bill 69.
The Chair:
Thank you, Mr Lajeunesse.
Mr
Bartolucci: Thanks, Jim, for your presentation. You are
unique in your trade in that you have this 50-50 which you've
negotiated. Do you want to expand on that just a little bit? The
contractor has the opportunity to name 50% of the workforce and
the other 50% is hiring hall, correct?
Mr
Lajeunesse: Yes.
Mr
Bartolucci: OK. Has the 50-50 balance caused any
problems with safety in the workplace, from your trade's
perspective?
Mr
Lajeunesse: No, not really, because on the 50-50 we have
trades people coming in from other areas. In that respect, we
have no concerns on safety. When these people come and work in
our area, we have indoctrinations and everything that they have
to take before they're even allowed on site, so I don't think
safety is a concern in that respect, but it might be with respect
to compromising wages to get jobs. It hurts all around.
I always maintained that we
live in a false economy here in northern Ontario, because if you
take a fellow who's making a living today, how can you
honest-to-God go out and buy yourself a house and a car and send
kids to school? We're not gypsies. We don't live in covered
wagons. We can't move all over the province at the drop of a hat.
In some cases where there's a lengthy job, we can do that, but
it's hard to make a living like that. When you go on a job, you
don't know how long you're going to be there. You might be hired
for a six-month job and might end up being there two or three
weeks, maybe a month, may two months. How can you seriously say
that you can plan ahead with a future like that?
With the bill bringing down
our wages and everything-what they're suggesting we do-that's
going to make matters even worse.
Right now, our trade is
very physically demanding. Most of our people when they get up in
the late 50s and 60s are pretty well worn out or getting close to
it anyway; some of us are in better shape than others, but the
majority. We depend big time on our pensions. We have a good
pension plan, but we pay into it, we negotiated it. I hate to see
this being jeopardized in any way, shape or form.
Mr
Bartolucci: And you make sure that in that 50%, the
worker over the age of 50, the older worker, the worker who may
have a bit of a sore back or a sore knee etc, gets work because
they go through.
Mr
Lajeunesse: That's right. But we don't place a person
out of that 50% if he's not capable of the job. Our contract
demands that we send capable people who can do the job that's
asked for.
Mr
Bartolucci: I have one final, very quick question, Madam
Chair.
I think you've outlined, as
did Serge and Tom, very well the economic realities in northern
Ontario. Our economy and our base is very much different than
southern Ontario. We are, as far as I'm concerned, depressed from
an economic point of view. In the construction industry, will
Bill 69, the way it's written now, accelerate this economy or
depress it even further? In your opinion only; that's all I'm
asking, Jim.
Mr
Lajeunesse: As far as I'm concerned, it wouldn't
accelerate it or depress it; it would just hurt the people who
are involved in it. I'm sure whatever comes out Bill 69 isn't
going to pick up Algoma Steel or promote anything like that, but
it's certainly going to have an impact on the workforce that's
going into these places to repair and revamp and build like we
have in the past. Right now we have a terrible problem with
non-union. I was hoping that this bill would address some of the
non-union as well as the union side of things.
Mr
Bartolucci: Terrific. Thanks very much for your
presentation and for answering the questions, Jim.
Ms Martel:
Thank you, Jim, for being here today to make the presentation.
Let me ask you a couple of questions. I want to pick up from
what's already in your collective agreement about the name-hiring
at 50%. I'm just curious, has the union ever done tracking of how
that actually works? What I mean by that is, have you looked over
a number of years to see who may be repeatedly used by the
employer and who may not be used or may be looked over so that
the union has to use its 50% always to bring to the top people
who would continuously be looked over? Is there any kind of
pattern there? Have you tracked it at all to see how it works in
that sense?
Mr
Lajeunesse: Not really. Like I said, we had an earlier
problem with it. In the early years, we went on strike for it,
and then we had to accept it because it was more or less shoved
down our throats. But we learned to live with it. We have good
apprenticeship schools now, we've got good tradespeople here in
the north, and we try to provide the contractor with the people
he needs so that he doesn't have to bring anybody else in.
It hasn't been a big
problem for me, so to speak, but I do get the odd time where,
like I said, you get a contractor who's got his steady-Eddies or
favourites and he wants to bring them along, and there's nothing
you can do about. Our people grumble and they're mad for the
simple reason that they're home here and they don't like somebody
else coming in and taking a job that they thought they might be
entitled to. They're perfectly capable of performing the same service. Like I
said, we've got very well qualified people here.
Ms Martel:
Tell me, do you have any form of stabilization funding, as was
earlier referenced by some of your brothers?
Mr
Lajeunesse: No, we don't. We have an enabling clause in
our agreement. We've used it. We have no problems with our
contractors. Every time anybody has ever asked for some
compromise, we've obliged them, within a reasonable figure. We
have been successful in some cases, and in some cases the rates
were so different that we couldn't entertain them. You get to a
point where the $18 and $20 dip on rates is a little bit too
much.
1220
Ms Martel:
So the enabling clause is right in your collective agreement?
Mr
Lajeunesse: Yes, it is, and we do use it.
Ms Martel:
I was just unclear about the area you service, because you
mentioned that you don't see some problems here that you might
see in Timmins etc.
Mr
Lajeunesse: I service Timmins. I service from here to
the Quebec border, north to just beyond Hearst, across to White
River, Sault Ste Marie, right straight through to Sudbury and all
the district of Parry Sound.
Ms Martel:
The final question: You talked about people coming in from
outside. You used the word "indoctrination," before they get on
site. I was just curious, do you run health and safety programs
before they actually get on the site? What efforts do you make
before that happens?
Mr
Lajeunesse: NORCAT has something in place that Inco and
Falconbridge have instituted. These people here, before they set
foot on their property, have to take safety orientation. Of
course, there are new orientations for foremen and everybody else
now. If you haven't taken any courses, you can't supervise
people.
Ms Martel:
OK, thank you.
Hon Mr
Stockwell: I've got to tell you that we looked carefully
at your collective agreement and found it extremely interesting
and also a little bit more progressive in our minds. The enabling
clause is in there now. The mobility issue is also in there.
What about the reverse
mobility? I heard from some Toronto contractors etc, "Look, yeah,
there are some outgoing workers from Toronto, but there are also
outgoing workers from Sudbury, the Soo, Windsor, who go to work
in Toronto because the employer starts work in Sudbury." Have you
seen that?
Mr
Lajeunesse: Very, very little. We don't have too many
contractors who are successful in getting work in southern
Ontario. In most cases, if you get somebody from Sudbury or Sault
Ste Marie or the area I service, it's because of a shortage of
people. They put a call into our local hall. We are an
international union and they do call for qualified people from
here.
Hon Mr
Stockwell: What about southwestern Ontario or eastern
Ontario? They do some work there, though, I understand.
Mr
Lajeunesse: Southwestern Ontario?
Hon Mr
Stockwell: Yes.
Mr
Lajeunesse: That would be-
Hon Mr
Stockwell: I don't know. London, Windsor.
Mr
Lajeunesse: London? Like I said, we've got a few small
erection companies that might travel around a bit. To tell you
the truth, I can't recall too many of our members going down
there to work. They usually hire people from there.
Hon Mr
Stockwell: What about the enabling clause? Obviously it
took some time to work out. Would you consider it to be a work in
progress but functioning today?
Mr
Lajeunesse: The only problem with the enabling clause
is, like I said earlier, it's like a damn gas war. You lower your
rates; they lower theirs. There are restrictions on us but there
are no restrictions on them. We feel that if they had a bottom,
we could work towards that, but there's no bottom to them. I
don't know if we'd end up working for nothing just trying to
outdo each other. It would probably boil down to that.
Hon Mr
Stockwell: I guess the last question is, is there more
work because of that opportunity, because of the enabling clause
and the mobility?
Mr
Lajeunesse: It has created a little bit, Chris, but like
I said, as soon as they get on to what you're doing, they just
lower their rates and there's no limitation to what they can
do.
Hon Mr
Stockwell: OK, thanks.
The Chair:
Thank you very much, Mr Lajeunesse.
UNITED BROTHERHOOD OF CARPENTERS AND JOINERS OF
AMERICA, LOCAL 2486 / PROVINCIAL BUILDING AND CONSTRUCTION TRADES
COUNCIL OF ONTARIO
The Chair:
The next two presenters, committee, have asked to present
together and combine into 40 minutes. We have Mr Tom Cardinal,
business representative of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters,
Local 2486, and Mr Pat Dillon, business manager and
secretary-treasurer of the Provincial Building and Construction
Trades Council. Good afternoon, gentlemen.
Mr Tom
Cardinal: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name
is Tom Cardinal. I'm an organizer-business representative for
local 2486 of the carpenters' union in Sudbury. We represent 430
skilled carpenters, drywallers, floor layers and pile drivers in
northeastern Ontario.
The carpenters' union's
view on Bill 69 as an alternative to the proposal made by certain
employers for repealing or weakening section 1(4) of the Labour
Relations Act: Bill 69 reflects an industry-based approach by
addressing the competitive issues needed by certain employers.
However, while we do not oppose the general direction of Bill 69,
we believe the bill requires amendments. Our brief outlines the
amendments we believe should be made to Bill 69.
We would welcome any questions at this time instead
of going through the whole submission. I think it's a thing
you're probably going to see on and on, day after day.
Local 2486's main issue, if
we can put it to one issue, is mobility and name-hiring. I think
it will be a devastating issue to northern Ontario carpenters who
are currently unemployed to be further unemployed by way of
bringing other construction workers into the northern Ontario
district.
At this time I'd like to
turn to Mr Dillon.
Mr Patrick
Dillon: Thank you. I'm Patrick Dillon, business manager
and secretary-treasurer of the Provincial Building and
Construction Trades Council of Ontario, representing 100,000
unionized construction workers in the province.
Before I get into making my
comments, I will identify right at the outset that there are a
couple of the unions that are members of the provincial building
trades that we do not represent here with our views. One has
already presented, the sheet metal and roofers' conference and
their local unions throughout Ontario, although we do represent
the sheet metal local out of Toronto on the residential. Also,
the boilermakers in Ontario are opposed to Bill 69, as are the
millwrights. I want to state that upfront so that I'm not accused
of speaking on behalf of those local unions.
I'd like to set the stage a
little bit for everyone here on how Bill 69 came about and where
it really got started. It started back three and a half years ago
with eight general contractors who had a competitive problem, so
to speak, because of the Toronto working agreement being expanded
to the province of Ontario for them for all trades. I say that
because at that time it was eight general contractors. Today it's
eight general contractors that I think are sort of the key hidden
group, but they've been joined by some other contractor
associations; not all. This meant that employers bring to the
table that there's been this outrageous competitive disadvantage
or that there is an imbalance in the bargaining structure in the
province of Ontario. That is not where this issue started.
Out of that discussion back
three and a half years ago, we ended up with Bill 31, which was a
benefit to the poor people in the petrochemical industry, the
banks and Wal-Mart. I notice that the minister was kind of
laughing at the "poor people in the petrochemical industry."
Looking at the price of gas as I drove into Sudbury, it's hard to
see how they end up being the poor sisters at the table. But
anyway, we ended up with Bill 31. Then we had the election again
in 1999. Subsequent to the election and not long after that, we
found floating around our industry a brief that was done by a
number of unnamed contractors at that point making an economic
argument as to why 1(4) should be removed from the Ontario Labour
Relations Act.
I guess that group of
contractors, whoever they were, must have got some advice that
they could never sustain an argument on the economics of 1(4), so
they changed. That brief went by the wayside. Another brief
showed up called the Coalition for Fair Labour Laws. When you
read the front page, you would think that should be the building
trades unions making a case for a Coalition for Fair Labour Laws,
but when you turned the first page, with the direction that brief
was going in, you'd be pretty quick to see that it certainly
wasn't coming from the building trades.
But to set the stage for
how we got to where we're at with Bill 69, after reading the two
different briefs that were out there from the employers, I had a
discussion with Minister Stockwell, on the direction of our
executive board of the provincial building trades, that if the
government was looking at paying much attention to these briefs,
the building trades would prefer to negotiate an industry
solution to the problems rather than have a legislated solution.
That's been the history of labour relations for many years,
particularly for construction, except for Bill 31.
1230
To make a long story short,
Minister Stockwell appointed a committee of six labour and six
management reps to have an industry discussion. At the first
meeting, he addressed us and told us that, first off, he believed
there were some competitive problems in the construction industry
that needed to be addressed. He also stated that he would prefer
an industry-negotiated solution rather than a legislated solution
himself. The labour people should go to the table clearly
understanding that negotiating the status quo would not get the
day. The fourth point was that the employers should not go to the
table and stick to their position on 1(4) because there was a
good chance that it would not be delivered to them, but that we
should all go to the table with it clearly in mind that the
government would act if we did not come to some resolution on the
competitive issues.
As I stated a little
earlier, a shocking thing for me at the table was to hear
employers talking about the imbalance in the bargaining structure
in Ontario. Mr Lineham, on behalf of the IBEW CCO, pointed that
out this morning about their relationship with the Electrical
Contractors Association of Ontario, where they actually advertise
about their great bargaining relationship, yet we're sitting
across the table from them and they're talking about this great
imbalance in the bargaining structure. So I certainly have some
problems with that.
I'd like to emphasize to
the committee also the uniqueness of construction. At the end of
the hearing process, before you make recommendations to go
forward for change, I would ask the committee that you clearly
understand the impact of those changes for our industry. Our
industry is unique. For people who go to work in the steel mill
or as school teachers or as government people, your workplace
does not change. The issues change but the workplace does not
change. Construction changes on an hourly basis. If we have 300
construction workers working on a building this size, an hour
from now the building will not look the same as it did an hour
ago. It is totally different than other workplaces that you deal
with as politicians, so I ask you that we clearly understand
what those changes are
and that we take the time to make the necessary changes.
Getting to the brief
itself, the building trades-set aside some of the trades that are
opposed to it-are in support of Bill 69, but it needs to be
amended. The statement that we're in support of Bill 69 is with
the caveat that it has to have amendments. Simply put, it would
not work as is for the industry, for either side of the table, as
I would understand it.
I'd like to run through
some of the recommendations. First off, on the proposed changes
to section 1(4), the single employer, and the section 69
successor employer recommendations, the board should not make a
single or successor employer declaration solely on the basis of a
family relationship, but the board should be permitted to take
family relationships into account. They can't disregard it. I'll
use Mr Smith. If Jeff Smith's brother starts up a company
tomorrow, the board should be able to look at the fact that he's
Jeff Smith's brother as one of the factors but it should not be
used as the only factor to decide the case whether it's a related
employer or not.
In the residential sector
in Toronto we've got some recommendations:
The geographic application
should apply to the city of Toronto and the regional
municipalities of Durham, Halton, Peel and York, as well as
Simcoe county. Thus it would include board areas 8, 9, 10, 11 and
18.
The strike lockout window
should be extended to 75 days.
On mutual agreement of the
parties, they can request arbitration any time during the May 1
to June 15 period. Either party should be able to request
arbitration on or after June 15 regardless of when a strike or
lockout would have been lawful.
Notice to bargain should be
given 120 days prior to April 30.
The Ministry of Labour
should host forums to address the industry's concerns.
Amend section 150.2 to give
arbitrators similar powers under section 48(12) of the act.
The only comment I can make
on the residential sector is to say that the Toronto building
trades and the Toronto unions were at the table with the
developers, the residential contractors and the Ministry of
Labour. I was not at the table so I cannot speak with great
expertise on their recommendations, but we have endorsed their
recommendations.
Back to the ICI, one
problem area I find, among a number of them, is the designated
regional employer organization. Only an employer bargaining
agency or a designated regional employer organization appointed
by the employer bargaining agency should be entitled to apply for
local amendments to a provincial agreement and to have the right
to make applications for arbitrations and submissions under
sections 163.2 and 163.4. There should only be one designated
regional employer organization for a geographic area.
Another subject matter of
the proposed amendments is to remove reference to benefits in
163.2(4):
"The application may seek
only amendments that concern the following matters:
"1. Wages, including
overtime pay and shift differentials...
"5. Requirements respecting
the ratio of apprentices to journeymen employed by an employer,"
subject to the Apprenticeship and Trademen's Qualification Act
thereto.
On point number one, the
wage package, overtime and shift differential, the change there
is to take the word "benefits" out of the act as is existing in
the proposed act now. There are a number of reasons for that, and
most of the unions will speak to that. Whatever the wage rate,
even using enabling clauses that local unions use now, they
enable the wage package, but the benefits package remains as is
no matter what work they are working on. There are quite a number
of reasons for that. First off, costs of benefits for health and
welfare, dental, those kinds of things, remain static no matter
what wage the worker is working at, and the costs to the plan
remain the same. The same thing with pensions. You heard Mr
Lajeunesse say that the ironworkers have a decent pension plan
for their people as they get up to certain ages, which I am
quickly approaching. The cost of that pension, so that the
pension will be there, has to remain static during the person's
work life.
I think there is also some
major benefit to that from the employer organizations. I don't
want to be seen as speaking on behalf of the employers, but I
know from being a business manager in a local union over the
years that getting changes made to the collective agreement was
always a pain for the employer: problems for them in their
office, their accounting. If you have people working under the
same collective agreement at three different jobs in Sudbury, at
three different rates-one may be in schools, one may be in
hospitals and one may be in the mines-the employer does not want
to have a whole list of different benefit package rates, because
those employees from time to time may move from one job to the
other. So there's good reason why it should be the wage
package.
1240
The definition of "market"
as described in the act is "The market in which it"-I guess
that's the work-"is performed, which could be work performed for
all of the industrial, commercial and institutional sector or a
specified market in it."
The problems with the
current drafting of section 163.2(1):
The stated purpose of Bill
69 is to facilitate local modifications to provincial agreements
that will enable unionized contractors to successfully bid for
work that they purportedly have not been able to secure under the
current terms of their provincial agreement. Clearly unionized
contractors do not require modifications to provincial agreements
to secure work for which they are already successfully bidding.
Consequently, the way in which "market" is defined in Bill 69 is
far too broad. The definition in Bill 69 could include work that
is already being done by
unionized contractors. To allow wage reductions on such work is
clearly unreasonable.
To make the procedures in
Bill 69 both effective and fair to all concerned requires a more
precise definition of "market." Our recommendation is:
"The market in which it is
performed which will be a specific segment of the industrial,
commercial or institutional sector which cannot include work
which historically has been performed by members of the
affiliated bargaining agent."
That's our recommendation
on "market," as to how that should apply to the new act.
The legal test at
arbitration for modifications to a provincial agreement in
section 163.3(32) and elsewhere: The word "significant" should be
inserted before the phrase "competitive disadvantage" in section
163.2(32).
I'd just like to make a
comment on that. We had some discussion about that during our
discussions and it was my understanding that "significant" would
be part of the act, along with "competitive disadvantage." I was
told you were having some difficulty defining what the word
"significant" meant, that you would have to have that defined in
the act. Well, there's no definition in the act for
"disadvantage." As a matter of fact, as we have looked through
courts and statutory tribunals, we haven't found where
"disadvantage" has been defined, but the word "significant" has.
So I ask you to look at pages 14 and 15 of our brief. It gives a
few areas where the word "significant" has been defined: in the
dictionary, obviously; in labour board cases; in Workers'
Compensation Board cases; and in Court of Queen's Bench cases. So
I think there's some definition there that can be used.
I think "significant" is
something that helps people and would help an arbitrator
decide-any employer could come forward, could actually go to the
owner and say, "Invite some non-union guy to put his name on the
list here so that I can make an argument that I can't be
competitive." The non-union guy could maybe not perform the work
but the owner and the employer could use the non-union name on
there to show that the union is not competitive. Why? Because the
union rate is $30 an hour and the non-union rate is $18. Maybe he
couldn't perform the work, but they would use it. So we need the
word "significant" in there and it's of major importance to
us.
On the referral to
arbitration and the arbitration process itself, this system
cannot work unless we have the designated regional employer
organization thing straightened out. It cannot work unless there
is a mechanism. It should start with the employer identifying the
market he or she is uncompetitive in. The union would have seven
days to respond to what the employer has said he's uncompetitive
in. Maybe at that point the union wouldn't even need an
arbitrator, but you should have an arbitrator just in case the
two can't agree. But we'll say they didn't agree; the arbitrator
at seven days would take the employer's evidence and the union's
evidence and say, "The employer has a significant disadvantage
here." Then the union and the employer have 14 days between the
two of them to negotiate a local settlement for that work. If at
the end of that negotiation they haven't come to agreement, each
organization should share with the other person their final
position and then it goes to the arbitrator. The reason they
share that final position is twofold: one, the arbitrator is
going to be dealing with the exact same issues as both the
employer and the employee bargaining agent were. He doesn't get
some totally different response from either one of them. The two
of them see what the other person's position is before it goes to
the selector. It also puts pressure on the two of them to make a
deal because they really don't know which one the selector is
going to choose, so they're more apt to make a deal, and I think
that is in everybody's best interests, that the industry resolve
those differences.
The other issue along the
same lines is that the way the act is written right now, there
could be a multitude of final offers, and surely that is not the
intent. It just can't work. Both parties will come to the table
with a list of positions, and in our view, it should be that the
two parties at the end of the discussion each have one
position.
On the panel of
arbitrators, we recommend that a new section of Bill 69 be
provided that says that within 30 days following the proclamation
of Bill 69, employer and employee bargaining agencies will meet
to agree upon a panel of arbitrators to arbitrate applications
under section 163 of the bill. The chair of the Ontario Labour
Relations Board should be allowed to specify the number of
arbitrators required. The chair of the Ontario Labour Relations
Board would also make the appointments to fill those seats on the
panel that the parties do not fill by mutual agreement. The
obvious recommendation there-take the bricklayer as an example,
seeing that Mr Bartolucci used to be a bricklayer-is that the
bricklayer and the bricklayer employer organization should sit
down and agree on a list of arbitrators. If they can't come to
agreement, the labour board chair would fill the number they
didn't agree on. Say it was set at six and the employers and the
union agreed on four; the labour relations board chair would
appoint the other two. We think that would work.
A new section: duration of
local amendments to provincial agreements and adjudication of
disputes arising under local amendments. We're recommending that
local amendments to provincial agreements would apply only for
the balance of the term of the provincial agreement. If there are
two years left in the provincial agreement, the employers and the
union go through an exercise to target schools in Hamilton or
wherever it is for labour work, then that agreement they arrived
at through the final offer selector or by mutual agreement would
last up to the end of that term, unless mutually agreed by the
parties that it be extended. That is one of the keys about local
negotiations out of the hands of the arbitrator. There would be a
benefit there for the employer and the union. If they wanted to
extend it past the expiry date, that would be up to them. But if
it has to be done through the selector, then it should end with the term.
That's the way we had the discussion with the ministry. That was
our suggestion when we put forward the enabling provisions.
1250
The default provisions in
hiring, the 40% mobility and 60% name-hire: We see that those
should be maximum percentages that cannot be exceeded at any
time. The mobility provisions should be clarified so that only
current employees can be transferred from outside a geographic
area, and the legislation should clarify that any employees not
hired under the mobility and name-hire provisions would continue
to be hired as before, under the provisions of the provincial
agreement in the normal hiring hall procedures. We also suggest
that the 60% name-hire entitlement for an employer should be
changed to 50%.
We say that for a number of
reasons. First off, 60%, in my view, is not a number that's used
in our industry on anything other than Bill 31, where you have
60% to make a collective agreement. That's the last time I'll
mention Bill 31. The 60% on the hiring hall provisions will fly
in the face, in every case, of every procedure that applies in
our industry now. Of our unions in Ontario, some have no
name-hire and some have 100%, but the majority have 50%. I don't
think the employers' association can give much of an argument as
to why it should move from 50% to 60%. As a matter of fact, I can
give a hell of an argument as to why it should be at 50%. First
off, the procedures are in place. Those employers and those
unions have used them for years without complaint. We've heard
some anxiety, and I understand the anxiety, from unions that
don't have the name-hire provisions now, but for the unions at
50%, why would we change it without any real rationale for that
change? I would suggest very strongly that you take a look at
that.
The next section we have a
real problem with is section 163.6, which calls for the
ministerial review in 18 months' time. In our view, that is just
a recipe for employers to make sure this mechanism doesn't work
so they can come back to the table six months or whatever after
the next round of bargaining and apply to the government that
this mechanism isn't working. We went through a lot of anxiety, a
lot of difficulties with different parties to try and get to
where we're at. If we get a mechanism put in there-the minister
can review at any time, and we understand that, but if it's put
in the act that the minister has a review in 18 months, I believe
employers will use that to not work at making the system work,
and this whole thing is about putting the parties together and
making the system work.
I will cut off there simply
by saying that if the government acts on our amendments and the
industry partners commit to work together on market
competitiveness, Bill 69 will work. Fair labour legislation is
evolutionary, not revolutionary. With those comments, we're open
for questions.
I guess the final comment I
would make is that Tom and I are sharing the time. I heard Tom's
comments about the mobility and hiring and I respect his position
on it. So when I am answering any questions along that line I
will answer from the brief side, but I think Tom should be
allowed to answer them too from his own perspective.
The Chair:
No problem, Mr Dillon. We have questions-
Mr Dillon:
Madam Chair, can I just make one more comment? There's something
I've overlooked here, and it bothers me deeply. It goes right
back to the comment about the ministerial review in 18 months. I
have here the document that was submitted by the electrical
contractors in Toronto, but the same remark was made by the
Ontario General Contractors Association. It reads, "The ECAO does
support the government and its current legislative initiative as
a first step in the direction of enhancing the competitiveness of
the unionized construction industry." That statement bothers me
very deeply and it bothers our affiliates deeply, that somehow
these people already believe-and I think it's because of the
18-month mechanism being there-that this is the first step. I
want to make it very clear that the building trades see this as
the very last step and that we are committed to making the act
work so our employers are competitive in the industry, but we
don't want them to look at this as just a shopping list, one step
along the way to their ultimate goal, which was 1(4) at one
point. No more comments.
The Chair:
Thank you, Mr Dillon. We have about seven or eight minutes for
questions.
Ms Martel:
Let me just pick up on the ministerial review and flip it around
the other way. If it's not working in 18 months, where is the
forum for the unions to come forward to say it's not working? I'm
not saying I'm wedded one way or the other to this, but I see
where you're heading and I'm wondering, from the other point of
view, if it's not working and unionized workers have something to
say, where do they get to have that say?
Mr Dillon:
We've discussed that a little bit. We think that if the
amendments are made to the act, there'd be little chance that the
union would be coming forward with those kinds of complaints. If
both parties go to the table to try and make this work, we should
not have that. But we had to look at it in balance: Who is more
apt to be coming forward in 18 months with complaints about
Bill 69? We don't believe it's going to be the unions, so
we'd like the thing taken out. If we have problems, we know where
the minister's office is and we know where both opposition
parties' offices are. We would come forward with issues that have
arisen under Bill 69 and ask that we try and get the government
to move to make those changes. But I don't think we need
something in the act that says the minister is going to review
it, because I think the employers see it as more of an
opportunity than we do.
Ms Martel:
I'm considering, for example, the mobility provisions, which Mr
Cardinal might want to respond to in terms of his concerns. We go
through this process and discover that in fact employers are
moving 40% of their people around the place, and in many
communities local workers who have a stake in that community, who
pay taxes there and
are probably being asked to contribute to fundraise for some of
those very projects that other people are working on-we find that
people in a lot of communities just aren't getting work. Surely
that's an issue you'd want to have some forum to bring forward
to. You can go to the minister; there's no guarantee he's going
to do anything about it. I don't say that personally to the
minister, who's here, but sure, you can always go to the minister
with all kinds of things; whether or not anything happens is a
different story. The review may allow for both sides to have an
opportunity to have their say. Maybe, Mr Cardinal, you can
respond with respect to concerns about mobility, for example.
What happens if 18 months from now what you discover is that
people in a lot of communities just aren't working?
Mr
Cardinal: Northern Ontario has had little to no
construction at all in the last five years. At this time we're
starting to see light at the end of the tunnel, that there's
going to be some construction, some work for our people in this
area. If the mobility issue stays the way it is and the
name-hiring provision, we believe that those people who are now
unemployed will further be unemployed. The people who are on
unemployment insurance at this time will run out of unemployment
insurance and be put on the workfare list. It seems that the
Sudbury region has adopted the workfare situation very well and
does not give the opportunity to carpenters in the region to
actually go out and make a salary, a wage, and earn a decent
living. Bringing in individuals from other communities such as
Toronto and southeastern and southwestern Ontario will just
further devastate that carpenter. He's not going to have a chance
to go out to earn a living. He's not going to have a chance to go
out and put food on the table for his children. He'll be sitting
at the gate, watching a northern Ontario carpenter coming in to
work, bottom line.
1300
Ms Martel:
So if you had your choice, the provision wouldn't be changed at
all.
Mr
Cardinal: That's right.
Hon Mr
Stockwell: Thanks for the presentation. I appreciate the
work and the effort that was put into it.
A couple of quick points:
On the first step thing, the 18-month review, I don't see this as
a first step. I hopefully see this as a last step, that in fact
this thing gets adopted and people go to the table and make it
work and work well. I want to be clear about that. The review is
there because I don't think we could ever write a perfect piece
of legislation. We may have to tweak it or make some adjustments
that may be acceptable to both sides. But the idea isn't simply
to say, "Hey, this is just a first stage and the second stage is
abolition." So I want to go on the record. I don't know what the
generals are saying and I don't know what the unions are saying,
but I know what I'm saying.
I want to just ask you,
Pat-you were at the negotiating table through this whole process.
I've been accused on a number of occasions by Mr
Christopherson-he's not here and I don't mean to disparage him
when he's not here-of putting a gun to the head of the unions. As
I recall that first meeting when it took place, I could be
accused of putting a gun to the head but I guess my thought was,
I was putting a gun to everybody's head, in essence. I basically
told the employers that section 1(4) was out and I told you guys
that the status quo wasn't on and something has to be found in
the middle. I always took the position that you guys can work an
industry-based solution or you can have me write it, but if you
get me to write it, you're both going to hate it. Is that a fair
analysis of what took place?
Mr Dillon:
That's a fair analysis and I think that's kind of what I said in
my opening remarks about what took place at the first meeting.
Yes, I would agree that's how we started out.
A problem the unions had
through the process as we negotiated, and not coming from your
office, is that we were getting feedback almost on a daily basis
of employers going to other members of the caucus, employers
going to the Premier's office and employers going to different
cabinet ministers lobbying for 1(4). We never really knew for
sure what the playing field was, other than we were told at the
start that the status quo was not going to be the resolution to
this from labour's standpoint.
We knew that government was
going to act. My mandate was twofold: one, that we negotiate an
industry solution and, two, that we stay away from any form of
double-breasting. That was the mandate I went forward with and
went through the process with.
Hon Mr
Stockwell: I hear a lot of this name-hiring stuff and
enabling stuff and mobility stuff that's crushing the other
unions. But, you know, Pat, I've read a lot of the collective
agreements and in this province they are included in a lot of
collective agreements, yet those unions don't seem to be
suffering what I would classify as the travails and pitfalls that
are being offered out there as the potential downside to this
piece of legislation. There seems to be active evidence out there
that these things are in place and the sky hasn't fallen and the
province hasn't slipped into the lake.
The Chair:
Could you give about a 10-second response to that?
Mr Dillon:
The enabling provisions are in collective agreements and have
been for 10 to 12 years, and maybe longer in some. The problem
has been that employers are complaining to the government that in
some areas those enabling clauses are used and in some areas
they're not, that the unions won't capitulate-if you want to use
that word-to whatever their demands are, so they weren't foreign
to us going to the table. We know the spirit in which they were
put in the collective agreement, that we do have some competitive
problems in different areas and so we should be using them. The
union had to come forward with a position that offset the
employers' position of 1(4), and we came forward with the
enabling clause as the solution and we think it'll work.
On the name-hire and
mobility, there are differences. Obviously, you've heard Tom, and
I respect Tom's position. The fact is, though, that there are
locals in the province that are provincial in scope that have
100% mobility.
Hon Mr
Stockwell: Ironworkers.
Mr Dillon:
No, the ironworkers aren't one. The ironworkers have five locals
and they have 40% mobility. But the operating engineers have
100%, and there may be others, and the same on the name-hire.
There are locals that have zero. The IBEW would be one of them. I
think the carpenters are pretty close to that. Then you've got
areas like the pipefitters, who have a variation that goes maybe
from zero to 50% to 100% name-hire. Then you have the
ironworkers, which is 40% mobility, 50% hiring hall. So it
differs.
But I want to say, on
behalf of all those unions that have 100% or 50% or whatever, and
I say this with all due respect to comments that were made by
different people here, that those people do have safety people
and those people do have stewards and they have proud traditions
in their area, the same as we all do. There's anxiety around that
and I respect that, but it will be time that tells what impact
this has.
The Chair:
Mr Bartolucci, just very quickly, please?
Mr
Bartolucci: Yes, thanks. Probably two questions like
everyone else. Is that OK, Madam Chair?
The Chair:
Yes.
Mr
Bartolucci: First of all, just a little comment. I'm
disappointed that guns had to be pointed at anybody's heads,
regardless of the side, when there was a solution in 1997 that a
certain group walked away from. I think we should always remember
that the industry had its solution, it found it in 1997, and a
particular group of contractors chose not to accept it.
Second, I'm glad the
minister is so close to me because I want him to clearly
understand that, as far as I am concerned, we will be putting
forth an amendment to get rid of the 18-month review. If the
legislation can't stand the test of time, then it's lousy
legislation. In fact, the government has the opportunity to
review its legislation at any time, so I'm glad the minister said
here, he's put it on the record, that the legislation isn't
perfect, and maybe this is one aspect that needs some
modification. The best modification with regard to 163.6 is its
complete withdrawal, and I will be putting forth an amendment to
that effect.
You mentioned so many good
points, Pat, we don't have time for. The arbitration lists:
Honestly, it doesn't make any sense to me that the Lieutenant
Governor should be fooling around with those. She's a nice
person, but I think the Minister of Labour and the Ontario Labour
Relations Board understand that a whole lot more.
"Significant" is an
important word and it can be defined. "Wage package," I'm glad
that's a modification or an amendment you're making.
You know, the minister
referred to me as a bricklayer before. I learned the trade, but
there are people I worked with in the construction industry here
who would say I was a better labourer than a bricklayer.
But I've got to tell you, I
don't know why they would buy into the enabling legislation. Can
you explain that to me, just a little bit more carefully? You
said you didn't represent some people but you represented others.
Did all your partners buy into that too?
This is a personal opinion:
Because I'm from the north, I agree with everything that every
other presenter has said. You know that, because we've talked in
the past. Can you just expand on those things?
Mr Dillon:
On the enabling provision?
Mr
Bartolucci: Yes.
Mr Dillon:
I guess the first comment I would make is that, yes, the deal
that was on the table in 1997 should have been hammered at those
people at that time. As a matter of fact, some of those same
people are heading up the lobby, and according to them, their
issues haven't been addressed in this bill. I could make an
argument to that, but that's not what you're asking me.
On the enabling provisions,
they are in collective agreements now. We were told at the start
that the status quo was not going to make the day. We know now,
the government has told us, that they're going to act. He hasn't
indicated how he's going to act, but we know he's going to act on
the competitive issue.
We had enabling clauses in
our agreement so the bargaining agents got together and agreed
that we would put that in legislation. That way, it isn't
optional in one local area or one trade or another to use it.
What's happened is that locals in some trades will use the
enabling clauses that they have in their collective agreement in
some areas and yet you go to another area and they haven't used
it. That creates employers in that particular area screaming that
they can't be competitive. Now, that's their screaming.
We had to put something on
the table. The employers' position was clear: It's 1(4) or some
form of double-breasting. But we knew what that meant from a
health and safety perspective, from a wage perspective: The
unions would barely exist in the province of Ontario. Obviously,
we didn't want to go there. What was something that we could put
on the table-in negotiations, that's what it's about, you've got
to put a position on the table-something that would maybe tweak
the employers' attention, but certainly tweak the minister's
attention? We put the enabling clause on the table.
The Chair:
Thank you, Mr Dillon and Mr Cardinal, for your time. Members of
committee, I believe it's agreed that we will vary the order of
business to allow Mr Ron Laforest, business manager, to speak
next, and then we will take a 20-minute recess for lunch. If Mr
Bryant, Mr Burton and Mr Gatien are here after that, we'll
proceed with that as the final presentation of the day. My
understanding is that the 3 pm delegation has had to cancel
because they are stuck in Washington.
1310
UNITED ASSOCIATION OF JOURNEYMEN AND APPRENTICES
OF THE PLUMBING AND PIPE FITTING INDUSTRY, LOCAL 800 / LABOURERS'
INTERNATIONAL UNION OF NORTH AMERICA, LOCAL 493
The Chair:
If the committee is in agreement with that, we'll proceed with Mr
Laforest, business manager, United Association of Journeymen and
Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry, Local
800.
Mr Ron
Laforest: Good afternoon. First of all, my name is Ron
Laforest. I'm business manager of the united association of
plumbers, steam fitters, welders and apprentices, Local 800,
which represents members in Sudbury, North Bay, Timmins and
Kirkland Lake. Maybe I can speak also for Local 508, which is
Sault Ste Marie, and Thunder Bay, which is 628. I don't know if
you know it, but they disagreed with this bill also. Even though
my organization did agree, the Ontario pipe trades, the three
locals in the north disagreed with it. Maybe the north has a good
reason for not liking this bill.
First of all, I just want
to bring up a very good example here of what could happen on
mobility. The biggest thing for us in the north is mobility. We
do a lot of work on gas compressor stations, which are all over
the north. There's no contractor from Sudbury or anywhere else in
the north who does this work. They're all from the south. At one
time, four or five years ago, we couldn't supply the welders for
that, so they came from southern Ontario or elsewhere in Ontario
because our people weren't trained to do this kind of welding.
They would be bringing in people from southern Ontario to do this
work. Our guys wouldn't be able to do it, so we spent probably a
couple of hundred thousand dollars, our union training money, to
train our people to be able to do this work. We have the
facilities at our union hall and we trained them to do the work.
Now they can do the work. Now we do have the jobs. But still the
contractors are from down south, so now if they get a job, they
would be bringing their people from down south. All this training
we did for our people would be no good any more.
Why would they bring their
people from down south? First of all, they have welders that are
tested already. They wouldn't have to retest. The cost of
retesting a welder from our local would be a couple of days'
work, so they'd take them from down south and give them the job
here.
Another thing: Our local
has a big area, as I told you, so our people are always
travelling. They work in Smooth Rock, they are always on the
road. It's very hard for their families because these guys are
never home, and now you're asking for them to bring people from
outside to do our work. That means they'll still not work at
home. They'd be travelling all the time.
We don't have seniority in
our local, as does big industry. So when contractors hire us, in
two hours they can lay you off and get rid of you if you don't do
your job. They do that. So they don't need the 60% name-hire, I
think. Give everybody a chance. Contractors don't even know some
people. At least with the system we have in place, it gives
everybody on the list a chance to go to work. If they don't like
them, they lay them off after anyway. It doesn't matter if
they're there first, they're first to go if they're not that
good. But don't take away the opportunity of the person who is
not known or has a bad back to go and show that he can do the
work. With what you're doing here, the guy won't be able to show
that he's capable of doing the work. I have one member who has
one eye. People will say, "Let's not take a chance on him."
Another thing with this 60%
name-hire, who is going to work safely on the job? Say a foreman
tells you to go up a scaffold that doesn't have handrails. If you
say no, next time will you be name-hired? So everybody is going
to do things that aren't right just so they can get
name-hired.
People don't realize how
important it is to have a job. In this area, as you know, in the
last couple of years there hasn't been that much work. It's not
due to competitiveness that we're not having work; it's just
because it's not there. We are competitive with non-union. We do
things to be competitive. We are getting the work, the little
work there is. But give everybody a chance to work. Give the
older members a chance to work. He could be working better than a
young guy, but if he doesn't have that chance, nobody will know.
This guy will be sitting at home not working because of the 60%
name-hire or the 40% mobility to bring somebody in.
The other thing I want to
say on the competitiveness-I know that one of the first things
that's going to be asked of us is that instead of getting double
time for overtime, go to time and a half. We don't want time and
a half. We'd rather have four times instead for double time. That
way, maybe we wouldn't work double time. Everybody wants you to
finish their job, the client, so they can make money faster, so
instead of being an eight-month job, it turns out to be a
two-month job. Then the rest of the year you're off. Our guys
would rather work six, seven months a year than have to do it in
two months with all kinds of overtime, being away from their
families and everything. But this is what happens. If they want
you to do it at time and a half, then they'll want you to work
more overtime. Then your job is going to be shorter, you'll be
away from your family more. I'd rather there was no overtime,
that we'd just work 40 hours a week and then go home to our
families.
That finishes my report.
Thank you very much.
The Chair:
Thank you, Mr Laforest. We do have questions.
Mr
Bartolucci: Madam Chair, Art Adams represents the
Labourers' International Union.
The Chair:
Sorry, Mr Adams. Did you also want to add something?
Mr Art
Adams: Yes. I'm Art Adams, business manager of the
Labourers' International Union, Local 493 in Sudbury. We represent
approximately 725 members in northern Ontario, which would take
in Nipissing, Timiskaming, Cochrane, Timmins, Sudbury,
Manitoulin-quite a large area.
I'll go on record as being
opposed to this bill. The major concerns we have with this bill
are mobility and name-hires. A lot of individuals have come up
here today and talked about workers from other parts of the
province coming in. But I want to give you an example of how
people from outside the province could come in here to take the
jobs. We're an international union. We have members all across
Canada, from the east coast to the west coast. Those individuals
have a right to transfer from one local union to another.
Somebody from Nova Scotia could deposit his transfer into
Sudbury, Local 493, as a labourer. A company could then name-hire
that individual and put him out on the job.
1320
Members who live in the
area, who have been here and resided here for years, who have
gone unemployed because of a lack of construction work, would
then be forced not only on to the UI list but now on to the
welfare list. While they pay taxes in this province and in this
part of the province, they're going to sit there and watch
individuals even from outside the province coming in and taking
those jobs. I'm going to tell you, it will happen.
When I see this bill I
think how fortunate I am to be the age I am, because I would not
want to be a young person looking at a future in construction
work with the disastrous effect this is going to have. Number
one, it will reduce the safety factors on the job. Number two,
it'll bring down the wages of construction workers in this
province. I have no doubt about that at all. It will force people
to move from one area of the province to another, and the workers
will have to bear such things as paying for their own room and
board. It'll also drive down the quality of construction on
projects that are there now too, and I have no doubt about that.
That's all I have at this point. Thank you for your time.
The Chair:
Thank you, Mr Adams.
Mr Gill:
You did bring up an example that somebody from Nova Scotia within
your own union could transfer himself to Sudbury. If he has the
seniority, would you say then he would be picked first, under
your scenario?
Mr Adams:
The way it works now, an individual from Nova Scotia has the
right to transfer and place his card in our hall. But he would
have to reside here in the area and he would have to wait until
his turn came to be dispatched. First into the hall, first out,
with the necessary qualifications. So he would have to work up
the list. To give you an example, it could be a year's time. I
don't know if a guy from Nova Scotia is going to come up here and
sit for a year. If he's going to come, then he's going to move
his residence. With the new scenario, he could deposit his
transfer in the local today, the contractor could name-hire him
tomorrow, regardless of where he is on that out-of-work list.
Mr Gill:
If there was a contractor-again, maybe I'm hypothesizing-who was
north-based, Sudbury-based, I guess the name-hire and the
mobility will work in their favour, so that they could take the
workers from here to western Ontario or to southern Ontario. Do
you think that's a good thing?
Mr Adams:
Very few of our contractors from northern Ontario bid outside of
our area. It works the opposite. The vast majority of contractors
bidding in here, especially on larger-scale projects, are from
outside the Sudbury and northern Ontario area.
Mr
Bartolucci: Art and Ron, thanks very much for your
presentation. I guess what the committee has to understand is
that ever since we started, Larry Lineham, Tommy Whynott, Michael
Stewart, Serge Ayotte, Jim Lajeunesse, Tommy Cardinal, now Art
Adams and Ron Laforest have tried to tell us that it's different
in northern Ontario. The reality is that if the bill goes as is,
without amendments, this is going to hurt the construction
industry in northern Ontario, it's going to hurt the construction
worker in northern Ontario. I also think, and I've said this
publicly in the House and at committee hearings, that this bill
really does hurt the opportunity of fairness for all workers in
the construction industry.
Ron, I want to go back to
you, because I know your local well and I know the workers in
your local well. Expand on the one example you mentioned here
already this morning. That guy isn't going to work under these
rules. He'll work, but it'll be so rarely, because the only way
that guy is going to get hired is through the hiring hall
procedure. Now, his wait is going to be magnified by I would
suggest at least 300% for him to get work. Outline that. Then,
because health and safety is a concern to me in the construction
workplace, having almost lost a father through a construction
accident, I'd like you to outline how this bill enhances safety
in the construction field or deters from it, either or both.
Mr
Laforest: First of all, I want to bring up a situation
we have in our local on mobility. We have, as I told you, the
districts of Sudbury, Timmins, North Bay and Kirkland Lake. It
was the members who put in the agreement that if there's work in
Sudbury, the Sudbury guys go to work in Sudbury first, even
though they're members of the same local in Timmins and North
Bay. After that, they come from Kirkland Lake, North Bay and
Timmins. It's the same thing in Timmins if there's work in
Timmins, because it's their home. Why shouldn't they be working
at home? Is it fair to have a Sudbury guy working in Timmins when
they live there? I don't think that's fair to anybody. The same
thing in North Bay. I don't think Mr Harris would like having
somebody from Toronto or elsewhere working in North Bay when his
guys are not working. I don't think it's fair. The thing is, it
doesn't work both ways in northern Ontario. Our contractors don't
go out of their jurisdiction. Very few of them do. It would just
be people coming in and nobody going out. That's the problem with
the bill. It's no good for northern Ontario.
Mr
Bartolucci: What about the safety aspect, the second
part of my question?
Mr Laforest: The safety aspect
is just terrible. Can you imagine somebody asking you to do
something, even if it's not safe? You have to or else you won't
get name-hired any more. You won't get out if you don't do it
even if it's unsafe, or if you don't lift something that's 100
pounds; even if you're not supposed to, you're going to lift it
because maybe you'll get name-hired next time.
Mr
Bartolucci: That's a reality in the industry. It really
is.
Mr
Laforest: Especially in a smaller local like we have.
Everybody knows each other.
Ms Martel:
Thank you, Art and Ron, both of you, for coming today.
Can I go back to the
mobility issue, Ron, for you in particular? You had said, why
would contractors bring people from the south? Because they're
already tested so there's no need to spend days to test them. I
didn't clearly understand that. What are the requirements that
you're referring to?
Mr
Laforest: Like I told you, this is very special welding
on natural gas, so there's probably about two days of testing.
TransCanada tests all the welders. What happens is that we don't
have contractors who do this work. They all come from the south.
You have the Adam Clarks or the BFC, which have shops already and
people who are tested already. They could bring them here and
they wouldn't have to test them because they're already tested
with that company.
Ms Martel:
So if they're hiring locally they're losing a couple of days on
the job already just to try and test. You mentioned that your
union made some enormous efforts to try and get people trained so
they could do the work without having to bring people from
southern Ontario. You said you spent a couple hundred thousand
dollars on training?
Mr
Laforest: That's right. We had to buy the machines, we
had to buy the place, built the garage to keep the machines in
and everything. We brought in some 42-inch pipe; that's the size
of the pipe they have to be trained on. We successfully passed 10
people last year to make their tests.
Ms Martel:
Who are qualified and can do this work.
Mr
Laforest: Who are qualified to do that work.
Mr David
Christopherson (Hamilton West): I want to come back to
the retesting, if I can, because it's the first time I've heard
that. We are, of course, trying to identify those areas that
negatively impact on construction workers, contrary to the
government's best arguments. You mentioned that this was in the
case of natural gas. Are there other examples where you would
have testing time, even if it's half a day?
Mr
Laforest: For any job.
Mr
Christopherson: Everything, virtually?
Mr
Laforest: Everything. A welder would be tested for a
contractor for one year, that contractor. If he works there two
months and goes to another contractor, he'd have to retest.
Mr
Christopherson: And that's usually a couple of days?
Mr
Laforest: This is for TransCanada, not for the other
ones. The other ones would be about four hours.
Mr
Christopherson: Four hours, but for every local person
they hired, it's four hours lost. And if that person, say,
doesn't pass, then they've got to go to the next person and
that's another four hours, so it can be a headache they could
avoid just by bringing up their own folks.
Mr
Laforest: That's right.
1330
Mr
Christopherson: You mentioned that you've got three
locals in the north, in the Sudbury area? Timmins-
Mr
Laforest: Only one local, but it comprises North Bay,
Timmins, Kirkland Lake and Sudbury. But we have three locals in
Northern Ontario that disagree, which is 508-that's Sault Ste
Marie-and Thunder Bay.
Mr
Christopherson: Which disagree with the position
you-
Mr
Laforest: With Bill 69.
Mr
Christopherson: OK.
Art, on people travelling
from outside, on what you said, I just want to be 100% sure I've
got it. If somebody comes in from Nova Scotia, as Mr Gill pointed
out-you were saying that under ordinary circumstances they'd have
to reside here and work their way up the seniority list and be
qualified for the work that's available. But under Bill 69, your
concern is that people could come in from anywhere, and if
they've got a relationship with the contractor, they can get
name-hired. In your case, they've got national mobility to move
into Ontario, if they've got that relationship, and always keep
on working, at the expense of local people who sit at home.
Mr Adams:
It could go as high as 76%, because they could have individuals
come from Nova Scotia to Ottawa, have them brought up under the
mobility portion of this.
Mr
Christopherson: That's 40%.
Mr Adams:
Then they could also have individuals come and put their transfer
into Local 493 and use an additional 36% on the job by
name-hiring those individuals. So we would have 24% of local
people we could put on to a job, while 76% of the total workforce
out there would either be from somewhere else in the province or
out-of-province. We have no control over that.
That's basically how it
works. Here we don't have name-hires in the local. We have the
right to recall. When an individual has worked for an employer in
the past 12 months, we will allow the contractor to recall that
individual after a layoff. We don't have any name-hires.
Mr
Christopherson: That's been very informative. Thank
you.
The Chair:
Thank you very much, Mr Laforest and Mr Adams, for coming to
speak to us.
ELECTRICAL CONTRACTORS ASSOCIATION OF NORTHERN
ONTARIO
The Chair:
Members, we have one other delegation. I could ask if they're all
here. You may want to proceed if they wish to proceed. Mr Bryant,
Mr Burton and Mr Gatien of the Electrical Contractors
Association of Northern Ontario, would you be prepared to address
the committee now? Great. Please come forward.
Mr Peter
Bryant: Good afternoon. I'm Peter Bryant, director of
ECA Northern Ontario, chairman of the electrical trade bargaining
agency, and president of Esten Electric here in Sudbury. With me
are Cec Burton, president of ECA Northern Ontario, and electrical
manager of Comstock's northern Ontario division; and Wayne
Gatien, vice-president of ECA Northern Ontario, line contractor
representative to the electrical trade bargaining agency and
president of PowerTel Utilities Contractors.
As you can see, northern
Ontario contractors are representatives of both the local and
provincial construction labour relations scene. Together we
represent 30 electrical contractors in negotiations with IBEW
Local 1687 in the north, covering the Soo, Sudbury, North Bay and
Timmins.
As chair of the ETBA, I'm
responsible for provincial negotiations covering 700 or more
contractors throughout the province. I would like to begin by
wearing my provincial ETBA chairman's hat and make some general
comments about Bill 69 and then turn the mike over to Cec and
Wayne for local specifics.
In general, we support the
government's initiative to create a fair, competitive system for
everyone to work within the ICI sector. Bill 69 is a reasonable
alternative method for achieving improved competitiveness and
fairness in our industry.
The general structure of
the bill deserves comment. It is clear that Bill 69 encourages
labour and management parties to work out the specific details of
such issues as hiring, mobility and other local modifications to
the provincial agreements. This structure challenges the industry
to make the process work, and I commit the ETBA to achieving that
end.
The only part of Bill 69
that is not process oriented is 160.1, which is a vehicle to
allow a union to abandon bargaining rights with individual
contractors, presumably general contractors, without the consent
of subcontractors who would be adversely affected. As chairman of
the ETBA, it is my responsibility to ensure that all 13 areas of
the province are treated equally. I do not think this is possible
under the abandonment section of Bill 69 in that it doesn't allow
for any input by subcontractors in the process.
The process for modifying
the local elements of the collective agreement is well defined.
To get relief in Sudbury, this local association has to make a
case and have it decided by an arbitrator if an agreement cannot
be reached. In the abandonment provisions, there is no such
process. A union gets to make a unilateral decision which could
have significant negative impact on individual contractors
represented by the ETBA.
I'm also concerned that
area associations affected by any abandonment have the
opportunity to respond to this new competitive challenge. Any
form of abandonment provision should be delayed until after the
next round of provincial-wide bargaining so that its impact can
be addressed at the provincial bargaining table and through local
modification procedures in Bill 69.
I know through my
constituents at the ETBA that many electrical contractors in
other jurisdictions will be hard-pressed to survive if the
general contractors, their primary clients, are released from
their subcontracting obligations to the IBEW.
That said, I return to the
overall direction of Bill 69 and on behalf of ECA Northern
Ontario and the electrical trade bargaining agency endorse and
support the provisions relating to hiring, mobility and local
modification to provincial agreements.
I'd like to turn it over to
Wayne Gatien.
Mr Wayne
Gatien: Thank you for allowing us to make this
presentation.
ECA Northern Ontario
supports the government's initiatives on hiring and mobility. One
of the major concerns of unionized electrical contractors is the
union hiring hall. In most instances, workers are dispatched to
the employer on the basis of the length of time a worker has been
unemployed. This often results in workers being dispatched who
are not well suited to the available work. Normal criteria for
hiring, such as special skills, additional certification,
previous work history and suitability for the available work are
generally not considered.
The electrical contracting
industry is a dynamic and technologically driven business. New
skills emerge regularly, many requiring both on-the-job and
classroom training. Some go as far as to require additional
certification, such as work on fire alarm systems. In the
industrial areas of the province, specialized safety and
orientation programs are taken by workers before they can be
employed in certain work areas. In this area, for example, our
electricians must take a safety and orientation course before
being allowed to work underground in the mines, and I still
haven't mentioned the new opportunities arising from the
revolution in the communications business, with its ever-changing
systems and proprietary vendor training.
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The traditional hiring hall
operates on the theory that all tradespeople are equally
qualified. This reality is otherwise. Today's electricians are no
longer mutually interchangeable. The government's initiative on
hiring is meant to address this issue by providing a contractor
the right to select up to 60% of the workers it will employ each
time the contractor goes to a hiring hall to hire additional
workers. There are many positive effects arising from this
initiative, not the least of which is the improved efficiency of
training. Employers will be able to do a better job of matching
workers to the work. Workers will be encouraged to engage in
additional training in the knowledge that they may actually get
to use their new skills in the field, instead of losing them
while they are waiting their turn on the list.
Another benefit will be
increased hiring, resulting from smaller contractors taking on
additional work and workers. Since mistakes in hiring have more
impact on small employers, smaller contractors tend to avoid work
commitments which
require them to go to the hiring hall for additional workers.
They are also more likely to make do with existing workers
performing overtime, rather than adding one or two workers to the
payroll.
The government has
addressed these concerns through Bill 69 by permitting
contractors to select 60% of their additional workers every time
they go to the hiring hall. This substantially reduces the risk
associated with hiring new workers and will result in increased
work for both unionized employers and employees. Since the hiring
language in Bill 69 is default language, each party to a
provincial agreement is given the opportunity to customize it to
suit their own particular circumstances. ECA Northern Ontario is
committed to working closely and positively with our labour
counterpart to maximize our mutual benefit from this section.
We'll do our part to make this work.
Another competitive
challenge answered by Bill 69 is the restriction on transferring
core unionized workers from one geographic area of the province
to another. Traditionally, employers may bring only one
experienced tradesperson into another geographic area, and they
must employ all additional workers from the local union hiring
hall. This means workers familiar with the contractors'
operation, practices and techniques cannot be transferred from
one geographic area to another. We are the only business I know
of which can sign and seal a multi-million dollar contract and
then turn the work over to complete strangers to deliver. A key
attribute of our non-union, often out-of-province competition is
their ability to move personnel from job to job without
restriction, whereas in the unionized sector, working away from
home can be a white-knuckle time.
The Electrical Contractors
Association of Northern Ontario membership is naturally reticent
about opening its doors to more competition from outside the area
but at the same time appreciates the new opportunities available
to us as a result of Bill 69. Bill 69 will allow ECA Northern
Ontario contractors a broader range for selling their expertise
in other jurisdictions, which will benefit both the contractors
and their unionized employees. Essentially, mobility is a two-way
street, where all participants specialize in and sell what they
do best; it is also a right that is limited in its use due to the
economic realities of supporting large numbers of workers away
from home. A contractor will take only enough workers into
another jurisdiction to ensure the consistency of their product.
To a certain degree, mobility already exists for the workers. In
tough economic times, large numbers of local tradespeople travel
without compensation to Windsor or Oshawa to work. Similarly,
when the resource sector is booming, large numbers of IBEW
workers migrate to northern Ontario. One can expect the same ebb
and flow with the mobility provisions in Bill 69 as contractors
seek to advance their company and its employees by marketing into
busier areas.
ECA Northern Ontario
supports the government initiatives to give contractors the right
to select up to 40% of the employees needed to perform a contract
from among their employees from outside the local area in which
the work is to be performed. Time permitting, I'll have a few
other comments after Cec is done.
Mr Cecil
Burton: Good afternoon. I'm going to speak on local
modifications enabling. The government's initiative on local
modifications to the provincial agreement provides a practical
method for tailoring broadly applied provincial or local
conditions of employment to suit the changing needs of the local
marketplace. In spite of the efforts of the electrical trade
bargaining agency and the IBEW Construction Council of Ontario to
introduce a province-wide market recovery program, ECA Northern
Ontario and local union 1687 have been unable to implement it in
this area.
The provincial effort has
been very successful in most jurisdictions where the local
parties adopted and used the program. The local electrical
contracting economy has been dominated by the industrial
resources marketplace, which periodically requires large numbers
of tradespeople in remote locations working under very tight
timeframes. This situation results, over time, in collective
agreement provisions geared specifically to the needs of this
type of work. This reality ignores the fact that other markets
with other standards of employment exist and require attention or
they will be lost.
For example, in Espanola, a
multi-million dollar project at the E.B. Eddy-which is now
Domtar-pulp and paper mill would require a large workforce of
industrially oriented workers working under the terms of our
local appendix to the provincial agreement. It contains all the
necessary room, board, travel, wages etc to attract and hold a
large workforce. Literally across the street the town decides to
build a community recreation centre. Clearly, the same conditions
cannot apply to both projects. Without the ability to address the
specifics in each market and to fine-tune our agreements to meet
local needs over time, we will lose our competitive advantage in
one market or the other.
With respect to commercial
and even some institutional work, there is evidence that this is
already occurring. The government's initiative to create a
mechanism to create local modifications to provincial agreements
addresses this concern. The geography of this jurisdiction
requires travel and room and board to be paid in most areas
outside the major population centres. This results in a situation
where contractors based in areas such as Elliot Lake are
technically liable to pay for conditions for work in their own
community regardless of the numbers or type of work required. In
other words, they are liable to pay room and board, travel, the
conditions that I mentioned before. Again, the flexibility
provided by the local modification procedure will help to iron
out these problems and avoid the situation where the growth
potential of our commercial and institutional marketplace is
limited to the larger centres.
1350
One of the areas of the
local modification procedure that requires review is the list of
eligible items for modification. The complexity of our agreements
and unique working
conditions require the ability to amend all terms and conditions
of employment that affect competitiveness. For example,
underground work at the mines would require a non-standard work
schedule which may not be readily identified on the list of
items. For simplicity and to avoid unnecessary litigation, it
would be better to state what cannot be changed, such as union
recognition, safety, union security etc.
We are also concerned about
the designation of regional employer organizations which may
apply for local modifications. The ECA Northern Ontario is a
constituent member of the ETBA and effectively represents its
members in that forum. In our opinion, ECA Northern Ontario
should be the only designated regional employer organization
where the electrical provincial agreement is concerned. Our
existence should be a bar to any other group applying to be
designated.
With these minor, but
positive, amendments, ECA Northern Ontario endorses and supports
the government's initiative to permit local modifications to a
provincial agreement. This procedure will make province-wide
single-trade bargaining more responsive to local conditions and
improve the fairness and competitiveness of Ontario's
construction economy.
The Chair:
If that's your submission, gentlemen, we have only a few minutes
for questions.
Mr Gatien:
I have a quick comment if time permits. It's more of a personal
note than anything. I have the responsibility to run a family
business. A family business is a little bit more difficult. There
are extra requirements in a family business. I bought the
business from my dad about 15 years ago and promptly fired him.
That's a good and a bad story. He was without a job, but he was
able to negotiate his own severance. At the time, it was
difficult, because in a family business being the son chosen to
continue the legacy and still working for your dad, when you have
an argument you never know if you're going to be fired or
grounded. The responsibility is very large. For 15 years I've led
the company.
In the unionized
construction sector, the union designation extends beyond me to
my office staff, my brothers, my sisters, my mom, my dad, my
wife, my kids, my house, my pension, everything. If I fail in
business or if one of us wants to start a new business, the
present legislation infers that all the above are subject to
union rights.
The union representatives
here today continue to talk about the lowering of wages and
standards. If it were wages only that we competed with, I could
compete against anybody. In certain circumstances, the cost of
the remainder of our collective agreement is prohibitive. Because
of clauses in our collective agreement, I am required to pay a
first-year apprentice, this is somebody who's 18 or 20 years old,
over $600 per week in benefits and pensions. This is more than
the non-union pay in regular-time wages. Our employer and
employee associations got together over an extended period of
time and came up with a market recovery program. However, our
local union refuses to use it. We have no mechanism to overcome
that.
Mobility clauses allow us
to take our workers elsewhere. That applies to our firm
specifically right now, only in one trade, though. As line
workers in the province of Ontario, we have mobility now for our
sector. For this little Sudbury contractor, it works. I can
compete with the big Toronto contractors anywhere but downtown
Toronto. That's because I choose not to go to downtown Toronto. I
can go anywhere else: Hamilton, Niagara, Peterborough, Thunder
Bay, Kitchener. Our Sudbury-based workers go with us. But I need
the other shoe to run competitively. I need name-hiring.
Our company purchases many
half-million-dollar pieces of equipment. I put radios,
cellphones, satellite phones, everything under the sun into those
pieces of equipment. Now I do not get to choose who operates this
piece of equipment, this investment. I doubt any of you would do
that with your assets, personal or otherwise.
We do not go around older
workers in our business. In fact, the collective agreement we
have right now has a clause to ensure older workers work. In my
25 years, it has never been used. Those older workers work. Our
local has given incentives to our older workers to retire early
so younger workers could get the work. The unionized workers have
always been given the ability to get the work. All I want is the
ability to compete. If I am given the ability to compete, I
guarantee you that our workers will work.
The Chair:
Thank you. We actually are out of time but I will allow a little
bit of leeway here if you have one question.
Mr
Bartolucci: Peter, Cec and Wayne, thanks very much for
your presentation, much of which you know I disagree with, some
of which I can sympathize with and some of which I think is open
to negotiation at the local level or at your ECA level.
Let me just zero in on one
comment that you made, Wayne, not to be confrontational because
it's not the place. I respect your right to an opinion. You said
that the way the hiring hall works now, workers are assigned to
the contractor based on how the long the worker has been
unemployed. There's no argument with that. That's how the hiring
hall works. How is this legislation going to improve that for the
26% that remain in the hiring hall? Wayne?
Mr Gatien:
How is it going to affect the 26% that are left in the hiring
hall? Why are 26% left in the hiring hall? The numbers work
whether you hire 10 people or 100 people. The first worker on the
list may or may not have the exact qualifications, training,
certification and so on that you require. Presumably, the ones
that you've chosen already do, so they will have less of an
impact economically on how you compete.
Right now we have to
compete with non-union and out-of-province contractors who have
the same employees every job, 100%, job in, job out, it doesn't
matter, and these are not just on little jobs. For the last two
jobs, which totalled approximately $30 million, I was the only unionized
contractor bidding the job. I was one of 30% of in-province
contractors bidding the job. The two jobs went to one non-union
in-province and one non-union out-of-province. What does that do
for your 26% on your list? Nothing. They may still get the work
because if these guys stay out of work long enough, they'll go
work for that non-union contractor. I don't have that ability. I
can't do that. I don't have that choice.
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Mr
Christopherson: Thank you for your presentation,
gentlemen.
Just further to the answer
you were giving in terms of the people left over, you can
appreciate that the submission made by unions here and in other
places is that people who are active in health and safety, who
have been active as a union steward are likely to be looked
over.
You probably heard the
presentation from another union talking about a member who has
one eye, which may or may not affect their ability. I'm assuming
it doesn't in terms of the work they perform and once they're in
that hall they should have every opportunity, but human nature
being what it is-we're not asking people to be saints or go
against human nature-if you've got a choice between hiring
somebody who has two eyes or one eye, guess what's going to
happen. Or if you've got a choice between hiring someone who has
no track record, they're fairly new in the industry, versus
someone who had a particular interest in health and safety, human
nature is that you're not going to pick that person. You don't
want that person on your site if you can avoid it. If you're
given the chance-under this legislation you would be-that person
will sit.
I take very seriously the
point that workers will also ignore safety rules or direction
they're given that would have them work unsafely for fear of
being tagged a troublemaker, someone who can't get along. These
are serious concerns in terms of the long term. I appreciate for
each of you it's not that huge, but cumulatively in terms of the
number of hours of work performed across the province, this has
serious implications.
The other thing I want to
mention to you is that at the end of the day, all that's going to
happen is that we're just going to see workers pitted against one
another to see who can work for the least amount of money. Yes,
business will operate better, business will operate more
efficiently, I'll bet you business will work more profitably, but
construction workers and their families over the years will see
their standard of living decline, decline, decline, union and
non-union. This is a concern and this is one of the reasons why
we think the government is going in the wrong direction here. So
just comment on those two observations.
The Chair:
That's a five-minute question. If you would like to respond to it
in under three minutes, we'd really appreciate it.
Mr Bryant:
I'd like to address the safety issue as it's a very important
issue. It's very important to electrical contractors, and
electrical contractors, as supported by the Ontario Construction
Secretariat, are twice as safe as non-union electrical
contractors in the province.
Mr
Christopherson: Two and a half times.
Mr Bryant:
Two and a half times. We take great pride in that. Electrical
contractors have put forward many initiatives collectively to go
forward and train our workers. We have provincial programs that
work to that end.
The laws of the land that
you people make and that are in place with the requirements for
health and safety require health and safety representatives on
all projects. They are appointed, in our case, in Local 1687, by
the business manager. He has appointed the health and safety reps
on the project. They're appointed, they have never been objected
to, and I see no reason in the future that that would change. Our
contractors are very responsible in that manner. I would like to
say that is across the province, and I am speaking on behalf of
electrical.
As much as I can understand
the concern, it's a serious issue to all of us here too and it's
one I think is well addressed. Safety is paramount in the
electrical industry.
Mr
Christopherson: Under the existing law. I just worry
about what will happen under the new law.
Hon Mr
Stockwell: Just a couple of quick points to follow up
the line of questioning. If what Mr Christopherson said is true,
then all those collective agreements that have enabling clauses,
that have mobility and that have name-hiring, would be suffering
what he suggests is this serious travesty. It doesn't seem to be
happening. There are many collective agreements out there that
have these clauses built right in them, but none of those things
that he suggests is happening on these sites. So it would seem to
me that although you may suggest this could happen, there is
absolutely no proof that it is happening. In fact, exactly the
opposite: there is proof that it doesn't happen where this takes
place.
The further point I'd like
to make and maybe make a comment on is there is a lot of talk
from the union side of things that they don't want the unionized
employers to double-breast. In essence, it's 1(4), and they don't
want 1(4); they don't want to allow double-breasting. But I've
heard too many times from too many employers, and from union
people too, that although the union operations don't want these
employers to double-breast, union workers double-breast. They
work on a union site until they run out of work, and then, not
all, but some, decide, "Well, I can't get any work on the union
side of things," and they go and work non-union.
Are there any comments you
would like to make on either of those?
Mr Gatien:
Back to the health and safety issue and the injured worker issue,
it is a difficult issue at best. Collective agreements are very
poor places to attempt to handle that circumstance. We've
attempted to allow the proper ministries to look after that. That
worker's interests are better represented in those
circumstances.
You talk about the person
with one eye. I am not responsible for all the injuries that have
taken place in the workplace. In fact, our health and safety
record is very good,
and it's not because we're forced to go there by the local or by
the IBEW; it's because we choose to go there.
However, on the injured
worker, many times in the past a person has come to the top of
the list and we require someone to climb a pole and we know this
person has an injury that stops him from climbing a pole or doing
it safely or doing it efficiently, and we have not been given the
choice to go to another worker. So now we have to make provisions
for this worker. It's a difficult issue at best.
There are many compensation
and safety issues that labour legislation will never have the
ability to handle, and shouldn't have the ability to handle. I've
witnessed people on compensation who are in jail for other
offences, still collecting compensation. I don't think it's up to
the labour ministry to look after that. That's the work of other
ministries to look after that, and they better represent the
issue at that point in time.
Hon Mr
Stockwell: The double-breasting?
Mr Gatien:
Especially in our sector we know that takes-almost 100% of the
workers who go on the list for extended periods of time do
double-breasting and 100% of the employers are not allowed to.
There are no ifs, ands or buts about that.
The Chair:
Thank you, gentlemen, for coming.
That's it for the
submissions. I would like to close by thanking everyone for
coming today, thanking you also for your patience and your
flexibility.
Members of committee, lunch
is provided for committee and staff. The shuttle bus will be
available at 2:45. This meeting is adjourned until tomorrow at 10
o'clock in Windsor.
