Trades NL slams government for allowing out-of-province workers
One company says construction flow makes it difficult to always hire local
Some local contractors and tradespeople continue to raise concerns about workers from outside the province being exempted from self-quarantine rules applied to other travellers.
Specifically, construction workers who arrive from other parts of Canada are required to self-isolate on off-hours for 14 days but can work on site. Self-isolation exemptions also apply to truckers and transportation workers such as ferry and airline crews.
One subcontractor who contacted The Telegram earlier this week was worried about a group of workers who arrived in St. John’s on Tuesday and went straight to work on the core sciences building at Memorial University.
But the company overseeing that project says this has been going on all across the province and is in line with exemptions implemented back in March.
“We are following all the Newfoundland public health orders. We’re compliant with social distancing and personal hygiene and we think we have a very safe worksite,” Chris Hickman of Marco Construction told The Telegram.
“Marco takes the health and welfare of its workers very seriously.”
Hickman confirmed that work crews coming to the province do not always have special skills that would make local hires impossible.
And that has the organization representing trades people in the province calling foul.
“At a time when our province has been doing extremely well fighting COVID-19 by following professional health advice and maintaining a significant shut-down of industries, including construction, it is difficult to understand why government would grant construction workers from out-of-province an exemption from the 14-day isolation order to work on their own public infrastructure projects,” Trades NL president John Leonard said in a release Friday.
“This latest development is both disappointing and unacceptable. Therefore, we are calling on government to withdraw this exemption for the protection of our local workers.”
Trades NL president John Leonard
“This latest development is both disappointing and unacceptable. Therefore, we are calling on government to withdraw this exemption for the protection of our local workers.”
Trades NL’S executive director, Darin King, said the situation highlights the need for a local hiring agreement.
“Last week we wrote government, after a year of discussions, asking them to demonstrate a provincial commitment to Newfoundlanders and Labradorians by implementing benefit agreements on public infrastructure, as we are seeing in so many other provinces,” King said. “This is not a new concept as we see them in many other jurisdictions, and they have been used on resource projects here before.”
A spokesperson for Trades
NL later said they are aware of construction workers here from Quebec, Ontario, P.E.I. and Nova Scotia.
“We are confident that we have absolutely every skill set required to construct infrastructure in N.L.,” Corey Parsons told The Telegram. “Our members are building buildings, mines, oil rigs, refineries, processing facilities, etc.”
Hickman said the flow of work from one subcontractor to another makes it difficult to ensure local workers are favoured.
“We try to employ as much Newfoundland labour as we can,” he said. “There are some tradespeople that come from outside the province. It’s a very fluid workplace and labour market, so at any one time we have people from outside the province on that site.”
On Friday, Premier Dwight Ball reminded reporters that the total number of people coming into the province these days is very low.
Nonetheless, he says he has made inquiries.
“I have reached out personally to some companies that have brought in people from the outside, even though they’re very limited,” he said.