Crown firm to control major-project hiring
Everybody knew the B.C. NDP was keen to retool public construction projects to put more apprentices and under-represented groups to work.
But inventing a new Crown corporation to take direct control of the entire hiring process on major job sites? Not many saw that coming.
Monday’s news that the government is adding a new twist to public construction projects by way of “community benefits agreements” was widely anticipated. The only surprise is that it took so long. Still, Premier John Horgan went far beyond the hints he had laid out.
The campaign promise was to “mandate effective apprenticeship ratios on government-funded projects.”
What was unveiled Monday was a big intervention in the old way of doing business that will make one of the biggest and most complicated parts of any building project the government’s responsibility.
“B.C. Infrastructure Benefits Inc.” is about to take its place in the pantheon of standalone public corporations that do the government’s bidding in specified areas.
It will wade into the billions of dollars worth of public building contracts B.C. puts out to tender. The mission is to write more apprenticeships, local hires and quotas for under-represented groups into the contracts.
That’s standard policy in much of Canada these days. The previous B.C. Liberal government encouraged the same thing. But the NDP government is going to enforce it, by taking over the task directly.
The other party to the agreement is a new entity called the Allied Infrastructure and Related Construction Council. It had zero presence or record in B.C. until Monday. It sounds as if it is just the B.C. Building Trades Council by another name.
So all hiring for designated provincial projects, starting with the Pattullo Bridge replacement in Metro Vancouver and then the four-laning of the Trans-Canada Highway east of Kamloops, will go through it.
The government said that the new agency will hire the construction workers, and will work with unions and contractors to dispatch labour, as well as manage payroll and benefits.
The old model of government awarding contracts for the best price and hoping companies hire in a socially conscious way is out. The new model will see government take full control of all hiring, and do most of it through the Building Trades Council.
Despite its dwindling presence, the council has been an intrinsic element of the NDP and a big cash contributor for years. The reward is at hand. And rejigging labour laws is as much a part of changing governments in B.C. as changing the locks at the legislature. Righties tilt the scene more to the liking of their supporters. Lefties skew it back in the other direction.
The goals are: More apprentices (up to 25 per cent on the bridge job), more under-represented groups getting trades careers started and more locals on job sites. Also, pay raises are almost guaranteed.
Transportation Minister Claire Trevena painted a picture of people living at home, working nearby and “spending time with friends and family without having to worry about going to where the work is.”
The goals are worthwhile. But the weakest part of this new plan was the assertion that it’s not going to cost any more money. Horgan said he didn’t see any significant increase in costs coming and there wouldn’t be any “explosion” of new bureaucracy.
The function he is undertaking is hugely complicated and will need constant attention through multi-year construction schedules. The agreement aims to align wages at prevailing rates, “to promote good wages for all employees.”
That’s all going to cost more than it once did. Someone is going to pay for it. It’s going to be us.
Billions of dollars of provincial government projects will be built using union-only labour, under new rules announced by Premier John Horgan.
The new “community benefits agreements” were billed by Horgan on Monday as prioritizing local hirings, better wages and more opportunities for apprenticeship training, but also mark a throwback to 1990s-era construction rules that forced workers on government projects to join trades unions.
“Within 30 days of employment on the job site, any non-union worker or a worker from another affiliation will be required to join the union for work specific to the project,” the B.C. government said in a statement.
Horgan glossed over that detail in a news conference in Vancouver, preferring to play up the potential benefits to the first two projects to fall under the new model: The new $1.4-billion Pattullo Bridge and a four-lane highway project between Kamloops and Alberta.
“Community benefit agreements ensure projects will be on time, on budget, fair wages are paid to everyone and importantly that legacy of new workers for the future,” said Horgan.
The changes were immediately hailed by unions as a way to fix B.C.’s shortage of skilled tradespeople, as well as give women and Aboriginal peoples more opportunities to enter construction. But independent non-union contractors, who represent more than 80 per cent of the industry workforce, said those justifications are just a smokescreen for a return to union-only sites, labour halls and favouritism for building trades that will cause projects to be more expensive and cumbersome.
Horgan rejected those arguments, saying B.C. needed to solve its labour shortage and be competitive in attracting workers, and he hailed it as “a new way of doing business in B.C.”
However, the new rules are similar to how the NDP handled public construction projects in the 1990s. At that time, the party was criticized for providing lucrative incentives to unions that donated to the NDP and organized its election campaigns.
In the 1990s, the government created Highway Constructors Ltd. to employ workers building the Island Highway expansion project. Any of the workers who entered the site had to join a union within 30 days, and it set a “fair wage policy” mandating union pay. An analysis by the Vancouver Board of Trade estimated that added $70 million in costs to the project.
Under the new Horgan proposal, Highway Constructors will be resurrected as a Crown corporation called B.C. Infrastructure Benefits Inc., that will also set pay at “industry rates.”
Program details will be set out this week, when the government is expected to release the full agreement between B.C. Infrastructure Benefits Inc. and the Allied Infrastructure and Related Construction Council — a new organization that acts on behalf of 19 trades unions.