Province’s project agreement pays into rehab, safety
The provincial government will pay into funds for safety, education and rehabilitation of workers with addictions under its agreement with construction unions for public-sector projects starting with the $1.4-billion Pattullo Bridge replacement.
The payments add up to 32 cents an hour for each worker, but a union representative argues government will get “good value for money,” considering some of the services the funds support.
“The reason we’ve negotiated these (contributions) is because these are collective costs,” said Tom Sigurdson, executive director of the B.C. Building Trades Council. “They are costs not specific to one union” that would be covered by union dues.
Neither government nor Allied Infrastructure and Related Construction Council of B.C., the union entity created under the agreement, have released an estimate of how much these contributions will total for the Pattullo project. Sigurdson said such contributions aren’t unique to government projects.
The biggest contribution, 25 cents of the 32 cents, goes toward an administration fund to pay overhead for the Allied Infrastructure council. One cent an hour goes to the cost of sorting out the jurisdiction of unions to keep one trades union from straying into the work of another.
Two cents an hour go into each of three funds: one that helps pay for educational upgrading for construction workers, one for a safety programs and one to a long-standing drug-and-alcohol rehabilitation program for the unionized construction sector.
“Some of these are historic,” Sigurdson said, such as the rehabilitation program and safety programs, which date back decades. Two cents an hour isn’t a lot, he said.
Critics of the agreement argue its provisions are overly bureaucratic and there is no guarantee that nonunion construction workers who sign on to the project will benefit from the programs.
Under the deal, non-union contractors can bid on jobs, but must abide by the agreement’s terms and non-union workers must join a corresponding union within 30 days of starting work on the project.
“All of this is a way of directing dollars to the building trades unions and their different initiatives,” said Chris Gardner, president of the Independent Contractors and Business Association of B.C. Gardner said only about 15 per cent of B.C.’s construction workforce is unionized.
“To find a contractor or consortium with the best price, most experience and record for on-time delivery, government should put out a request for proposals and let the private sector respond,” Gardner said.
“That’s the way you build projects.”
All of this is a way of directing dollars to the building trades unions and their different initiatives.