Tuesday, June 2, 2020

Canada's National Crisis and Fairness in Construction

No two issues have been at the forefront of CLAC’s advocacy with government as much as the appalling indifference as a society to the care of our seniors and ensuring fair and open tendering of public infrastructure construction projects

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On June 1, 2020, CLAC Executive Director Wayne Prins had the opportunity to present directly to MPs and appeal for much-needed change. (Watch the presentation. Wayne is introduced at the 14-minute mark.)

Good day everyone. Thank you for the opportunity to meet with you today.

CLAC is a national union founded on the belief that people, businesses, and work communities flourish when workplaces are based on cooperation and mutual respect. We believe cooperation and partnership between labour and management creates more positive work communities and better outcomes for everyone.

CLAC was established in 1952 and is today one of the largest independent, multisector unions in Canada with over 60,000 members working in a wide range of sectors and industries—construction, healthcare, retail, transportation, manufacturing, food processing, and others.

Internationally, CLAC is an affiliated member of the World Organization of Workers, for which I currently serve as president. The World Organization of Workers collectively represents 1.5 million workers throughout much of the world.

We remain independent of traditional labour bodies in Canada such as the Canadian Labour Congress, who you have heard from today. We have a great deal of respect for the traditional labour establishment, and in many instances we have come to work in collaboration with their affiliated members on ground-level initiatives.

That we are not a member of the labour establishment speaks primarily to a different perspective regarding the nature and role of a union in a workplace as well as worker choice and union accountability. But in many respects, the day-to-day work of our union is similar, and certainly we face the same challenges in today’s environment.

I’d like to begin my comments by commending all parties for coming together and supporting a quick and effective response to the crisis. Key among the programs are the emergency response benefit (CERB) and the emergency wage subsidy (CEWS).

The emergency response benefit has been extraordinarily successful in helping millions of Canadians through the worst of this crisis, and the emergency wage subsidy, because of the significance of it being a 75 percent subsidy, has literally saved thousands of Canadian businesses and kept millions of Canadians gainfully employed.

While these programs will need some adjustments going forward, they will remain critically important for months to come, supporting workers and employers as we rebuild the economy.

I want to speak to a national crisis that, in the midst of this COVID-19 crisis, has taken centre stage in the Canadian conscience.

CLAC represents nearly 10,000 members working on the front lines of healthcare and long term care in Ontario, Alberta, and BC. Grace Manor of Holland Christian Homes, which was one of the homes mentioned in the national media last week, is represented by CLAC.

These workers are caring for our nation’s seniors with amazing dedication and commitment. If you’ve spent time with these workers, you know how they love the residents, and work desperately hard to care for them in such a way that keeps them comfortable and preserves their dignity.

They work in an environment that is exceedingly challenging and for money that often falls short of a living wage. The workers use every possible minute of their shift to provide hands-on care to the residents, yet the system drowns them in needless paperwork and documentation, which takes time away from the residents.

The expectations and burdens of care have been steadily increasing, yet the rate of funding has steadily declined. As a result, the working conditions are so challenging that finding qualified staff is very difficult. Worker shortages are common, and caregiver burnout is on the rise.

All of this betrays an appalling indifference as a society to the care of our seniors. The sector has been neglected by governments across this country for decades—in fact, CLAC, along with others, has been ringing alarm bells on this issue for over 30 years.

I understand this sector is primarily provincial jurisdiction, but we now understand the issue as a national crisis, and it’s a moral imperative for all stakeholders to get together and find solutions to the crisis now.

The federal government can play a helpful role in this, starting with establishing a national standard of care for our seniors. This could be achieved by a nationally orchestrated study of best practices that have resulted in superior outcomes.

With all that has been said recently, I want to take this opportunity to honour the service of the workers in this sector. We are not upset that the military released their report on the homes in Ontario—in fact, it may finally be the catalyst for meaningful change.

But it is deeply distressing to see the front-line workers in long term care shouldering the weight of public outrage when, in fact, the guilt belongs elsewhere. The workers remain the heroes in this equation, and the burden is on the rest of us, starting with our political leaders, to fix it.

Lastly, I want to talk about the construction industry and work in skilled trades.

CLAC represents over 40,000 skilled tradespeople working in construction and skilled trades.

Notably, CLAC represents about half of the construction and contracted maintenance workforce in Alberta’s oilsands as well as half of the workforce building the clean energy megaproject in northern BC called Site C dam.

We will build much of the LNG Canada project in Kitimat. And, when the Trans Mountain Pipeline Project ramps up to full activity later this year, over 60 percent of the workforce will be CLAC members.

We are proud to be building much of the infrastructure in our natural resource sector, which ultimately propels the entire Canadian economy.

Through this crisis, construction activity has been an economic lifeline for many Canadians. While the majority of the economy was shut down, governments across the country declared much of construction work essential.

This affirms what we, in the industry, talk about as “parity of esteem”—that education in the skilled trades is as noble as any other form of education, and work in the skilled trades is as important as any other in the country.

It’s important to understand that the construction workforce in Canada is comprised of three main groups: the traditional building trades unions, CLAC as well as other alternative unions, and the nonunion open shop.

Each of these groups enjoys a significant share of the market in Canada. And, just as Canadians are well served by competition among political parties, we, too, are well served by the competition among the players in the construction labour landscape.

I say all this because there is an important link to what comes next in the economic recovery from COVID-19.

As we saw just this morning with the prime minister’s announcement regarding municipalities, a key response of governments to stimulate economic growth and activity will be major investments in public infrastructure.

The federal government alone will spend billions of dollars on construction projects; so too will your provincial and municipal counterparts. In many cases, particularly on large projects, funding will come from multiple levels of government.

In all cases, it is incumbent on governments to ensure this money is spent both efficiently and in a way that achieves the greatest benefit to the community in which it’s spent. This idea is what has given rise to the use of community benefit agreements (CBAs), which are a contractual tool used to ensure these benefits are realized.

CLAC endorses the use of community benefit agreements—when they are used properly. By properly, I mean that they identify the desired community benefits and set in place the conditions and resources necessary to achieve them without losing the benefits of fair and open competition for the work among all players in the construction industry.

Sometimes, community benefit agreements are used to limit access to the work to only one group of labour. For example, the government of British Columbia has entered a community benefit agreement with the BC Building Trades unions. This means that on designated projects paid for by all citizens of BC, only members of building trades unions are permitted to perform the work. The City of Toronto has done the same thing with the Ontario Building Trades.

Evidence suggests that where CBAs are used in this restrictive way, the cost of the public projects increase by 20-25 percent. Imagine 20-25 percent on the billions of infrastructure dollars that will be spent across the country over the next decade. This is a critically important issue.

Fair and open tendering of public infrastructure, whether under the auspices of a community benefit agreement or not, is the best approach, and is the approach the federal government should demand of every infrastructure dollar spent on behalf of Canadians.

I will leave my opening comments at that, and I look forward to answering questions from committee members. Thank you.

Canada's National Crisis and Fairness in Construction

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