Toronto City Staff Report Recommends Procurement Be Open to All Qualified Workers
CLAC applauds recommendation
Toronto—CLAC welcomed the report released yesterday from Toronto’s city manager that clearly recommends that construction work be openly tendered to all qualified contractors and workers.
At present, the City of Toronto can only accept bids for major construction projects from contractors whose employees are members of certain unions. This excludes companies whose workers belong to other unions or are not unionized, which has prevented many business owners and workers in Toronto from participating in building their city. If council accepts the recommendation, it will end a labour monopoly that select unions hold on construction work in Toronto.
“The strong recommendation from staff that the city openly and fairly tender projects will better serve taxpayers, while also supporting all workers qualified to work on these projects,” says Ian DeWaard, the Ontario director for the union CLAC. “Eighty-five percent of construction members in our union believe that closed tendering has unfairly impacted them and restricts their access to work. Opening up projects to all qualified companies and workers will provide more opportunities for our members and all workers.”
The city manager’s report references studies that say the opportunity for cost savings ranges from 2 to 40 percent. The construction budget for projects that are affected by restricted tendering has been calculated to be over $600 million per year, and the savings for the city and Toronto taxpayers could be anywhere from $12 million to more than $200 million annually.
The $600 million does not include the Toronto Community Housing Corporation, which is also captured by closed tendering. Toronto Housing must decide for itself if it will adopt open tendering procurement practices.
“CLAC is concerned primarily with the fairness of this issue, but we cannot overlook the serious savings to the city that open tendering will bring,” says DeWaard. “Open tendering will allow the city to remain fully in control of the quality and safety of contractors it selects, and the city will also benefit from a less complicated procurement process that nets better value for projects. It’s hard to imagine that council could vote to reject the recommendations of the staff report when they also know that their budgets are facing constraints.”
The report prepared by the city manager will go before the City of Toronto Executive Committee on June 6 and to full council on June 17. CLAC will be speaking to the report on June 6. CLAC represents 6,000 construction workers in Ontario who are currently restricted from bidding and working on industrial, institutional, and commercial (ICI) work for the cities of Toronto, Hamilton, and Sault Ste. Marie and the Region of Waterloo.