Well, yes, I have worked in high places.
But that's what the ironwork trade is.
With respect to that, I represent the local. We have about 1,800 members in this province, and there are about 15,000 of us in Canada. We have lots of issues, and they're in the newspapers, with mobility and skill shortages, and this is what I want to address.
I passed around a graph. I'm not sure if you have it, but it shows the apprentice completion numbers over a period of years. When you look at that, this is what happens when the government gets involved with apprenticeship. We ran our apprenticeship program up until there. Ever since 1986, the numbers pretty well tell the story. It was going pretty good when we were in charge of the apprenticeship program.
Anyway, I'm going to read a letter, as I'm going to run out of time. It's a letter I addressed to the last Minister of Human Resources, Belinda Stronach, in January. It pretty well sums up a lot of what I'm going to say, so I'll see if I can get through it in time.
To the Honourable Ms. Stronach:
I am writing to request your assistance in addressing an ongoing issue I feel is of grave concern, not only to members of my Union, but also to the public at large. The issue is the requested use of foreign workers to deal with an anticipated skilled trade shortage in British Columbia. I have previously written to your office regarding the skilled trade shortage issue and the impending “foreign worker” solution. This issue now requires your immediate attention.
In particular, I want to address the issue of workers who place reinforcing bar, or rebar, into concrete. The open-shop, non-union contractors in residential high-rise construction have been screaming for the past couple of years that Canada ought to open its borders to foreign rebar workers. They claim projects are in disarray, on hold, and others may be cancelled due to these contractors' inability to attract and retain rebar workers.
Yet, a recent study done by the Construction Sector Council entitled, Labour Requirements for 2005 to 2013, indicates a need for only approximately 300 additional ironworkers over the next three years in British Columbia, with another 100 or so required over the following 4 years, ending in 2013. It is our position, which I will sketch out in greater detail below, that we are more than capable of meeting this demand from within our own borders.
...it is interesting to note that the same group of contractors crying out for the right to bring in foreign workers to deal with an alleged skills shortage are the exact same contractors who have never bought into the need for full-fledged apprenticeships or formal training, and heaven forbid they would accept anything like a red-sealed tradesman. They are also largely responsible for the strong lobby group behind the provincial government's destruction of apprenticeship training in the province of British Columbia.
In contrast, Ironworkers Local 97 has a proud and enviable record of supporting apprenticeship training and our membership hold at least 98% of the Ironworker Red Seal certifications issued in this province. The first formal ironworker training curriculum and dedicated facility in North America was developed and initiated by Local 97 in 1956. This program was subsequently adopted by the International Association in Washington, DC, and is now used throughout North America. It is a proud legacy as my Local Union enters its 100th year in the business of building Canada.
A few years back it became alarmingly clear that we were not attracting enough apprentices into our trade. There are numerous reasons for this; namely a lack of work and diminishing wages due to the competitive bidding against the open-shop sector, a sector that never was a supporter of apprenticeship, and therefore unwilling to bear any of the cost burden associated with training apprentices. In addition, for a time we had the lowest wages in the rebar sector in Canada, the consequence of which was the inability to attract experienced Ironworkers from other parts of Canada to fill the void. Wages have now increased to the point that we currently have 30 rodmen...
—actually, we have a hundred rodmen from other provinces—
...almost all of who are from Quebec, working in British Columbia. We expect another 40 to arrive in the New Year.
It is interesting to note that the province of Quebec, since implementing the Decree and enacting significant labour law changes in the early 1970s, have developed the best training and apprenticeship programs in North America and quite possibly the world. As a result of this commitment to training, there is now an abundance of mobile, highly skilled tradesmen from Quebec available to travel to other parts of Canada, including British Columbia, when construction is slow in their home province.
Ironworkers are a mobile group of workers, and as a result of our fraternal brotherhood, we have the ability to tap into this valuable source of highly skilled Canadian tradesmen from Quebec. If the open-shop contractors signed an agreement with us, they too could gain access to this gold mine of opportunity. Instead they, in collusion with the provincial government, wish to bring in foreign workers rather than employing or training Canadians. I wish to note one of our contractors, Harris Rebar, is paying airfare and some subsistence allowance for these tradesmen, something the federal government has done in the past in parts of this country for unemployed Canadians.
Recognizing the dwindling apprentice to journeyman ratio a number of years ago (presently, 6% of our membership are apprentices)--