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 District 2Updates on bargaining, projects and organizing (May 2007) By Tim Cullen, Member Representative Old Man Winter was slow to leave. He put snow on the ground in early March. The snow was replaced with several inches of rain per hour when the Pineapple Express weather system came through. Work has been busy with several rounds of negotiations including the Vancouver Island Addendum for the Utility Contractors; the Paving Addendum for Island Asphalt; United Rentals in Victoria, Nanaimo and Campbell River; Robinson Rentals in Nanaimo; Eaglestar Golf Inc. for the Morningstar Golf Course (the new owners of Eaglecrest Golf Course) and Victoria Materials Depot. Each set is at a different stage, from collecting proposals to getting set for ratification votes. All the OEM Industrial shops, Brandt Tractor in Campbell River, Nanaimo and Victoria; Terratech in Campbell River; and Wajax in Campbell River and Nanaimo have been fairly busy so far. The rental industry shops, United Rentals and Robinson Rentals, seem to be holding their own too. In the waste industry, Waste Management in Campbell River, Nanaimo and Victoria; Waste Services in Cumberland, Parksville and Duncan; and BFI in Victoria have had a somewhat difficult winter with all the wind storm damage, snow and ice (and, of course, our expected rainfalls of biblical proportions). Hopefully, the sun will do more than just poke through the clouds for a few minutes and will shoot for whole days instead. In the utility construction industry, Uplands Excavating in Campbell River is back at the Westmin Mine. It has completed a project in Alert Bay and is now doing residential work. The residential market is keeping utility companies Hazelwood Construction in Nanaimo, Chew Excavating and WIC in Victoria busy with road and utility upgrades. Hazelwood has completed the first phase of the Departure Bay parking lot expansion and we hope it is successful in getting the next. There has been quite a bit of expansion work at the ferry terminals in the past year with most contracts going to Vancouver Pile Driving and Fraser River Pile & Dredge. Hurlen Construction has completed work on the new cruise line dock in Campbell River which should bring in additional tourist dollars for that community. Construction Aggregates in Victoria has almost exhausted the supply of aggregate at its production pit. It will be hard pressed to provide any more aggregate within a year or so. This provides an opportunity for it to start working on a development project in Sayward. The company purchased land with a sizeable supply of gravel. The only thing holding up production is the permitting process. The community is divided over a gravel operation starting up there. Half the town wants the work and the other half wants the beautiful pristine trees. Me, I am a supporter of EARTH FIRST. We can log and pave the rest of the planets later! Seriously though, the Island needs work. With all the sawmills closing and the chip supply for the pulp mills getting smaller all the time, it’s getting really scary. Construction Aggregates is a good union company. It has agreed to carry the terms of the collective agreement to Sayward and it deserves our support. If people like the look of the trees, then fine, they can take pictures and hang them up on the walls back where they came from. Now that I have pumped up Construction Aggregates a little bit, maybe it will have a positive effect on the Victoria Materials Depot collective agreement currently in the bargaining process. In the paving industry, Hub City Paving in Nanaimo and R&E Paving in Port Alberni are expecting another good season. The OK Group (Island Asphalt in Victoria, Duncan Paving, Haylock Bros. Paving in Parksville, Tayco Paving in Courtenay and Campbell River, and OK Upper Island in Port Hardy) is also expecting a good season. We are in negotiations with this group and you never know what the future will hold. The company is not adamantly against our requests and all the other groups of paving contractors on the Island and Mainland have agreed to substantial increases. We have also received some very unfortunate news. JJM, which is not our friend, is back in the paving business. It was the low bidder, with Island Asphalt being second, on the Dugan Lake job in Cobble Hill. We had been informed that JJM was getting out of the paving business and had even sold off some of its paving equipment. Once it secured the job, it had to find employees to do the work. JJM went looking for some of its past employees who, by the way, are members of our Local Union and the Labourers’ Union. We were reasonably sure that JJM was not going to get these people back because they were now working steadily with our union contractors, and many told us they had been screwed by JJM. How wrong we were. Some of these employees are now back with JJM. The company wants to keep them working so it has bid on city work for Ladysmith and is considering the large paving contract at the Comox Airport. These are jobs that should have gone to our Local Union paving contractors. Of course, the OK Group now believes that we are in a weaker bargaining position than we were just a few weeks ago. I am very disappointed that any employees who were working for a union contractor would later work for a non-union or, in this case, a CLAC contractor such as JJM. I only hope these employees have the courage to demand that the CLAC/JJM collective agreement is adhered to. This leads me to my final and most important subject: ORGANIZING. The Local Union is always looking for opportunities to expand our market share. This not only increases the size of our organization, it also brings improvements in our collective agreements. The situation with JJM is being used by the OK Group in bargaining sessions to weaken our position. This same tactic is being used by the utility contractors. The lesson is clear: the more companies we have under collective agreement, the more we can seek in collective bargaining. In closing, stay safe and see you in the summer. |
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