NEW WESTMINSTER, B.C. — The BC Building Trades is launching a campaign “to protect Community Benefit and Project Labour Agreements to ensure major public projects are built by local, skilled workers from British Columbia.”
The organization also says these agreements expand apprenticeships, training and provide safe working conditions along with pay family-sustaining wages.
The campaign is in response to legislation that was introduced earlier this month by Prince George-Mackenzie Conservative MLA Kiel Giddens coined “The Public Sector Construction Projects Procurement Act.”
The bill would require labour-neutral procurement on all public sector construction projects in British Columbia and prohibit “government and crown corporations from issuing calls for construction that require building trades union-only labour or mandate that contractors enter into a specific collective agreement as a condition of bidding.”
The bill was applauded by groups such as the Independent Contractors and ȵes Association and Progressive Contractors Association of Canada.
“Community Benefit Agreements and Project Labour Agreements ensure B.C. workers build B.C. infrastructure and train the next generation of trades workers. At a time when we’re facing a skilled labour shortage, major private-sector projects are choosing to sign agreements with the BC Building Trades to secure skilled labour. The BC Conservatives’ bill would move B.C. backwards, preventing public projects from signing agreements and accessing that same stable labour supply,” said Brynn Bourke, executive director for the BC Building Trades, in a statement.
“We’ve seen what can happen when public projects are built without these agreements. The BC Conservatives want to take us back to a time when public projects like the Canada Line were built using temporary foreign labour. On that project, foreign workers were paid less than $4 an hour.”
The BC Building Trades is calling on the BC Conservatives to “stand with – not against – BC skilled trades workers” and to withdraw their bill.
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