November 18, 2009

Three unions replace Christian Labour Association on Vancouver tunnel project

RICHARD GILBERT

staff writer

Workers on the twin tunnel component of a water treatment facility in North Vancouver have voted to certify a new union, after construction on the stalled project restarted this fall.

“It’s the first time in North America where (there were) two different general contractors on the same project whose workers voted to displace the same incumbent union,” said Mark Olsen, Business Manager for the Construction and Specialized Workers’ Union Local 1611. “There were issues such as shifting, the ratification of an extension of the existing agreement and in general members realized they would be better represented by three traditional unions.”

About 130 union members who are working on the Seymour-Capilano Filtration Plant twin tunnel project recently participated in a Labour Relations Board-supervised vote. The workers voted to replace their previous agreement with the Christian Labour Association of Canada (CLAC) and certify with three traditional unions: the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 115, the Construction and Specialized Workers Union local 1611 and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 213.

These unions are operating together in a “poly-party” certification under the British Columbia and Yukon Territory Building and Construction Trades Council.

“I can’t speculate as to why they chose to go to another union,” said CLAC director of public relations Alex Pannu. “Some members had previously worked with Bilfinger and were members of another union, while other members were hired by Frontier-Kemper and also belonged to another union.”

According to Pannu, the secret ballot vote resulted in a small margin of victory for this group of workers who had previously worked for Bilfinger Berger Canada (BBC) and the core group who wanted to bring in another union.

Pannu said he doesn’t think there were any major labour issues on this project.

“If they were that upset, why did they ratify the contract,” said Pannu. “A lot of promises were made by other unions trying to raid us, but at the end of the day the workers thought the contract was good enough to ratify.”

Pannu said the competing unions urged their members to reject the contract. But work on this site will continue to use the CLAC-negotiated contract under the new unions.

A legal battle between Metro Vancouver, which operates the Greater Vancouver Water District, and Bilfinger Berger Canada (BBC) Inc. has slowed down construction on the twin tunnel project.

BBC was hired in 2004 to build the twin tunnels with a combined length of 14.2 km, after submitting the low bid of $100 million.

Workers on the twin tunnels had previously voted to replace CLAC with the B.C. Building Trades poly-party, but lost their union representation when Metro Vancouver suspended BBC’s right to perform further work following a contractual dispute.

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