For the past year in B.C., trade unions and Canadian companies have been fighting pitched battles over the hiring of foreign nationals. Things started going sideways last spring, after the revelation that the Canada Line rapid-transit project is using workers from Costa Rica and other countries to bore tunnels. In another twist, the original crew of 50 was brought in through an Italian subcontractor named SELI Tecnologie.
by Mark Van Manen, Vancouver Sun
Last June, most of these labourers voted to join the Construction and Specialized Workers’ Union Local 1611, which claims some of them earned an hourly wage of about $3.50, overtime included. SELI has disputed this number but union officials say they’ve got pay stubs to prove it. In September, SELI told the workers that if they went on strike it would pull out of the project. By October 22, when a strike vote failed, the workers were earning between $12 and $14 an hour. Meanwhile, the union had filed unfair-labour-practice charges of employer intimidation.

In the Canada Line dispute, B.C. and Yukon Territory Building and Construction Trades Council executive director Wayne Peppard claims the unions tried to hammer out an agreement with chief contractor SNC-Lavalin to look elsewhere for labour if local supplies weren’t adequate. According to Peppard, there were even offers to help the company find foreign workers, but no deal emerged. “They led us on for eight months and then dropped the bomb on us that we were too expensive, and that in fact they were going to bring the workers in from offshore,” he says.

The second flashpoint is another public-private partnership, the new Golden Ears Bridge project, which will require some 500 workers. The consortium building the bridge, led by the Canadian subsidiary of German construction giant Bilfinger Berger BOT, has asked the feds for the right to import as many as 345 guest tradespeople. Ontario-based Harris Rebar and several other Canadian firms say they sought an upcoming contract but that Bilfinger turned them down.

The unions claim they don’t have any quarrel with immigrants or foreign workers, preferring to direct their anger toward employers and the federal government. They say companies like SNC-Lavalin and Bilfinger are looking offshore for help while Canadian workers sit idle.

If you ask the construction firms embroiled in these foreign-worker hiring flaps, the whole thing is a big misunderstanding. Patti Schom-Moffatt is a spokesperson for the Golden Ears Bridge project. She says that by this past October, Bilfinger had hired 30 workers, all of them local. Some of them were recruited through a Langley job fair last June 18. The company also keeps a database of applicants – including union-provided names – whose skills it will try to match to the project.

According to Schom-Moffatt, none of the four Canadian companies that expressed interest in the Golden Ears subcontract actually bid on it. She describes the application to hire foreign workers as an insurance policy in case Canadian labour becomes unavailable. Also, Bilfinger has signed a union contract to pay anyone who works on the bridge the wage that was negotiated through the collective agreement.

Steve Crombie, a spokesperson for InTransitBC, the Canada Line’s public-private consortium, explains that the project ran seven weeks of newspaper ads seeking local workers. However, he says, no domestic companies bid on the tunnelling contract won by SELI. Why? “Partly because of the technology that is needed for it, I don’t think there was a Canadian company that felt they were able to do it,” Crombie responds, repeating a statement that the unions have vigorously denied.

When asked about the foreign workers’ pay, Crombie argues that meals, accommodation, transportation and benefits effectively bring it up to union scale.

Mark Olsen, business manager of the Construction and Specialized Workers’ Union Local 1611, begs to differ. He counters that the Canada Line builders advertised locally for workers in the $18-to-$21-per-hour range and stated a preference for people with several languages. According to Olsen, no self-respecting Canadian construction miner would work for that kind of pay.

The labourers arrived in Canada through an intra-company-transferee visa, which exempts executives, managers and specialized workers from a labour-
market opinion.

Hal Howie, regional director of program services for Service Canada, oversees the B.C. foreign-worker program. He says that generally speaking,
employers who wish to hire guest workers must show that there aren’t enough trained Canadians to do the job.

Another condition of what Howie describes as a subjective approval process: they must pay competitive wages. “If we are bringing in workers from overseas, then the conditions under which they come in will be the prevailing wage rate or the union rate,” Howie states.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada communications adviser Denny Falls says the provinces are responsible for overseeing work standards once a foreign employee is on-site.

Provincial Ministry of Labour and Citizens’ Services spokesperson Graham Currie notes, however, that the B.C. Employment Standards Branch has limited jurisdiction. Although its purview includes minimum pay and overtime, it’s driven by complaints rather than enforcement.

Vancouver immigration lawyer Zool Suleman thinks both the feds and the province need to take more responsibility. “The federal government says we issue the work permit, but we’re not dealing with the on-site inspections or problems. And what the provincial government is saying is that it’s out of our jurisdiction how the work permits were issued, and so the provincial government is reluctant to step in,” Suleman observes. “Once that gap is dealt with, then I think issues can be brought to the table and resolved by both sides.”

Wayne Peppard believes SNC-Lavalin okayed the foreign Canada Line workers directly through Citizenship and Immigration Minister Monte Solberg’s office.

Why would the Conservatives encourage foreign recruitment? “Because the employer community has a great influence in that government,” Peppard replies. “I’d have to say it’s political, because it certainly has nothing to do with the reality of the industry.”

Peppard also takes a dig at the federal government’s power base. “Everything’s being driven by the needs of Alberta,” he vents. “And when you begin to drive policies and legislation based on timely interest rather than the benefits in the long term, you can make serious mistakes.”