Business Manager says Union is on Upward Tragectory

Local 793 is flourishing on a number of fronts, business manager Mike Gallagher said at a general membership meeting of the union at head office in Oakville on March 25. “We’re just going to continue on an upward trajectory,” he said in remarks to more than 150 members at the meeting. Gallagher said the union […]

Local 793 is flourishing on a number of fronts, business manager Mike Gallagher said at a general membership meeting of the union at head office in Oakville on March 25.

“We’re just going to continue on an upward trajectory,” he said in remarks to more than 150 members at the meeting.

Gallagher said the union is on the right track, as membership numbers continue to rise.

“There’s a lot of good news about the union,” he said, “and we’re now just shy of 15,000 members.”

He noted that members’ equity is at $104 million – 10.7 per cent higher than the previous year – and union assets are $111 million – 10 per cent higher than the previous year.

The out-of-work list for Toronto area was at 569 members at March 14, down from more than 800 a year earlier, he said

Meanwhile, the pension plan is now at $2.7 billion – up $200 million from a year earlier, he said, and the plan earned eight per cent in 2017.

The plan was 99.9 per cent funded on a going-concern basis as of the end of 2017, he said.

On the organizing front, Gallagher said more companies are being unionized, with 117 voluntary recognition agreements being signed in 2017 and up to March 14, 2018. In the same time period, the union received 18 certificates from the Labour Board.

Gallagher said the union is growing at a much more rapid rate through organizing than any other construction union.

“The numbers are growing at a faster rate than all our competitors,” he said. “I feel that we’re doing good.”

Gallagher noted the local is preparing to file a certification at the Labour Relations Board on Baffinland Iron Mines Corp. at the Mary River site on Baffin Island in Nunavut.

Organizers have spent more than a year organizing Baffinland and the company has more than 800 workers.

Gallagher said he met earlier with Baffinland’s vice president of human resources and presented the concept of voluntary recognition, but the union will be making an application.

He said workers at the company seem to support the union and feel it can help them improve camp conditions.

“Lets just keep our fingers crossed and hope it turns out,” Gallagher said.

While trying to organize the company, he noted that Inuit workers from Baffinland have been training at the OETIO in Morrisburg, which has brought revenue into the union.

He said the OETIO has already received $416,000 in tuition plus $146,348 in room and board and ancillary expenses as a result of the workers being trained at the OETIO.

Another 12 operators from the company are scheduled to be trained at the OETIO in June, so the total tuition as a result of training employees from Baffinland is expected to be $596,000 plus $210,078 in room and board and ancillary expenses, he said.

Gallagher noted he recently hired four new organizers, bringing the number to 11, and he encouraged members to work with the union’s organizers, as it’s not an easy job.

Gallagher told the meeting that Local 793 will soon be embarking on an expansion of the banquet hall at head office.

The union is working with Michael Spaziani Architect.

Gallagher said the present building will be doubled in size and is being expanded to the east, a hallway is being added to the north, and more office space will also be added.

“We will likely be finished by August of next year in time to do our dinner dance,” he said.

Gallagher said the union also plans to build a 40-to-60-room student residence on 6.25 acres of property at 2201 Speers Rd., adjacent to head office, that it bought in summer 2017.

The building, he said, will enable apprentices to be able to stay in a safe place while training at the OETIO.

Gallagher said the union is also moving to self-administer its pension and life and health benefits plans and staff will be housed in a building on the newly-purchased property.

Eventually, he said, a new building will be built on the property for staff and some of the space will be rented out, bringing revenue into the local.

Gallagher said when members come to the main hall to take care of union business they’ll be able to do everything in one location.

Meanwhile, he noted, the union is planning for the future.

A committee has been meeting for the past year, planning activities for the 100th anniversary of the local in 2019, he said, and picnics and events are planned for many districts.

The union will also be selling commemorative items on its website and plans to get permission to fly flags on tower cranes at worksites.

“It’s a privilege for us to be alive when this great local reaches 100 years,” he said.

Gallagher spoke on a number of other subjects.

He said it was brought to his attention that companies were bringing in cranes that had been de-rated to avoid hiring apprentices and grievances have been filed with contractors.

He said companies were bringing in 110-ton cranes as 90-ton cranes.

“We filed 14 grievances against all of the heavy hitters in the crane rental sectors and I feel very confident that we’re going to win them,” he said.

Since filing the grievances, Gallagher said a couple of contractors have reached out to Local 793 to settle the issue.

Gallagher also congratulated the 21 delegates who were elected to attend the IUOE general convention in Hollywood, Florida in May.

He said it is the largest number of delegates ever being sent to the convention by Local 793.

He thanked the election committee for running a successful election for the IUOE general convention. The members were Mike Chenier, Vince Prout and Dan Davey.

At the meeting, OETIO executive director Harold McBride provided a report on apprenticeship training, new training initiatives, short-course and e-learning training, simulation and the union’s Aboriginal engagement plan.

He noted the Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development (MAESD) is providing the OETIO with $2.3 million for training of mobile and tower crane, concrete pump and heavy equipment operators in 2018.

This will enable the OETIO to train 104 mobile and tower crane and concrete pump apprentices and 126 heavy equipment apprentices in 2018, he said.

The MAESD also awarded the OETIO $457,336 in 2018 to train 36 pre-apprentices.

As part of its Aboriginal engagement plan, the OETIO plans to recruit 50 new Aboriginal apprentices in 2018.

McBride said an RFP is going out to purchase a 40-to-60-ton all-terrain crane for the Oakville campus and a second RFP is going out to purchase a 0-8-ton carry-deck crane for Morrisburg. A new 15-ton Elliott boom truck recently arrived at the Oakville campus.

McBride noted that an AZ/DZ driver-training program has been added at the OETIO. Trainees in the course take four weeks of training. So far, six courses have been completed.

A report presented by McBride showed that from the beginning of the year to March 25 1,387 short-courses have been completed by members at the OETIO.

Meanwhile, he noted, six new VxAdvantage simulators and two Vxtraining simulators are up and running at the OETIO and two existing VxMaster simulators have been retrofitted.

General Membership Meeting on March 25

A general membership meeting of the union is scheduled for Sunday, March 25, 2018 in Local 793’s banquet hall at head office in Oakville, 2245 Speers Rd. The meeting begins at 10 a.m. Click here for location.

A general membership meeting of the union is scheduled for Sunday, March 25, 2018 in Local 793’s banquet hall at head office in Oakville, 2245 Speers Rd. The meeting begins at 10 a.m.

Click here for location.

Local 793 Objects to Canada Signing TPP

The following press release was issued by Local 793 regarding the Trans Pacific Partnership OAKVILLE — Mike Gallagher, business manager of Local 793 of the International Union of Operating Engineers, says the federal Liberals have made a mistake by signing the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). “By signing this deal, the Liberals are […]

The following press release was issued by Local 793 regarding the Trans Pacific Partnership

OAKVILLE — Mike Gallagher, business manager of Local 793 of the International Union of Operating Engineers, says the federal Liberals have made a mistake by signing the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).

“By signing this deal, the Liberals are failing to protect construction workers in this country. There are provisions in this trade pact that can be exploited by foreign construction companies at the expense of Canadian workers and our economy.”

“This deal, in our opinion, could open the door to under-skilled and under-paid temporary foreign workers being allowed to enter Canada to work – something that is unacceptable to our union.”

Gallagher said the CPTPP does not have a Canada-first provision and there is nothing in the deal to prevent a construction project being built in Canada by a foreign company with foreign workers.

A side-letter to Article 12.4 of the CPTPP states that Canada shall grant temporary entry and a work permit of up to three years to intra-corporate transfers of executives or managers, management trainees on professional development, or specialists. Specialists are defined as a worker possessing specialized knowledge of a company’s products or services and their application in international markets, or an advanced level of expertise or knowledge of the company’s processes and procedures. There is no mention of hiring Canadians first, opening the door to foreign companies being allowed to bring in foreign “specialists” to work on a project. Worse, there would also be no restriction on how many specialists a foreign company could bring in.

The deal, signed March 8 by International Trade Minister François-Philippe Champagne and representatives of 10 other nations in Santiago, Chile, could also affect Canadian contractors because they might end up competing for projects against foreign companies that could bring in cheaper labour.

“We have plenty of skilled, trained workers here in Canada and are concerned that the government has gone ahead and signed this deal without closing those loopholes,” said Gallagher. “These issues have been raised but, unfortunately, they were not addressed in the deal.”

Gallagher noted that if large foreign construction firms come to Canada and take work from local contractors and workers it does nothing to benefit the Canadian economy or the pension, benefits and training programs of unions like Local 793, as the foreign firms and workers take the wages and profits back to their own country, something that is unacceptable to Canadian employers and workers – whether unionized or not.

Gallagher said the fact that the United States saw the light and exempted itself from the CPTPP should ring warning bells for the Canadian government. The U.S. officially withdrew from the pact on Jan. 23, 2017 because the administration was concerned it would be a job killer and undermine the U.S. economy.

Local 793 has always supported fair trade agreements that don’t undermine the Canadian workforce by bypassing labour, safety and training standards, and backs NAFTA because no unfair advantage accrues to U.S. contractors when it comes to licensing or substandard training, Gallagher said, but the CPTPP raises the prospect that Canadian workers will not fully benefit from the jobs that will be created by the $125 billion in infrastructure funding over 10 years that was announced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau when he paid a visit to the Operating Engineers Training Institute of Ontario during a campaign stop in August 2015.

Gallagher noted that the Ontario government and a number of influential groups, including Canada’s dairy farmers, the country’s largest private-sector union, and key sectors of the Canadian auto industry are also critical of the trade pact, saying it will cost jobs in Canada.

Unifor, which has more than 315,000 members across the country, is warning that the deal is a regressive agreement that will start a race to the bottom and once again hurt Canadian workers because Article 19 on labour rights is essentially unchanged and fails to make any meaninful advancements to ensure compliance and enforceability when labour rights are violated under the deal.

The Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association, which represents companies that make most of the vehicles produced in this country, is also concerned that the deal fails to provide our large auto manufacturers with reciprocal access to markets of trading partners in the CPTPP.

The Dairy Farmers of Canada, which represents farmers on about 12,000 dairy farms, indicates the deal will give other countries in the CPTPP tariff-free access to Canada’s dairy market. The group estimates that the market access conceded in the deal will result in a 3.1-per-cent loss in milk production by Canada’s dairy farmers, or about $160 million per year.

The Council of Canadians, a social action organization, has called on government to scrap the deal because public objections to it were ignored and the pact will result in large job losses. A study called Trading Down, Unemployment, Inequity and Other Risks of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement done in January 2016 by Tufts University in Massachusetts found such a deal could cost Canada 58,000 jobs over a 10-year period.

Meanwhile, according to the Ontario government, the province’s farm sector could lose $500 million in revenue over the first five years of the deal and a drop in investment in the auto sector would result in an economy-wide reduction of $80 million in the annual gross domestic product as well as potential job losses. In a speech to the Toronto Region Board of Trade on Feb. 22, 2018, Premier Kathleen Wynne noted the province’s auto sector will need $1.26 billion in transitional assistance from the federal government over 10 years to adjust to the new realities created by the CPTPP and the agriculture and food sectors will need $1.4 billion over that period.

“Why did Premier Wynne not mention assistance for the construction industry, which employs more than 500,000 workers in Ontario?” asked Gallagher. “It would appear that both the federal and provincial governments are ignoring the impact that introduction of the CPTPP will have on construction workers. Why is that, when our industry is so important to the growth of the economy?”

Gallagher said the deal is out of step with the federal government’s budget objectives of advancing women and Indigenous peoples and addressing youth unemployment and underemployment because foreign workers will have a higher priority than the domestic workforce.

A report done in August 2016 for Canada’s Building Trades Unions noted that the deal makes it easier for temporary workers to enter Canada because employers will no longer need to prove that there is a shortage of domestic workers in a specified occupation in order to open the sector to foreign workers.

Gallagher noted that, in the past, there have been abuses of the system and the CPTPP will only make matters worse – not better.

On April 4, 2007, for example, two temporary foreign workers were killed when a storage tank roof collapsed on them at a Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (CNRL) site near Fort McMurray, Alta. The workers were employed by the Canadian subsidiary of Chinese engineering firm Sinopec Shanghai Engineering Company (SSEC). CNRL was fined $10,000 and SSEC was ordered to pay $1.5 million in penalties.

In 2012, HD Mining International Ltd. was found to have brought in more than a dozen Chinese miners to develop a coal mine at the Murray River project near the town of Tumbler Ridge, B.C. The company had been granted temporary permits to bring in more than 200 miners. The workers were sent back after Local 115 of the International Union of Operating Engineers and Local 1611 of the Construction and Specialized Workers Union challenged the company in court.

In April 2013, meanwhile, it was revealed that the Royal Bank of Canada was planning to shift information technology work done by 45 Canadian employees to foreigners contracted by iGate, an outsourcing firm from India. Because of public backlash, the bank released a new code of conduct stipulating that RBC and its suppliers must not hire foreign workers to perform services for the bank when someone eligible to work in Canada is available and able to perform the service.

Without protecting Canadian workers under the CPTPP, Gallagher said the huge potential to employ First Nations peoples and construction workers to build railways, roads and infrastructure in the Ring of Fire area in northern Ontario could be lost to foreign companies and workers.

“Can the Liberal government give us a guarantee that we won’t have Canadian jobs ripped off by offshore contractors and foreign workers?”

Gallagher said Local 793 takes health and safety very seriously and the CPTPP also needs to clarify that unlicensed crane operators and operators of heavy equipment from foreign countries would not be able to circumvent licensing requirements in Ontario.

“Construction equipment is large and dangerous and members of the public and other construction workers could be in danger if foreign workers were permitted to work in Canada without so much as a demonstration of skills test to prove their competency. This must be avoided at all cost.”

Gallagher noted that on March 12 in Quebec’s Saguenay region, during the first stop on a cross-country tour of aluminum and steel factories, Prime Minister Trudeau said he and his team have the backs of workers in those industries.

“But does he have the backs of construction workers in the CPTPP deal? I would like to think so, but the prime minister needs to make that point clear right now, as he did for the workers in Quebec.”

Local 793 of the International Union of Operating Engineers represents nearly 15,000 highly-skilled crane and heavy equipment operators across Ontario. The union has a head office, banquet hall and training campus in Oakville, and another training campus in Morrisburg. Canadian locals of the International Union of Operating Engineers represent more than 50,000 operators and have hundreds of millions of dollars invested in equipment at training centres across the country.

For additional information contact:
Local 793 business manager Mike Gallagher
905-469-9299, ext. 2202

Click here for text of the CPTPP

Local 793 Members Participate in St. Patrick’s Parade

Local 793 members and their families participated in the Toronto St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Sunday, March 11. Union members, proudly wearing bright green and white jackets, marched the 3.5-kilometre route from Bloor and St. George streets to the parade-reviewing stand at Nathan Phillips Square. The Local 793 entourage also featured a band on a […]

Local 793 members and their families participated in the Toronto St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Sunday, March 11.

Union members, proudly wearing bright green and white jackets, marched the 3.5-kilometre route from Bloor and St. George streets to the parade-reviewing stand at Nathan Phillips Square.

The Local 793 entourage also featured a band on a float playing Irish music.

About 50 Local 793 members and family members participated in the parade.

Local 793 was one of the sponsors of the parade.

The parade started at noon. Thousands of people lined the parade route.


 

 

Local 793 Participates in St. Patrick’s Day Parade

Local 793 members and their families are invited to break out a little green and march in the Toronto St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Sunday, March 11, 2018.   The union is once again one of the sponsors and participants in the parade and will have a float with a band playing Irish music.   […]

Local 793 members and their families are invited to break out a little green and march in the Toronto St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Sunday, March 11, 2018.
 
The union is once again one of the sponsors and participants in the parade and will have a float with a band playing Irish music.
 
This is a family-friendly event and all members and their families are invited to participate.
 
The parade starts at noon. Local 793 members and their families are asked to be there at 10:30 a.m.
 
The marshalling point for Local 793 members and their families is E15 at St. George Street and Hoskin Avenue. Please click here for the parade route.
 
Special jackets and hats will be given out to all participants while supplies last.
 
The parade begins on the corner of Bloor Street and St. George Street (near St. George subway station) and heads east on Bloor Street, turns south on Yonge Street and finally turns west on Queen Street, finishing at the parade reviewing stand at Nathan Phillips Square.
 
The parade route is about 3.5 kilometres in length and takes up to two and a half hours.
 
Access from the TTC subway can be made at the following stations: St. George, Bloor, Wellesley, College, Dundas and Queen.
 
So, if you’re Irish – or just want to be Irish for the day – come out to the parade and show support for your union at the same time.
 
Please don’t forget to dress appropriately for the weather.
 
And also please remember to set your clocks ahead the night before the parade.
 
For more information about the parade, click here.
 
If you have any questions regarding the parade, please contact Mike Scott at 647-632-2035 or send an email to mscott@iuoelocal793.org.