Op-Eds
Workers Advocate’s Message – Your Personal Medical Evidence – What is the Employer Entitled to?
November 25, 2022 IN CANADA, THE law is clear: employers may request medical information from their employees in certain situations. However, when an employer can make requests and what they can request continues to be a thorny matter of conflict. Often, even when the...
Executive Director’s Message – People Are Our Greatest Strength
October 25, 2022 THE PROJECTS WE BUILD are so impressive that we can often lose sight of the people behind them. Our members’ touch so much of the provincial landscape. It’s hard not to fill the pages of TradeTalk with pictures of our members erecting skyscrapers or...
President’s Message – Now We Organize
October 18, 2022 ON JUNE 2, 2022, we celebrated an important win for workers in our province. Bill 10 — the Labour Relations Code Amendment Act, 2022 received royal assent and became law, reinstating card check certification in B.C. Card check, or single-step...
Executive Director’s Message – The fight for good jobs
August 21, 2022 SHORTLY AFTER I started working at the BC Building Trades a decade ago, a young man walked into my old executive director’s office. After six years working as a plumbing apprentice, he had just learned that his “apprenticeship” was never registered...
Editor’s Message – Unions: a powerful and effective voice
June 21, 2022 WHEN I LOOK BACK on all the jobs I’ve had, many times I could have used a union. Like the time $10 went missing from our locker room at a fast food restaurant, and the owner decided to bring in her husband, a retired police officer, to...
President’s Message – When union membership is on the rise, communities shine
June 11, 2022 WE ARE THE BC BUILDING TRADES: 25 affiliated unions representing more than 40,000 unionized construction workers in B.C. Most of our craft unions were formed many years ago, several with over 100 years of service to their respective memberships. Like...
Executive Director’s Message – The everlasting mark you leave says ‘We were here’
April 13, 2022 IN THESE DARK DAYS of winter and long into this pandemic, it may feel that normal times will never come again. But I take great comfort in the fact that even in these difficult times, our members are doing something amazing. You’re still building B.C....
Workers Advocate’s Message – Two years and still waiting on Patterson recommendations
March 28, 2022 ABOUT A MONTH before Christmas, I participated in the BC Federation of Labour’s lobby of our provincial New Democratic government. The objective was to underline the importance of moving forward promptly with several initiatives: psychological injuries...
President’s Message – Rebuilding B.C., fighting for what’s right & making our communities better
March 9, 2022 THE PAST FEW YEARS have highlighted the importance of the work of our members in the BC Building Trades unions. Early on in the pandemic, our trades were deemed essential and most of our members continued to work, providing critical services necessary to...
Editor’s message – Apprenticeship is no walk in the park, but you’re not alone in the journey
February 14, 2022 REMEMBER WHEN Bob Seger played in Vancouver in 1996? Not many people do. It was for an album that didn’t do all that well, and when it was over, Seger basically wasn’t seen again until 2006. I went to that concert though. I bought two tickets as a...
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