Op-Eds

September 28, 2021 I’VE HAD LOTS OF JOBS. As a teen, I washed dishes at an Italian fast food restaurant and sold toys and pet budgies at Woodward’s department store in Downtown Vancouver. I was a video rental clerk peddling VHS and Betamax copies of Top Gun and...

September 17, 2021 WHY JOIN A UNION? If you ask someone who is not a member of one, the response is typically about better wages, better pension and health plans. While these are the quantifiable benefits of being a union member, there are many other, often overlooked...

July 21, 2021 WHAT THE LEGACY IMPACT of COVID-19 will be is hard to envision, when we are still deep within the crisis. At the time of putting pen to paper, Ontario and Nova Scotia are both in lockdown, Alberta is experiencing soaring cases, and across the country,...

July 13, 2021 OUR FORMER president of the BC Building Trades Council, Lee Loftus, was a prized member of the workers’ representatives on the Policy, Practice and Consultative Committee (PPCC) for  many years. The PPCC consists of two Workers’ Compensation Board (WCB)...

June 21, 2021 WHEN I WAS GROWING UP, family dinners seemed to last forever. It wasn’t because it took that long to chew through the plate of half meat, half starch and half butter that you just don’t see today. And it wasn’t because there was a pile of dishes waiting...

June 15, 2021 THE BC BUILDING TRADES RECENTLY commissioned an independent report on the sanitation conditions on construction sites in British Columbia. The Report on Washroom Facilities in the Construction Industry provides an in-depth analysis of the current...

June 11, 2021 By Brynn Bourke & Melissa Chirino DO YOU WANT someone without training to work on the electrical wiring of your home, your child’s school, or the hospital in your community? Or how about the brakes on your car, or on the 18-wheeler behind you as you...

April 9, 2021 AFTER BEING WITH THE BUILDING TRADES for most of a decade, I’ve had the unique privilege of seeing what we can accomplish when we work together. There are many big things we do that make their way into the public; like the big infrastructure projects we...

March 22, 2021 MANY OF US IN THE BUILDING TRADES have had the fortunate experience of having family and friends in the business. I myself had my father, who is a plumber by trade and has been working in the industry his whole life. Being a plumber allowed him to...

February 2, 2021 THE CONSTRUCTION industry, early on, was deemed essential in most areas in Canada and contractors and tradespeople have adapted extremely well to ensure the health and safety of all workers while continuing to build and maintain vital infrastructure....