Op-Eds

View From Ottawa By Arlene Dunn Canada’s Building Trades Unions are preparing for this fall’s federal election. The need to get out the vote is more important than ever. Before the Trudeau Liberals were elected in 2015, the building trades had been fighting for...

The Liberal Party of Canada has shown a willingness to work with us Voting is a fundamental right of our citizenship. It is something we ought not to take for granted. Your vote counts! And yes you should get out and vote. Who you vote for is your personal choice but...

Union representative responds to Tom Fletcher's column Another week, another anti-worker rant from Tom Fletcher. The intrepid legislative columnist for Black Press, Fletcher works tirelessly to deliver us biased news and views from Victoria. His last column was no...

If there are two things workers value – in addition to the obvious, like wages and working conditions — it’s choice and voice. And because of this, I’m frankly puzzled that those who purport to support workers’ rights were opposed to Labour Code amendments that would...

By Merrill O’Donnell - BCBT Advocate The duty to accommodate following a worker’s injury has caused longstanding confusion in labour-management relations in B.C. It is critically important for our members, building trades officers and contractors to realize that...

View From Ottawa - By Arlene Dunn - Chief Executive Officer for Canada’s Building Trades Unions The opioid dependency epidemic affects a disproportionate number of construction workers across Canada; that number is even more pronounced in the province of British...

We have all heard the expression, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” And so let us take a moment to reflect on what happened in May of 1919 in Winnipeg. The First World War had just ended and soldiers returning from Europe had...

Temporary foreign workers at the LNG Canada project in Kitimat will comprise fewer than five per cent of the workers, as promised by LNG Canada. Put another way, 95 per cent of the workforce will be Canadian. These estimates were released last summer in briefing notes...

LMS Reinforcing Steel Group president and chief operating officer Norm Streu's rhetoric is hard to swallow in his recent guest column in the Prince George Citizen on the provincial government's new Community Benefits construction framework. Let's recap: Streu concedes...

Paul de Jong’s pre-Christmas JOC op-ed against Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs) wants to be all truth and light. Unfortunately, his arguments are just "alternative facts." De Jong begins by misrepresenting Building Trades unions’ market share in work related to...