November 16, 2009

Labour relations

North Vancouver twin tunnel workers vote to certify new union

RICHARD GILBERT

Staff writer

Workers on the twin tunnel component of a water treatment facility in North Vancouver have voted to certify a new union, after construction on the stalled project restarted this fall.

“It’s the first time in North America where (there were) two different general contractors on the same project whose workers voted to displace the same incumbent union,” said Mark Olsen, Business Manager for the Construction and Specialized Workers’ Union Local 1611.

“There were issues such as shifting, the ratification of an extension of the existing agreement and in general members realized they would be better represented by three traditional unions.”

About 130 union members who are working on the Seymour-Capilano Filtration Plant twin tunnel project recently participated in a Labour Relations Board-supervised vote.

The workers voted to replace their previous agreement with the Christian Labour Association of Canada (CLAC) and certify with three traditional unions: the International Union of Operating Engineers, the Construction and Specialized Workers Union and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

These unions are operating together in a “poly-party” certification under the B.C. Building Trades Council.

“I can’t speculate as to why they chose to go to another union,” said CLAC director of public relations Alex Pannu. “Some members had previously worked with Bilfinger and were members of another union, while other members were hired by Frontier-Kemper and also belonged to another union.”

According to Pannu, the secret ballot vote resulted in a small margin of victory for this group of workers who had previously worked for Bilfinger Berger Canada (BBC) and the core group who wanted to bring in another union.

In contrast to Olsen, Pannu said he doesn’t think there were any major labour issues on this project.

“If they were that upset, why did they ratify the contract,” said Pannu. “A lot of promises were made by other unions trying to raid us, but at the end of the day the workers thought the contract was good enough to ratify. We don’t think this (the vote) is a reflection on the level of representation we provided.”

Pannu said the competing unions urged their members to reject the contract. But work on this site will continue to use the CLAC-negotiated contract under the new unions.

A legal battle between Metro Vancouver, which operates the Greater Vancouver Water District, and Bilfinger Berger Canada (BBC) Inc. has slowed down construction on the twin tunnel project.

BBC was hired in 2004 to build the twin tunnels with a combined length of 14.2 km, after submitting the low bid of $100 million.

A series of overstress failures of the rock in the tunnels occurred in late 2007 and January 2008, which led BBC to suspend work for alleged safety reasons in the same month.

Metro Vancouver suspended BBC’s right to perform further work. In response to this action, BBC filed a suit in B.C. Supreme Court against Metro Vancouver.

In April, Metro Vancouver awarded the contract for the completion of the twin tunnels to Seymour Capilano partnership, which is made up of Frontier-Kemper, Aecon Construction Inc. and JF Shea Construction Inc.

Workers on the twin tunnels had previously voted to replace CLAC with the B.C. Building Trades poly-party, but lost their union representation when Metro Vancouver suspended BBC’s right to perform further work.

“There’s something drastically wrong with the system when workers have to vote not once but twice to be represented by the union of their choice” according to Gary Kroeker, business manager of the Operating Engineers Local 115.

CLAC was able to resume representation of the employees with the new employer Frontier-Kemper.

However, the workers rejected CLAC a second time for representation by the poly-party.

“Fortunately for these workers, lightning did strike twice,” said Olsen.

“But it is obviously time to review the BC Labour Code process that let CLAC return even after workers had clearly rejected them.”

The twin tunnel project has also suffered from cost escalation and is five years behind schedule.

In February, the Board of Directors of Metro Vancouver approved additional funding of $220 million to complete the construction of twin tunnels.

Frontier-Kemper bid $181 million to complete the tunnel project using Metro Vancouver’s original design and the two tunnel boring machines already in place.

The total budget for the tunneling is now about $400 million, double the original budget of $200 million for the project.

The project is scheduled for completion in 2013, but was originally supposed to be finished in 2008.

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