Prince George, B.C. – The union representing heavy equipment operators in the province is launching a new website and an advertising campaign to identify skilled workers for major industrial and resource projects underway or proposed for northern BC.
Local 115 of the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) represents 11,500 heavy equipment operators mainly in civil construction in B.C. and the Yukon. That includes crane operators, loaders, excavators and other pieces of heavy equipment used in construction. The local is attempting to draw the attention of interested workers to www.jobsfornorthernbc.ca where they can identify what equipment they’ve operated and what opportunity is of interest to them.
Brian Cochrane, Local 115 Business Manager, says “site C, a $9 billion project, is well underway and with all of the planned capital expenditures for construction projects including gas pipelines, LNG facilities, mines and investments in other major infrastructures, skilled operators will become in a much higher demand than the current market.”
However, he says in the case of Site C, the first piece of work let out, worth about $60 million, went out of province. Cochrane says “the historical way that Hydro has done dam construction in the province is with a project labour agreement with the building trades. Now they have deviated from that model for Site C because one of the things that a project labour agreement mandated within it was local hire provisions so locals get access to employment first before starting to go outside of that area.”
He says “under this new model that Hydro has adopted this first big piece of (Site C) work has gone to an Alberta contractor. So there’s lots of folks from Alberta that are coming and taking the jobs. It’s B.C. tax dollars that are building this $9 billion mega-project so we’ve had lots of discussions with government and with Hydro on this particular issue and we’ve certainly got a membership base to be able to support the construction of that job.”
“We want to make sure as the LNG and the pipeline work and all of the pending work becomes available that there is a layer of oversight that happens and demonstrate to government that we have the in-house forces in British Columbia to build these jobs.”
Cochrane says “even in our own membership, and certainly within the north, we’ve got members that are available for work right now so we’ve got people that we could be supplying to Site C and projects like that. So if our membership has got some capacity you know that the broader labour pool has probably got some as well.”
Cochrane says the only feedback from the Clark government so far was a statement from Energy and Mines Minister Bill Bennett “that they had no intention of trying to mandate British Columbians to be prioritized for these projects. So that’s the feedback that we’ve received so far.”
While that does not sound particularly promising Cochrane adds “but I think it’s very, very important that the public is really aware of the positions that are taken by government, and the work that we’re trying to do to make sure British Columbians comes first as we develop our resources.”
Re-Posted from 250 News.
