Month: April 2022

Each week, ICBA’s Jordan Bateman reflects on what we’ve learned as we participate in ICBA’s Workplace Wellness Program. This program is free for all ICBA members – check out icba.ca/wellness for details.

This week’s Toolbox Talk was on helping people through addiction, and I couldn’t help but think of my late father-in-law, Steve.

Steve overcame his addiction by working his sobriety one day at a time for the 26 years before he passed away in 2020. During that period, he had the courage to make the right choice—not just once, but every day.

It took a lot of work, a lot of humility, a lot of making amends, a lot of support from Wendy and his daughters, a lot of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, and a lot of bravery to make that choice for sobriety. I’m so thankful that he did.

It was hard. The turning point came at a Salvation Army facility called Miracle Valley, out in Mission. He spent months there, learning to be sober. He took the AA big book, the 12 Steps, to heart, working them every day, attending meetings every week.

I’m grateful he did. He never chose to be addicted; it just happened. But he did choose, a million times, to stay clean and sober. It changed his life, and his family.

That’s Steve’s story. I know he’d be the first to say that not everyone has to, or can, do it how he did. But if you’re struggling out there with addiction, please know there are people who want to help.

Take the first step and please call the 24-hour B.C. Alcohol and Drug Information and Referral Service toll-free from anywhere in B.C. at 1-800-663-1441.

ICBA’s Workplace Wellness Program is helping more than 50 companies and 6,000+ construction professionals, better understand mental health. The program is free for ICBA members — see icba.ca/wellness.

The following op-ed, written by Chris Gardner, President of the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association, was first published in the Prince George Citizen April 13, 2022.

It’s hard to imagine that in 2022 in British Columbia, we are facing the prospect of a government taking the secret ballot away from anyone, but the NDP is doing just that.

For the past two decades, the secret ballot for union certification votes has been the law in B.C. It ensures that neither employers nor unions coerce or intimidate workers when they are deciding whether to join a union. Votes are fair and supervised by a neutral party, the Labour Relations Board. If an employer interferes, the union is automatically certified – a strong protection against company intimidation. At the end of this process, both the employer and the union know the true desire of the workers.

But in a shocking move ripped from the 1970s Big Labour playbook, the NDP Government is now rolling out a “card check” system that is notoriously open to manipulation and abuse. Using the blunt force of their majority government, the NDP will strip away the best protection from intimidation granted workers in the workplace – the secret ballot.

In 2018, an independent panel appointed by this same NDP Government defended the secret ballot finding that it is “most consistent with our democratic norms, protects the fundamental right of freedom of association and choice, and is preferred.”

However, governments ignore the recommendations of independent experts when it suits them. Some might be wondering who was consulted. No entrepreneurs, job creators and no industry or business associations received a call. But surely the views of workers were taken into consideration? Again no.  Polling shows workers overwhelmingly favour the secret ballot – most workers, when given the choice, decide against joining a union.

Of B.C.’s nearly 250,000 construction workers, more than 85% of them are not members of a traditional building trades union. The percentage of workers unionized has been slipping for decades as workers embrace the opportunity of more flexible work arrangements and reject the rules and bureaucracy of a more confrontational approach to the workplace.

As we hopefully put COVID-19 behind us, one of the most important lessons we learned about today’s modern economy during the pandemic is that workers want greater choice and fairness. And, because of the worst shortage of people our economy has experienced in generations, the opportunities for workers are endless and wages and benefits have never been better – and they are going higher.

Killing the secret ballot is out of step with this new reality. The NDP Government talks a big game about an open, democratic workplace on the one hand, yet on the other they are taking the secret ballot away from workers. Someone in Victoria did not get the memo that unionization is a worker choice and not something dictated by government, unions, or employers.

Whether it’s when we elect governments or members to local community associations, it is the secret ballot we rely on to provide assurance that the vote is free from manipulation.  There’s a good reason that we don’t use a “show of hands” in important elections. Indeed, we elect high school councils and choose the winner of Canadian Idol through a secret ballot – working men and women deserve no less when they are deciding whether to join a union.

In 2013, one of the biggest unions in Canada, the Labourers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA), on its website highlighted the problems inherent in a card check system – union organizers make “false promises” and “misrepresent the facts.” It issued a strong warning to its members to not sign anything: “Don’t be tricked.” This is the system for union certification votes that the NDP Government wants everyone to embrace.

In public policy, there is often a lot of grey. However, this move is clearly wrong. And, because the secret ballot goes to the core of our democracy, taking it way erodes our democracy and may well be one of the most offensive policies this government will ever enact. The NDP Government is set to steam roll over the rights of workers and in the process toss out every ballot box in every workplace in this province, all in the name of workers they pretend to be protecting. Really?

Make your voice heard — tell John Horgan to save the secret ballot by filling out the form below:

Recently, the Building Trades Unions – having seen their market share in BC construction slip to a historic low of less than 15% – lashed out with a full-page ad in the Victoria Times Colonist, claiming that “unscrupulous” B.C. contractors are somehow bilking taxpayers out of $308 million per year.

Their “evidence” is a flimsy report from little-known Prism Analysis that has been fully branded with BC Building Trades logos and design marks, showing that this is far from an independent view.

This “analysis” is just another slanderous attack on small business owners and sole proprietors. Here are some facts they didn’t report:

1. With a historic labour shortage, virtually every construction company in B.C. is desperate for workers – if they can lock up sole proprietors and independent contractors as employees, they will.
2. The study uses stats from the 1990s and 2001 to pad their numbers, as they don’t have evidence for today (or any other time in the past two decades).
3. They claim independent operators are evading $271.6 million in income and other payroll taxes – but offer no map as to how they got to that number. Many independent contractors have trucks or other equipment that they can write off taxes against. It’s not underreporting – it’s completely legal usage of the tax code.
4. “It is unrealistic to expect a precise and accurate measure of the size of the underground economy in construction,” their report reads – yet they pulled an exact number ($308M) out of thin air.
5. Their answer to a non-existent problem is more government red tape – no doubt staffed with washed-up building trades union bosses.

Most hilariously in their ad, they claim that the tax money lost to these independent contractors could “pay for a third of the new Cowichan District Hospital replacement.” As if they care about taxpayer money one bit: that same hospital is being built for hundreds of millions of dollars more than necessary as the building trades unions’ friends in the NDP government have given the unions a monopoly on the project through a misnamed Community Benefit Agreement. Want to get more value for a dollar? Don’t cut out 85% of companies from bidding a project!

Cleaning up the construction industry, as the Building Trades Unions claim they want to do, should begin with fair and open bidding on government projects, with no company getting an advantage because of how they’re workforce is organized or how much money and support Big Labour has given the NDP over the years.

Each week, ICBA’s Jordan Bateman reflects on what we’ve learned as we participate in ICBA’s Workplace Wellness Program. This program is free for all ICBA members – check out icba.ca/wellness for details.

When we talk about addiction, it’s easy to default to thoughts of drugs and alcohol. And while those are the most well-known of addictions, there are many others that can derail our mental health – gambling, social media, eating, screens, shopping, or video games, to name just a few.

All of these things can be healthy when done in a measured, balanced way. But trip into addiction and they can have very negative effects on our lives.

As our ICBA Wellness learning says this week, “All types of addiction cause similar harms to a person’s social and emotional life, and the lives of those around them.”

How do we know we’re addicted? Consider the four Cs:

1. Craving
2. loss of Control of amount or frequency of use
3. Compulsion to use
4. use despite Consequences

Whatever your addiction, there is help. You can call or text 2-1-1 for free and confidential connection to a support service for substance use or addiction, (or, if applicable in your company, you can call your Employee Assistance Program for support as well).

There is help – and hope!

ICBA’s Workplace Wellness Program is helping more than 50 companies and 6,000+ construction professionals, better understand mental health. The program is free for ICBA members — see icba.ca/wellness.