The potentially expensive argument that erupted over the labour model for building the Site C dam eased somewhat on Wednesday, with news of a compromise deal between B.C. Hydro and the building trades.
B.C. Hydro has agreed to give unionized firms an advantage in bidding for contracts on the $9-billion project. The B.C. Building Trades Council has agreed to waive its demand for a project labour agreement that would have essentially made the job site a closed shop.
It's essentially a calculated bet on the part of the building trades that unionized firms will have enough of an edge in bidding that the majority of the workers will be their members. So Hydro can maintain that it's an open site, but there might be minimal non-union presence.
The key provision, according to Hydro, is that the two parties have agreed to no strikes, no lockouts and no raiding. There is also an agreement there will be no union organizing on the civil-works part of the project. That is the immense amount of earthmoving and clearing required.
Some bids have already been awarded and more, much bigger ones are expected to be called in the next few weeks.
Building Trades Council executive director Tim Sigurdson said the deal is only a framework understanding on "how to move ahead with giving the proponents access to our skilled trades."
The lawsuit the council filed against Hydro over its original vision of a labour deal will still stand, he said, until they determine how the work is progressing.
B.C. Hydro stressed that the project will be a managed open site, with union and non-union contractors. It said the framework agreement recognizes that stability is best achieved with a mix of labour representation that includes the building-trades unions. The deal allows Site C to operate as a managed open site that includes union and non-union workers as well as independent and First Nations contractors.
There might be a few non-union firms working on the project over time, but the arrangement suggests union firms will predominate.
Sigurdson said non-union companies would be able to sign project-specific collective agreements. They would get temporary union certification in order to take advantage of the extra weighting that Hydro has committed to give on bids. Contractors' bids are commonly scored on various criteria.
The value of the unionization component is being bumped up to give it more consideration.
Energy Minister Bill Bennett used the agreement in the legislature to goad the NDP, citing it and then introducing a motion that the legislature supports Site C. That brought NDP MLA Adrian Dix out of his chair to erupt in a colourful tirade against B.C. Liberal energy policies.
"They've made the most massive mistakes in history," he said.
The motion will likely get buried in last-minute business but as far as getting a rise out of the NDP, which has trod warily around the Peace River dam for years, it worked.
Hydro originally planned to proceed with the work as a managed open site, with a specific bar against organizing on site. The building trades objected and won a concession from Premier Christy Clark, who overruled the Hydro brass and got the organizing ban dropped.
That was the basis for the lawsuit, which claims the ban violates the unions' constitutional rights to organize.
But other parts of the labour plan still rankled, so talks between the council and Hydro have continued for several weeks after Clark's move in April. The premier's office was brought into those negotiations recently and they concluded this week with the announcement of theframework.
Hydro's two main concerns were to keep costs down by allowing as many firms to bid as possible, including from non-union outfits with lower labour costs, and to allow for as much stability onsite as possible.
The stability provisions are still in place, with the agreement stipulating no work stoppages, no raiding and no organizing. But what the framework does to costs will be closely watched when the bids started coming in.
