PCs' Deception About Apprenticeship Ratios

- Jim Nugent -

May 15, 2014 - In the two sessions of the Ontario Legislature preceding the current Ontario election, the PCs made a series of anti-worker, anti-union legislative proposals for driving down the working and living standard of all Ontario workers. This includes proposals attacking building trades workers and their unions.

Among the PC measures against the building trades were those that called for getting rid of regulations limiting the journeyperson-to-apprentice ratios in the trades with the aim of undermining the building trades unions' apprenticeship systems. The PCs are using the Ontario election campaign to renew these attacks on building trades workers. Undermining the building trades apprentice system has been included as part of a PC fraud about having a "million jobs plan." The PCs are claiming that by simply changing the journeyperson-apprentice ratios, they will create 200,000 of the one million promised jobs.

On the first day after the election officially began, PC Leader Tim Hudak held a photo op at a Vaughan construction site to talk about how apprenticeship ratios fit into the PC "million jobs plan." Hudak said, "They have this old rule that dates back to the 1970s that says for every single apprentice in many trades you have to have four or five journeymen, so they limit the number of opportunities. Allow each journeyman to mentor and train an apprentice, one each, and that'll help create 200,000 positions. It won't cost you a penny. One simple cabinet meeting, one stroke of the pen, and it's done."

Hudak's assertion is based on a deception: that there are 200,000 jobs in the building trades just waiting to be filled. Reality is quite the opposite: there are tens of thousands of construction workers waiting for jobs to open up, not jobs waiting for workers. The whole construction sector operates on the basis of a huge number of unemployed workers standing by for dispatch to new projects. In Ontario and in most of the country, at any given time there are six unemployed trades workers available for every job that opens up, a lower job vacancy rate than in other sectors. Hudak's proposed changes to apprenticeship regulations would redistribute existing jobs, not create any new ones.

Construction employers and construction project owners, not unemployed workers, would benefit from the PC apprenticeship system changes. They would obviously benefit from being able to hire more apprentices who have a starting pay rate 60 per cent below the journeyperson rate. But the most important benefit to employers would be the downward pressure on construction wages that would result from doubling the building trades workforce.

For historical reasons, the building trades unions have taken up the responsibility for apprenticeship training and carry out most of the successful training in Ontario. They are well known for preparing highly skilled tradespeople whose work benefits the economy and construction employers immensely. The objection that construction employers and their political representatives have about the existing apprenticeship system is that it enables the building trades unions to limit the free operation of the labour market, that is, to limit the competition among workers for jobs in the sector. The building trades unions do this by matching the number of apprentices admitted into training to the number of jobs available. This process is based on many years of experience with the ebb and flow of construction activity and on negotiations with employers.

Besides keeping construction wages at Canadian standards and from going into a free fall during periods of low construction activity, the approach of the organized building trades workers also serves apprentices who enter training. It ensures that there are enough employment postings for apprentices to complete their apprenticeship hours. Most building trades have a 90 per cent apprentice completion rate compared to 59 per cent in the non-union sector. The most common reason given by apprentices for quitting training is the long periods of unemployment between job placements.

The proposals of the Hudak PCs for changing the apprenticeship system have no potential for creating employment but they have great potential for wrecking. They could wreck one of the few effective worker training systems and damage the overall economy by pushing the construction sector into the downward spiral already being experienced by workers in other sectors. Working people should oppose the PC proposals about changing apprenticeship regulation and the entire "million jobs" hustle of the PCs. Working people should support the efforts of the building trades workers for training and bringing in the next generation of workers in a rational way that serves the workers in that sector and the overall economy.

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