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Quebec Industrial Workers Speak Up Crane Operators and Their Allies Persist in the Fight Against the Wrecking of Training Programs Crane operators demonstrate in front of CNEEST offices in Montreal, May 5, 2018, demanding changes to regulations on training be rescinded.It has been almost two years since the Government of Quebec and the Quebec Construction Commission (CCQ) seriously weakened the regulations governing the training of crane operators who do one of the most dangerous jobs in the entire construction industry. Crane operators in Quebec continue to reject the regulations and defend their training developed over many years.[1] The previous Quebec Liberal government abolished the mandatory requirement that crane operators complete the Diploma of Vocational Studies (DEP) at the end of April 2018. This was done without the consent or input of crane operators, the construction unions or vocational teachers. The vocational course to become a crane operator included 870 hours of practical training in a professional educational setting. The government decree made the diploma optional. An on-site training program of only 150 hours was introduced, which the construction companies themselves provide and oversee. The government and CCQ also replaced the vocational course and diploma with an 80-hour course for the operation of boom trucks with a maximum capacity of 30 tonnes. This type of boom truck is precisely the crane that overturns most frequently and causes the most damage. Established in 1997, the DEP played a direct role in a 66 per cent decrease in the number of deaths in Quebec related to the use of cranes.
Crane operators and their allies also object to the fact that the current Coalition Avenir Québec government has mandated the CCQ to implement the recommendations of the Committee of Experts it set up in September 2018 in the midst of the crane operators' fight. The Committee of Experts wrote in its report issued in March 2019, that the operation of a crane is one of the most dangerous operations in the industry and that mandatory vocational training remains the reference training, but it recommended that it should be optional, according to the dictate of the government and CCQ. It proposed as an alternative a period of three weeks of initial training in an educational institution followed by on-site training provided by construction companies. These recommendations are unacceptable and they are in complete opposition to what workers actually said at the hearings held by the committee itself in 2018. Two years later the crane operators are still asking that the new regulations, now modified in the recommendations of the Committee of Experts, be withdrawn and that the compulsory vocational training of crane operators be maintained. They continue to present their case to the
government, in particular to the Minister of
Labour, to demand compulsory vocational
training. They have the support of several
unions, in particular many FTQ-Construction
locals and the teachers' union that represents
the teachers of the courses leading to DEP.
Crane operators report that they are also
meeting with construction employers'
associations to ask for their support in
maintaining the mandatory nature of vocational
training. They report that some employers'
associations support this demand, not wanting
safety to be decreased on construction sites and
the number of deaths to increase to previous
levels. Above all, crane operators are constantly investigating what is happening on construction sites and where cranes are operated. They report that since June 2019 at least five accidents have occurred in Quebec involving the use of cranes, in which the operator had not received vocational training and where the accident was due to errors made by the operator due to lack of training. Crane operators are intervening so that the accident investigation is done in a professional manner by the inspectors of the CNESST (Labour Standards, Pay Equity, and Workplace Health and Safety Board) so as to identify the real causes of the accident. CNESST has recently admitted that there is an increase in accidents involving the operation of cranes and crane operators are urging the CNESST to take measures to defend and reinstate the training of the operators. We're talking here about reported accidents, not accidents that go unreported when they don't cause injury or loss of work time or when they're simply masked by pressure to silence workers.
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