No to "Contract Flipping" and Union-Busting
Stand with the Alberta Wapasu Creek Lodge Workers!
On April 13, four hundred workers represented by United Food and Commercial Workers Local 401 at the Wapasu Creek Lodge, a massive 5,174-room work camp north of Fort McMurray, were issued layoff notices after voting 95 per cent to reject the employer Civeo's demands for 20 per cent cuts to wages, clawbacks of benefits, deep cuts to guaranteed hours, and a variety of cutbacks on basic support Wapasu workers need to do their jobs. The demands from the company come two years into a three-and-a-half-year contract.
The workers provide food, housekeeping, reception and front desk services, maintenance, and security for the facility which houses and feeds workers from remote oil sands projects, including the Imperial Oil Kearl Lake oil sands mine. The workers kept the camps operating through the pandemic, under the most difficult conditions. The workers point out that major projects like Kearl Lake, with a production capacity of 263,000 barrels/day of bitumen, cannot operate without Wapasu. Not only does it house the fly-in/fly-out workforce at Kearl Lake and other projects but also the workforce for the annual turnarounds/shutdowns which are now underway to carry out maintenance. They do all that is necessary to keep the work camps functioning, but the arrogant Texas-based monopoly has now decided to dispose of them in order to deprive workers of the wages and working conditions they have established. To do this, Civeo plans to contract out the management and operation of the lodge to Aramark.
The union filed an unfair labour practices complaint with the Alberta Labour Relations Board (ALRB) on December 2, after the company demanded concessions while a collective agreement was in place. When the workers said No! and were served with layoff notices, the union filed applications for interim relief and a true/common employer and/or successor declaration on April 27. The first would stop the layoffs until the entire case was heard, and the second would establish that Civeo remained the actual employer, or that successor rights existed and the collective agreement would remain in place. Local 401 also filed for access to the worksite.
The hearing on the April 27 application for interim relief began on May 16. On day two, when only two of 25 expected witnesses from the union had been heard, Civeo put forward a motion to summarily dismiss the union's application, and the ALRB agreed. The ALRB then declared that there was no available time to continue the hearing prior to June 8 when the workers will be laid off. The union's full submission will not even be heard until August, two months after the notorious global privatizing profiteer Aramark has been installed as the new employer. Until then the workers must find new ways of affirming their rights as it is clear that the Labour Relations Board cannot be relied on to do it for them.
The ALRB ignored as irrelevant the fact that a company whose sole business is the ownership and operation of work camps would be contracting out its business to a competitor. Nevermind that in 2016, when the NDP was in power in Alberta, Civeo did the same thing when it demanded a 44 per cent wage cut from the 170 workers at Beaver River Lodge, which the workers also refused. Civeo then laid everyone off under a fraudulent "contract flip" where it rebranded itself as a new company, and contracted the work out to itself, replacing the workers with low-paid non-union workers. The ALRB did not even wait until Local 401 had put forward its caseto make its decision.
In its decision, the ALRB stated that it only has authority to grant orders which are "preservative," not "remedial" and that to grant the union's application would be "remedial."
Webster's Online Dictionary provides these definitions: "Remedial: Affording a remedy; intended for a remedy or for the removal of an evil: as, to adopt remedial measures; tending to cure or restore to health." "Preserve" is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as: "to maintain (something) in its original or existing state."
Local
401's applications to the ALRB were precisely to preserve what
the workers have established in the form of their union, collective
agreement and standards. Many of the workers at Wapasu have worked
there for many years. They fought to organize themselves and
establish wages,
working conditions and benefits acceptable to them. The Indigenous
workers fought to uphold their rights including a space to conduct
ceremony and other recognition. Granting the interim relief application
would mean they would keep their jobs and preserve the wages and
working conditions they have accomplished with their union.
However, the ALRB has made its order based on
precedents established by successive governments. These affirm
self-serving interests of the monopolies to do as they please while the
workers are limited by juridical rulings which are bad for the workers
who do the work, bad for the workers the camps serve and bad for
society itself.
The ALRB's refusal of the application for interim relief sets the stage for the board to also find that the "new contractor," whoever that may be, will not be bound by the collective agreement, obligated to retain the workers, or do anything else to preserve their livelihoods and uphold their rights.
This
is something which brings utmost shame to Canada and the claims of
governments to protect rights and not permit forms of human
trafficking. Of course, governments are not just at the disposal of the
narrow private interests which dare treat labour in this manner. They
have in fact been taken over by these narrow private interests and
spend their time passing laws to let these interests act with impunity,
on one hand, and limit the workers to not being able to do anything
about it.
Taking collective action to end this state of affairs
has become the greatest challenge facing the workers' movement,
especially when some of the union leaders concur with the governments
in question by saying that serving these narrow private interests is
needed to preserve jobs, attract investment, and the like. It is also
the case that unions are being attacked and either gotten rid of or
exchanged for organizations formed by the employers to keep the workers
divided and in line. Legally protected anti-worker practices have
become increasingly blatant. A modern society requires new ways of
mobilizing and organizing in a manner that favours the workers. There
is no option but to take this up. Local 401 has been mobilizing the
workers who live in the camps to join the fight, to stand as one and
not permit the vicious attack on the workers who make sure the camps
run smoothly and also according to public health requirements which is
a big issue when thousands of people are in and out of work camps.
When
the security of the workers who run the camps is so deeply impacted,
this directly affects the workers who live in the camps. They will
also be severely negatively impacted. Life is hard enough
living in isolation in the wilderness without also having to contend
with the inevitable decline in the standards at the camp when the
workers with years of experience are tossed out on the street.
Uphold the Dignity of Labour!
Our Security Lies in the Fight for the
Rights of All!
This article was published in
Number 29 - May 29, 2023
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/WF2023/Articles/WO10293.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca