Canadian government stirs unions by allowing offshore hiring for oil sands

Tensions are rising between organized labor and governments over the prospect of foreign workers being imported for oil sands projects.

The latest jolt to unions came with word that Ledcor has Canadian government permission to recruit 680 skilled trades people outside Canada to fill temporary jobs in the next year. They will be used at Ledcor sites where the construction company hired members of the Christian Labor Association of Canada, a coalition that has been steadily eroding the power of traditional trade unions, whose members often refuse to work on CLAC work sites.

A spokesman for the Alberta Building Trades Council said going overseas is not necessary when 5,000 workers are out of jobs in Alberta.

The council is also concerned that CLAC is offering workers who will undercut their organized labor counterparts by C$14 an hour. The companies involved in the current wave of oil sands projects, such as Suncor Energy, Canadian Natural Resources and Nexen, are reluctant to get drawn into a looming showdown among workers.

Canadian Natural, which obtained an Alberta cabinet order to hire non-union labor and negotiate a master agreement with one contractor to cover all trades, has been at pains to emphasize that Albertans followed by other Canadians will have the first crack at the peak 6,500 jobs it will offer at the C$10.8 billion Horizon project.

At the same time, the company has pledged to end an upward spiral of costs that have plagued other oil sands projects.

Suncor has also given an assurance that it will hire locally first and foreign workers will be used only as a last resort.

Unmoved by these promises, one union executive sent an open letter to Alberta Premier Ralph Klein accusing the province of opening the door to foreign workers by twisting labor rules.

—Gary Park