Political Action

Some of the things all three levels of government do affect specific trades or Building Trades unions as a whole group. And almost everything they do affects us and our families as individual citizens.

The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and its Alberta Regional Council Locals have a long history of participating in the process of informing governments of the wishes of our members, particularly on issues directly related to our work.

Before decisions are made, we lobby to make sure elected officials understand our positions on key issues. If their decisions are acceptable to us, we praise them. If decisions hurt us, we have never been afraid to be critical and to continue our efforts to work with government to change their positions.

We do not dictate to our members how they should express their opinions about political issues. We do, however, inform members on how issues affect their well-being both as citizens and as members of our trades.

Some of the key issues of greatest concern to us at the moment are:

Division 8 - Alberta Labour legislation for provincially-designated megaprojects. It says an employer who signs a contract with any single labour organization can force the terms of that contract on all other unions who wish to work on the project. It allows employers to 'negotiate' contracts with organizations not recognized as unions by the Alberta Building Trades Council, then apply identical pay and conditions on recognized labour unions.

Temporary Foreign Workers - Allowing employers to import temporary foreign workers is, in our opinion, a way of allowing employers access to 'indentured' labour. These workers do not have access to bargaining agents, and they can easily be denied equal treatment and opportunity. Our issue isn't with their presence, it's with them being treated differently, and with the employer's access to them being used as a way of undercutting what we have. The fact of temporary foreign workers is a downward force on the terms and conditions of contracts that we have legally and rightfully won for ourselves.

Health Care - This is a family issue. Our members are lucky to have top-flight health & welfare benefit programs, but on a society-wide scale, we're worried about the erosion of public health care by the continuing drive towards privatized medical services in Alberta.