ICBA celebrates 50 years of serving open shop construction this year, and we are looking back every week at some of the significant moments, milestones, and people who helped ICBA become Canada’s largest construction association.
Today, we turn back the clock to the mid 1990s, when the NDP forced Vancouver Island highway work to their trades union supporters – and went over budget. This is Part 1 of 2.
The interviews and other original research on which the ICBA50 series is based were conducted by writer Kevin Hanson. We appreciate Kevin’s work capturing the people, events, and milestones that shaped ICBA’s first half-century.
At first, it looked like nothing more than a minor labour “wobble” – a one-day illegal Teamsters strike that briefly disrupted highway work near Ladysmith in March 1994. On its own, it didn’t seem like much. But it cracked the surface of what had been a stable, low-conflict environment in B.C. roadbuilding for more than 25 years.
Around the same time, NDP Employment and Investment Minister Glen Clark sat down with the B.C. Roadbuilders and Heavy Construction Association. In what many read as a not-so-subtle threat, Clark raised the possibility of pulling back privatized road maintenance work unless the industry could “arrive at an understanding” with government about the just-announced Island Highway Project. His blunt message? “Let’s cut the crap and get down to how you want to work with the government to solve these problems.”
And just days later, the meaning behind “solving problems” became clear: a sweeping new NDP intervention into construction markets – this time through a project labour agreement. Government’s main justification? That it would guarantee “no strikes or lockouts.” The timing of the Ladysmith strike made that excuse look suspiciously convenient. In fact, one observer called the labour peace rationale “bordering on the preposterous.” As Philip Hochstein said at the time, it was like “paying the Americans not to invade Canada again.”
Dan Doyle, a 36-year veteran of the transportation ministry and assistant deputy minister back then, had a similar reaction: “The speech around it was all about stopping all the labour disputes we were having on contracts. We weren’t having any labour disputes on contracts.”
As controversy mounted, Hochstein pointed to more plausible motives: declining union market share and the need to refill union coffers ahead of the next election. “Everything else up till now was an effort to give the unions an advantage,” he said. “But despite the advantage they couldn’t win market share. So the NDP had to be more blatant. It just shows that the market wasn’t prepared to accept those kinds of costs anymore.”
Of course, the government still had to pretend open tendering mattered. “It had become difficult even for the NDP to put all public work out there union-only,” recalled former ICBA Chair Joel Nauss. “Those days were over with, it just wasn’t going to fly.” So the NDP set up a workaround—a new company called Highway Constructors Ltd. (HCL).
It was a clever shell game. Union and non-union firms could both bid, but every worker on the $1.1 billion Island Highway would be employed by HCL under a master collective agreement signed with eight Building Trades unions. Bidders could name-hire just five of their own employees; after 30 days on the job, every worker had to become a union member. Employer contributions to union advancement funds were mandatory.
While government touted this as a way to “free” contractors from administering the agreement, there was a little detail they left out: those same contractors had no role in negotiating the agreement in the first place.
Scott Jacob, who led civil construction for JJM Construction on Vancouver Island in the 1990s, wasn’t buying it. His team had a strong relationship with their CLAC-organized workforce. “I didn’t have grievances before you came along,” he said, “so thanks for showing up and introducing grievances and then fixing them for me.” To Jacob, the motivation was obvious: “I think it was purely the NDP paying back their friends at the building trades. Purely.”
While JJM and some other ICBA member companies worked to figure out how to navigate the mess, ICBA didn’t hold back. ICBA called out the policy for what it was: a political payoff that stripped away worker choice and would drive costs through the roof. “At present, 70 per cent of the road building workforce doesn’t belong to the unions that the government has made its deal with,” Hochstein told reporters. He warned that project costs could spike by up to 30%, and that job opportunities would be limited to select union members.
He wasn’t alone. The B.C. Construction Association called it a “backroom deal” that violated government’s own tendering policies. Other business groups piled on too – though, unsurprisingly, unionized contractors backed the agreement.
In April, Hochstein hit the road, touring Island communities to raise awareness. He warned local suppliers of the “mind-boggling series of twists and turns” they’d face just trying to do business with highway contractors. ICBA also kept spotlighting the cost to taxpayers.
Despite government efforts to downplay the price tag, the numbers told a different story. “What I saw during all that time was just trying to narrow down who could do the work,” said Doyle. “And what that did, of course, was raise prices everywhere – and that wasn’t in the public interest.”
The Vancouver Board of Trade put a number to it: $72.9 million in increased costs, thanks to inflated compensation and added red tape. The Island Highway Project ultimately ran significantly over budget – despite having its scope scaled back – delivering less infrastructure at a higher price.
And all to pay back the NDP’s friends in the building trades.
