LABOR

Unemployed
pipefitter Marilyn
Lanz with union
sign outside
Pennyfarthing
project.

Picketing echo of ’60s injunction fight

Continued from page 1
Trades, as well as leaders and members.of
the United Fishermen, Telecommunica-
tions Workers, Postal Workers, Teams-
ters and scores of others.

The Building Trades last year had
begun to wage a campaign against the
encroachment of the non-union sector,
challenging non-union contractors in
Tumbler Ridge, on the Vancouver Gen-
eral Hospital site and on another major
Kerkhoff project, the Kamloops court-
house complex.

Each of those projects also signalled a
more overt role by both the provincial
government and the Labor Relations
Board on behalf of the non-union sector.
But on each of them, the Trades were
hung up by unfavorable rulings of the
Labor Relations Board.

That has been no less the case on Kerk-
hoffs Harbor Cove project. But this time
the trades are digging in.

For the unemployed, that decision has
reflected their own. Many of them have
watched in frustration as non-union con-
tractors, who have cut wages to 65 per cent
of union rates, pay few or no benefits and
contribute nothing to apprenticeship
plans, garner more of what little work
there is.

~

And standing on the picket line in
defence of their union and decent wages
has given them a feeling of action and
purpose.

“It’s a lot better than sitting out on
unemployment insurance or welfare,’
says an unemployed carpenter “It’s
brought a lot of people together and made
them realize that we’re in this together.”

By 9 a.m., the line of supporters has
thinned but the pickets will remain
throughout the night. And by dawn the |
following day, the number will have
swelled again. |

For those who recall the campaigns |
against injunctions of 15 and 20 years ago,
the scene is a visual echo of massed picket
lines at Allied Engineering ‘during the
strike of 1962 or the strike against North-
land Navigation in 1959.

At the Vancouver and District Labor
Council meeting Mar. 6, council president |
Frank Kennedy recalled that 1959 strike,
reminding delegates that citizens’ picket |
lines had won the strike when union |
members were barred from picketing by
court injunction.

“If it comes to that again,” he said
“then that’s what we’ll do.” :

Kerkhoff spearheads anti-union drive

“If we get away with this project,” anti-
union contractor Bill Kerkhoff told the
Journal of Commerce in March, 1983 as he
was beginning work on the Kamloops
courthouse project, “it will open the flood-
gate for more non-union work.”

Whether the floodgate is now wide open
is perhaps arguable — the non-union sec-
tor in B.C. accounts for some $450 million
of a total construction volume of $3.5
billion — but there is no question that the
actions of Kerkhoff, together with the work
of the right-to-work Independent Canadian
Businessmen’s Association have ensured
that there is a steady stream of work going
non-union.

And if Kerkhoff is able to proceed with
work on the Harbor Cove construction pro-
ject given him by Pennyfarthing Develop-
ment Corporation, the stream could swell
to a flood.

The Harbor Cove project that Kerkhoff
managed to wrest from union contractor,
Stevenson Construction, is the biggest pro-
ject that the company has ever handled,
bigger even than the $13.7 million Kam-
loops courthouse contract awarded him last
year by B.C. Buildings Corporation. It
amounts to 80 per cent of the total volume
of construction that J.C. Kerkhoff and Sons
carried out last year, an indication of the
new fortunes of non-union construction
under a Socred regime at a time when
unemployment in the Building Trades
exceeds 50 per cent.

Kerkhoff and Sons Construction run by
Bill Kerkhoff the son of the original foun-
der — the “J.C.” — is one of several com-
panies run by the family, including Cascade
Windows and Kerkhoff Building Products.
And it is not just a non-union company; it is
the advance guard of the anti-union
offensive. ;

Kerkhoff himself has waged a continual
campaign against the Building Trades on
job sites and in the political arena through
his friends in the Social Credit government
and through the lobbying efforts of the
organization such as the ICBA and the
Housing and Urban Design Association of
Canada.

Like many of the non-union construction
companies in the province, Kerkhoff is
based in the Socred belt in the Fraser Valley.
It was here that he used his influence with
Socred MLAs Harvey Schroeder and Bill

12 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MARCH 21, 1984 |

Ritchie — the latter an avowed advocate of
right-to-work legislation — to retain a $3
million housing project.

The political climate has been crucial to
Kerkhoff and other non-union companies
expanding the base for their low-wage
operations.

The non-union sector invariably argues
that the union companies — and the Build-
ing Trades — have priced themselves out
of the market, particularly a market that has
shrunk as a result of economic crisis.

But that ignores the grim fact that what-

ever price is set by the union contractor, —

taking into account the wages negotiated by
the Building Trades, the non-union com-
pany will undercut it — by slashing the
wages of its workers.

The provincial government has facili-
tated that process by repealing the Fair
Wages Employment Act of 1973, by forcing
publicly-funded bodies to accept the lowest
bidder on job tenders regardless of other
factors and has restricted the Building
Trades ability to organize and defend union
conditions.

In virtually every instance, the govern-
ment moved in direct response to demands
from groups like HUDAC, of which Kerk-
hoff is a member, and ICBA, of which he is
currently provincial secretary.

Kerkhoff acknowledged to the Labor
Relations Board two weeks ago that lobby-
ing by HUDAC and ICBA had brought
about the changes in government policy
that have heavily favored the non-union
sector.

The board noted that HUDAC pressure
had resulted in Canada Mortgage and
Housing Corporation imposing a low
bidder policy which stipulates that any pro-
ject which involves CMHC financing —
virtually any public or co-operative housing
project — must be contracted to the lowest
bidder. That is almost invariably a non-
union contractor.

ICBA has also been successful in getting
the provincial government to stipulate a
similar policy in publicly-funded projects
although the policy only recently came to
light as a result of a Vancouver General
Hospital project going to another non-
union firm, Kirkwall Construction of
Richmond. A LRB hearing into the project
revealed that the provincial government

“would not have transferred the necessary

land to the hospital building committee if
the committee had not accepted the low bid
submitted by Kirkwall.

Kerkhoff crowed about ICBA successes
in a Feb. 2 letter to ICBA members:

“This is a very decisive year for the open
shop movement in B.C. Incredible inroads
were made during 1983 into traditional
closed shop areas.

“Did this happen by itself? Absolutely
not.

“Over the past nine years, all members,
you and me, have been dreaming that what
is happening today would happen. How-
ever, not everyone just ‘dreamed.’ Some of
our members have continually been battling
the obvious injustices of the closed shop
principles...”

The latest battle that the ICBA has taken
into the Socred caucus rooms involves the
demand for the removal of the Building
Trades non-affiliation clauses from collec-
tive agreements.

Many trade unionists = that changes
along that line are coming in the Labor
Code amendments, expected to be brought
down in the current legislative session, per-
haps even before bidding begins for the
multi-million-dollar contracts for Expo 86
at B.C. Place. That may be the biggest battle
yet to come and Kerkhoff appears to be
looking to it with some relish.

Significantly, Kerkhoff hit the headlines
last May, charging that B.C. Place had a
deal with Building Trades unions to restrict
contracts to union companies.

Yet only last week he announced that he
had submitted pre-qualification documents
and would be bidding on Expo 86 projects.

Premier Bennett reiterated only days

later that B.C. Place would be an open sit
on which all contractors, non-union an
union alike, would be free to bid. The low
bidder policy would virtually ensure that

_ the majority of contracts would go

non-union. \

If that turns both sides of the False Creek

waterfront into a battleground, that is pat
of the game for Kerkhoff who has dec

that he “won't give in to pressures and
coercion.”

In fact, he stated in a recent interview that
he had planned the confrontation over the |
Harbor Cove project on False Creek.

And it more than just the non-union see
tor muscling its way into a major players '
role in the construction industry. The |
demands of the union employers, repres- |
ented by the Construction Labor Relations
Association, for sweeping. concessions,
can’t be separated from Kerkhoffs |
campaign. |

Ultimately the issue is construction
workers’ wages — and the quest by |

employers, non-union and union, to drive
them down using unemployment as the

weapon. '
Right-to-work contractors like Kerkhol |
have sought to force wages down across the

industry by getting the government to adopt "

SUCCESS.

But if projects like that at Harbor Cove |

and contracts for publicly-funded projects
such as Expo 86 are awarded to non-union

_ right-to-work legislation — so far without —

contractors — as a direct result of low

bidder policies and the elimination of fait
wage legislation — right-to-work will have
been established indirectly.

PACIFIC

_| RIBUNE

Published weekly at 2681 East Hastings Street
Vancouver, B.C. V5K 1Z5. Phone 251-1186

Postal Code

lam ee 1yr.$140) 2yrs.$250) 6mo. $80 Foreign 1 yr. $200
Bill me later Donation$

ies
(