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A recent decision to delay the trial for at least two of the companies charged in the deaths of two temporary foreign workers (TFWs) means it will be at least five years since the incident before their families can get any closure.

Canadian Natural Resources Ltd (CNRL), Sinopec Shanghai Engineering Company Ltd, a state-owned company out of Beijing, and SSEC Canada Ltd were scheduled to appear in court October 3, but the case has been pushed back a full year.

Sinopec Shanghai Engineering is appealing a ruling by Alberta's Court of Queen's Bench that concluded the company was within provincial jurisdiction and would be tried alongside CNRL and SSEC Canada. Sinopec Shanghai Engineering argued that it had not been properly served and, as such, the court had no jurisdiction. The company was granted a stay of the judgement and an appeal is scheduled to be heard on October 6.

In a separate matter, an application by CNRL to postpone the case was also granted. As such, the trial for both CNRL and SSEC Canada has been pushed back to October of 2012. (The upcoming hearing will help determine if Sinopec Shanghai Engineering also goes to court at that time.)

Charges were laid following a deadly incident in April of 2007 at the CNRL Horizon Oil Sands site in Fort McMurray, Alberta. Two Chinese TFWs were welding the roof of an oil storage tank under construction when the roof collapsed. An electrician and a scaffolder, aged 33 and 27, respectively, were killed and five other workers were injured.

The oil tanks are large enough that a house could easily fit inside, says Barrie Harrison, a spokesman for Alberta Immigration and Employment in Edmonton. "When the one tank collapsed, some of the I-beams would have been 40 or 50 feet in length and they were just twisted like pretzels," Harrison reports.

The three companies face a total of 53 charges under Alberta's Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA). CNRL has been charged with 29 counts, SSEC Canada with 14 and Sinopec Shanghai Engineering with 10. Among other issues, the charges cite the alleged failure to protect the health and safety of workers, and numerous failures relating to engineering and equipment. The maximum penalty for a first offence is $500,000 for each charge.

Temporary foreign workers said to be at risk

"If we don't have legal frameworks in place to hold these employers accountable, should we even be allowing them to work in places like the oil sands?" asks Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour in Edmonton.

"Thousands of temporary foreign workers will be used for another generation of oil sands-related construction projects. Given that reality, we want to make sure that this case proceeds so lessons can be learned from that tragedy so it's not repeated in the next boom," McGowan says. "The longer it takes for the government to proceed with the case, the less likely it will be, in our opinion, that they'll be able to successfully prosecute the companies involved."

The number of TFWs in Alberta almost tripled between 2006 and 2010, reports Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Last year, the province had almost 58,000 such workers, with more than 1,500 of them coming from the People's Republic of China.

Although TFWs are afforded the same rights and protections as any other worker under Alberta's OHSA, McGowan argues that many of them are completely unaware of what acts, rules and standard practices govern work in the province.

OHS Canada, Wed Sept 28 2011

Workers on Canadian Natural Resources Ltd.'s (CNQ-T30.900.110.36%) large Horizon project in Alberta's oil sands knew something was wrong with the way a crew of Chinese workers flown in by a unit of China's state-owned oil giant Sinopec was building a massive storage tank on the site back in 2007.

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Gil McGowan, head of the Alberta Federation of Labour, said a union official with a crew of Canadian ironworkers working nearby on a different contract told him the tank worksite looked unlike any other he had seen. In the oil sands, clusters of giant vats known as tank farms have been a fixture of the industrial landscape for decades.

"I remember him saying, 'Gil, I'm looking at the work that's going on at the tank farm and I honestly don't know what they're doing. I've never seen scaffolds erected like that, I've never seen tanks being built that way,'" Mr. McGowan recalled in an interview.

Later that day, the support structure holding up the metal tank's roof collapsed, killing two Chinese workers, injuring two others, and launching a tangled saga that would see an arm of Sinopec, formally known as China Petroleum and Chemical Corp. and one of the largest companies in the world, wage a legal battle to avoid facing health-and-safety charges in a Canadian court.

Next week, that issue goes before Alberta's Court of Appeal. A trial on the charges that came after the workers' deaths has now been delayed another year, until the fall of 2012.

The case has raised concerns from labour leaders such as Mr. McGowan about the attitude of Chinese state-owned enterprises – which are pouring billions into the oil sands and other natural resource projects in Canada – toward local rules. Labour unions also point to the case as evidence that more safeguards are needed to deal with the explosion in the use of temporary foreign workers in the oil sands, where the feverish pace of activity has created a labour shortage.

Sinopec Shanghai Engineering Co. Ltd., using a skeletal Canadian subsidiary set up for the deal, had contracted with Canadian Natural Resources to build storage tanks on the Horizon site north of Fort McMurray and one of the largest projects in the oil sands. Union officials say about 150 Chinese workers were flown in for the project under Canada's temporary foreign worker program.

After the tank's collapse, the workers were sent home and Alberta health and safety officials launched an investigation. Two years later, they laid an unprecedented 53 charges for failing to ensure worker health and safety against three companies: Canadian Natural Resources; Sinopec's Canadian subsidiary, SSEC Canada Ltd.; and Sinopec Shanghai Engineering Co. Ltd. Convictions could mean a maximum $500,000 fine on each charge.

A lawyer for Sinopec Shanghai declined to comment. A spokesman for Sinopec could not be reached. Lawyers for SSEC Canada and Canadian Natural Resources also declined to comment.

The trial on the safety charges was delayed repeatedly, with Sinopec Shanghai Engineering arguing that it has no presence in Canada and was not served properly with the charges. It argued that a summons for Sinopec Shanghai, given to the manager in charge of SSEC Canada, was invalid.

In a 2010 ruling, an Alberta provincial court judge agreed. But earlier this year, Mr. Justice Sterling Sanderman of the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench tossed that aside, saying Sinopec Shanghai was clearly aware of the charges against it, having sent a lawyer to court in late 2009.

Judge Sanderman said the lower-court ruling allowed a foreign company, which had arranged its affairs to avoid a presence in Canada, an unfair excuse to evade charges. Sinopec Shanghai will challenge this ruling before Alberta's Court of Appeal Oct. 6.

Lawrence Herman, a lawyer and international trade expert with Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP in Toronto, said state agencies do not typically enjoy any concept of sovereign immunity when acting as commercial entities. Courts also tend to overlook problems when it comes to the complexities of serving a summons on a foreign entity, he added.

"The courts will try their very best to ensure that the defendant will be brought into court," Mr. Herman said, cautioning that he did not have first-hand knowledge of the issues in the case. "They don't like allowing putative defendants off the hook by virtue of technicalities."

The story has had several other twists. The Christian Labour Association of Canada alleged in a 2009 lawsuit that when the surviving Chinese workers on the site returned to China, they were given only a fraction of the wages the company pledged to pay them.

Union official Wayne Prins also travelled to China in an effort to hand over benefits payments and money raised by other workers on the site to the dead workers' widows. He later went back to China to persuade the workers to sign up for a lawsuit in Canada against Sinopec over lost wages, but says he was put under surveillance. That lawsuit was later withdrawn, when a Chinese worker who had initially given Mr. Prins the power of attorney to pursue the case in Alberta recanted. Sinopec argued that it had paid its workers properly.

With tens of thousands more temporary foreign workers and more investment from Chinese companies in the oil sands expected, Mr. Prins said governments need to do more to ensure workers are paid properly and have safe workplaces.

"Sinopec took a little bit of China to Canada with them," Mr. Prins said. "And that is just the way they have chosen to operate."

Editor's note: The maximum possible fine for companies facing charges under Alberta's Occupational Health and Safety Act is $500,000 for each charge, for a first offence. Incorrect information was published in an earlier version of this story. This version has been corrected.

Globe and Mail, Tues Sept 27 2011
Byline: Jeff Gray

Re: "It's time for unions to re-evaluate needs of workers and adapt accordingly; Attitude overhaul necessary to regain their much-needed place in society," by Colin McComb, Ideas, Sept. 12.

It's time for the truth about unions in Alberta. Unfortunately, we got nothing like that from Colin McComb's opinion piece.

McComb failed to identify his background as a former representative for the Christian Labour Association of Canada (CLAC). Why?

Many readers understand that the CLAC is not a real union. Perhaps including his former association with that organization would shatter his arguments for how unions should change. He says unions should not be involved in politics, but fails to point out he has a background in political marketing and campaigning.

McComb has a problem with democratically run unions making donations to political parties, but he has nothing to say about donations from corporations, whose spending far outweighs that by the labour movement.

He implies that unions love to strike, but the truth is that unions rarely strike. No worker wants to live on meagre strike pay instead of collecting a real wage. Striking is a weapon of last resort - but to surrender that weapon will leave workers powerless to defend themselves from bad employers who slash their wages or raid employee pension funds.

McComb paints an outrageous picture of union leaders as Marxists plotting an uprising. This is so out of touch with the labour movement it makes you wonder if he has delusions he is Joseph McCarthy, trapped in a 1950s witch hunt for Reds under his bed. McComb would have us go back to an era when workers had to bow down to employers, instead of being treated with the respect every person deserves.

A flip through a few contracts CLAC has negotiated on behalf of workers is evidence of this: employers being able to lay you off with no notice; no CLAC representative needing to be present for disciplinary meetings with a worker; employers and the CLAC being able to change anything in a collective bargaining agreement to be competitive.

One clause in a CLAC contract sums up their approach to dealing with employers: "In the event that consultation fails to resolve a matter of contention, the union agrees that the decisive word resides with management, unless specifically abridged, deleted or modified by this agreement."

That's CLAC-style labour relations. Some employers seek out the CLAC because they know it will mean they can pay lower wages, offer fewer benefits and impose lower standards on workplace safety.

If workers want real representation, and to ensure fairness in their workplace and a fair return for their labour, they need a real union.

Real unions have no trouble debating their role in Alberta. We do have a problem when those who argue against us do so from behind a smokescreen of omissions.

Douglas O' Halloran, president, United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 401

Edmonton Journal, Letters to the Editor, Tues Sept 27 2011

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka sent a letter to President Obama on Monday expressing his labor federation's opposition to the pending free-trade deal with Colombia.

Included with the letter was a list of names of the 22 union leaders who have been killed in Colombia, 15 of those after the United States agreed to a labor action plan with the South American country in April to improve its labor rights record, according to the AFL-CIO. Labor has long vehemently opposed a trade deal with Colombia because of its record of violence against union activists.

"Simply put, Colombia should not be rewarded with a trade agreement until it develops a proven track record of ensuring that workers can exercise the fundamental rights of free association and collective bargaining; preventing violence against union leaders and other social justice advocates; and bringing to justice those who perpetrated such crimes," Trumka wrote in his letter to Obama.

The labor leader also cited an estimate from the Economic Policy Institute that approval of the Colombia trade deal will lead to 55,000 jobs being lost.

"Given this predicted job loss, at a time when working Americans are already struggling to find jobs, pay their mortgages, and make ends meet, advancing the Colombia Trade Agreement will send the wrong message to the working people of both Colombia and the U.S.," Trumka wrote.

Thehill.com, Mon Sept 26 2011

Alberta union leader Gil McGowan met with federal politicians in Ottawa Thursday to protest a proposed extension of the Keystone XL pipeline, which he says will pump jobs into the United States rather than build opportunities to refine raw bitumen in Fort McMurray or Fort Saskatchewan.

"Frankly we were looking for allies, and we found them," McGowan said after the meeting, which was attended by opposition MPs.

The Alberta Federation of Labour president called the pipeline expansion a "job killer," suggesting its completion will ruin the chances of thousands of jobs being created in Alberta. Pulling from a cross-section of reports that show the pipeline could provide 99,000 jobs to the U.S. economy by 2020 and as many as 270,000 jobs by 2030. McGowan said the Keystone XL project will create few new jobs in Canada.

"It's clear to us that the majority of Albertans and the majority of Canadians would like to see us move up the value ladder with our oilsands resources, rather than sell our resources south of the border in their raw form," he said.

Upon completion, the $12-billion pipeline expansion is expected to push about 900,000 barrels of bitumen from Alberta to Texas each day.

But Shawn Howard, a spokesman for TransCanada - the company building the pipeline extension - pointed out Thursday no one is in the market to build a new refinery in Alberta, so Canadian jobs aren't being lost.

"We don't go and build a pipeline like Field of Dreams, where we build it and hope we can fill it. We do this in response to demand that the market has identified," Howard said.

No refining jobs would have been created in Alberta as a result of the project, Howard said. "Good luck trying to get a refinery built. It's very difficult; it's extremely expensive."

McGowan said it is up to provincial and federal governments to tighten export regulations to require more upgrading be done in Alberta. "Just because it's cheaper for companies (to export) doesn't mean that we as the owners of the resource should allow that to happen."

Vancouver Sun, Fri Sept 23 2011
Byline: Trish Audette (Edmonton Journal)

Georgian workers continue to experience severe trade union repression at the hands of both the employer and the government. The latest attack comes at Hercules Steel, a Georgian-Indian joint venture in Kutaisi, Georgia. Workers formed a trade union on 4 August 2011. However, the employer refused to recognize the union and fired six leaders. As the employer refused to seek a negotiated solution, workers had no option but to strike, some going on a hunger strike. On 15 September, the governor and 50 police vehicles stormed the plant and arrested 40 workers. Immediately after the strikers were dispersed, the police and management representatives called and visited workers demanding that they return to work under penalty of arrest. The police also forced detained workers to sign statements promising not to protest and to return to work immediately. In addition to the industrial conflict, information has emerged that over 100 Indian migrant workers have had their passports withheld and have been forced to live in squalid living conditions. Wages and working conditions are very poor. Workers wanting to leave in advance of the expiration of their contract have not been allowed to leave. We are urging the Georgian government to intervene in this matter to ensure the domestic and international labour rights of Georgian and Indian workers are fully respected.

For online petition:

labourstart.org, Thurs Sept 22 2011

Alberta's largest labour organization told MPs Thursday why it thinks the controversial Keystone XL pipeline is a bad idea.

The Alberta Federation of Labour and Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada have in the past likened the pipeline to a massive "bitumen superhighway" taking Canadian resources and jobs south of the border.

"Members of the Alberta and federal governments have been acting like sales executives for pipeline company TransCanada, travelling to the U.S. to persuade Americans what a great idea the raw bitumen pipeline will be, but they are ignoring what's best for Alberta and Canada," said Alberta Federation of Labour president Gil McGowan.

He expects Keystone XL will add only about a dozen permanent jobs here.

"We have a one-time chance to take control of our own resources and build a value-added refining industry here. What we have instead is a mad rush to approve every application to develop the oil sands and ship our raw resources and good jobs, down the pipeline," McGowan said.

The Keystone XL project is the third expansion of TransCanada's four-stage Keystone pipeline system, which has some 83% customer commitment for 910,000 barrels per day for over 20 years. Keystone XL will transport oilsands crude from Hardisty, Alta., to the U.S. Gulf Coast. The first phase began commercial deliveries to U.S. midwest markets in 2010. The Gulf Coast Expansion - or Keystone XL - if approved, will add another 500,000 barrels a day.

The Obama administration has said it will decide by the end of the year whether to permit the pipeline.

Toronto Sun, Thurs Sept 22 2011
Byline: Carol Christian

Immediate action is needed to make worksites safe as Alberta braces for a boom in foreign employees, says Alberta's largest labour group.

A criminal case against companies involved in the death of two oilsands employees has been delayed and the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL), which represents 145,000 workers, says that's bad news for Alberta workers.

The two workers died in April 2007 at the Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (CNRL) Horizon project, and another four who were injured, were Temporary Foreign Workers (TFWs) unfamiliar with Albertan workplace procedures and safety standards.

"The Alberta government failed to take the necessary measures to ensure our standards were being maintained — and the workers paid the price with their lives," said AFL President Gil McGowan.

"Alberta is on the cusp of another boom in bringing in foreign workers — we could have more than 100,000 TFWs here soon. We need to learn the lessons from this tragedy now in order to ensure the same fatal mistakes aren't made again. This trial delay makes learning those lessons more difficult."

The number of applications to bring TFWs into Alberta approved by the federal government soared by 37 per cent between 2009 and 2010, rising by 11,655 to a total of 42,885. Add that to the 57,774 TFWs already working in the province in 2010 and Alberta could soon pass the six-figure mark.

A total of 53 charges under the Occupational Health and Safety Act have been laid against CNRL, Sinopec Shanghai Engineering Company Ltd. and SSED Canada Ltd. The companies were to go to trial Oct. 3, 2011, but the case has been put over until Oct. 1, 2012.

"We cannot ignore or fail to enforce our rules just because these are foreign workers," said McGowan.

"The government must be more serious about its responsibility to inspect worksites and enforce its rules, or more workers will die or be hurt."

"We have to make sure that these foreign construction firms, whether they come from China or other countries, are not importing Third World labour and health and safety practices along with the temporary foreign workers that they use."

Daily Commercial News and Construction Record, Thurs Sept 22 2011

EDMONTON - Alberta union leader Gil McGowan met with federal politicians in Ottawa on Thursday to protest a proposed extension of the Keystone XL pipeline, which he says will pump jobs into the United States rather than build opportunities to refine raw bitumen in Fort McMurray or Fort Saskatchewan.

"Frankly we were looking for allies, and we found them," McGowan said after the meeting, which was attended by opposition MPs.

The Alberta Federation of Labour president called the pipeline expansion a "job killer," suggesting its completion will ruin the chances of thousands of jobs being created in Alberta. Pulling from a cross-section of reports that show the pipeline could provide as few as 99,000 jobs to the U.S. economy by 2020 or as many as 270,000 jobs by 2030, McGowan said the Keystone XL project will create few new jobs in Canada.

"It's clear to us that the majority of Albertans and the majority of Canadians would like to see us move up the value ladder with our oilsands resources, rather than sell our resources south of the border in their raw form," he said.

Upon completion, the $12-billion pipeline expansion is expected to push about 900,000 barrels of bitumen from Alberta to Texas each day.

But Shawn Howard, a spokesman for TransCanada — the company building the pipeline extension — pointed out Thursday no one is in the market to build a new refinery in Alberta, so Canadian jobs aren't being lost.

"We don't go and build a pipeline like Field of Dreams, where we build it and hope we can fill it. We do this in response to demand that the market has identified," Howard said.

No refining jobs would have been created in Alberta as a result of the project, Howard said. "Good luck trying to get a refinery built. It's very difficult; it's extremely expensive."

McGowan said it is up to provincial and federal governments to tighten export regulations to require more upgrading be done in Alberta. "Just because it's cheaper for companies (to export) doesn't mean that we as the owners of the resource should allow that to happen."

While the pipeline project has vocal opponents concerned about potential environmental impacts, McGowan isn't alone in protesting the project on economic grounds.

Last week, in an interview with the CBC, former premier Peter Lougheed said he'd prefer that bitumen be processed in Alberta to keep jobs in the province. In an editorial piece penned for the Edmonton Journal this week, provincial NDP Leader Brian Mason also highlighted the potential loss of domestic job growth that could come with the pipeline extension.

Edmonton Journal, Thurs Sept 22 2011
Byline: Trish Audette