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More than 100 construction workers with an Alberta company have returned from New Brunswick, after becoming the target of angry protests by local trade unions.

The workers were in the Atlantic province after SNC-Lavalin awarded a contract to Balzac, Alta.-based Integral Energy Service to work on a natural gas storage tank at a liquid natural gas (LNG) receiving and regassification terminal in Saint John.

About 125 employees were sent to Saint John on a three month contract.

On Sept 14, after only a few days on the job, hundreds of angry protesters began to gather outside their hotel to demonstrate against the hiring of out of province workers.

"What happened is SNC-Lavalin hired some subcontractors and some of them are CLAC (Christian Labour Association of Canada) signatory companies," said CLAC director of public relations Alex Pannu.
"Out of that group of workers, who are supposedly from Alberta, quite a few are from Atlantic Canada, but previously worked in Alberta."

Canaport LNG Ltd., which is a partnership between Irving Oil and Repsol, made it clear that they aren't directly responsible for the labour unrest.
"The labour issue is directly between our contractor SNC-SNAM (a partnership between SNC-Lavalin and Italian-based Snamprojetty) and the local tradespeople," said Canaport LNG spokesperson Francisco Garcia-Tobar.

"It is an unfortunate situation and our primary focus is the completion of the construction of the Canaport LNG terminal."

It remains up to the union and the main contractor to find a resolution.
"At the outset of the Canaport LNG project, labour unions signed an agreement which allowed 25 per cent of the labour force to be non-unionized," said Gillian MacCormack spokesperson for SNC-Lavalin Inc.

"SNC-Lavalin is well within the terms of this agreement. To date, over 90 per cent of the labour force at Canaport LNG has been unionized."
About 1,600 workers were employed on the project during the peak of construction.

"These protests are not about keeping Albertans out of New Brunswick," said Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour. "They are about stopping CLAC from getting a toehold in a province, where they are not recognized as a legitimate trade union."

Despite this claim, Pannu denied that CLAC is planning to move into New Brunswick.

"We have our hands full, especially with our work right now in Saskatchewan," he said. "If we have increased our presence in Atlantic Canada, it is because our members have asked us to come there."
According to Pannu, the building trades are spinning the whole thing about local workers not being employed and turning it into an attack on CLAC.

"The issue is SNC-Lavalin decided to subcontract to an Alberta-based company that sent out their workers," he said. "If the protestors have an issue, they need to sit down with the contractor and the union leaders, instead of holding their fellow workers hostage."

Garcia-Tobar said Canport LNG has encouraged SNC-Lavalin to use local construction companies as much as reasonably possible for the last four years.

"To achieve this goal, site construction was divided into smaller packages to give local contractors an opportunity to bid," he said. "As the project wraps up, with the completion of the third LNG tank, smaller packages such as the one at the origin of the current protests, were put to tender giving ample opportunity for competitive bids."

The protests lasted for about four days and took place each morning and afternoon. Despite a 24-hour injunction issued on Sept. 16, about 350 protesters showed up at the hotel the next morning.

Police didn't intervene.

On Sept. 17, the protesters were given a court order to stay at least 100 metres away from the hotel and were advised to stop preventing guests from going to work.Protesters cheered when a bus full of workers, fearing for their safety, left the hotel.

The judge also granted a temporary injunction to SNC-Lavalin, ordering protesters to stay away from the entrance to Canaport LNG, as well as hotels and motels in Saint John, Moncton and Fredericton.

Initially, the worker's whereabouts was unknown, but it now appears they went back to Alberta until things cool down.

Integral Energy is planning to have their staff return to New Brunswick to finish the job.

Representatives of the New Brunswick Federation of Labour, the New Brunswick Building Trades Council, the Electrical Contractors Association of New Brunswick and the St John Construction Association were contacted for this story but refused to comment.

Journal of Commerce, Tues Sept 22 2009
Byline: Richard Gilbert

Three labour unions challenged city council's private approval of a multi-billion-dollar deal involving Epcor shares at the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench last week.

The Alberta Federation of Labour, with Civic Service Union 52 and the Canadian Union of Public Employees 30, attacked the behind-closed-doors approach of councillors and Mayor Stephen Mandel in April to help place the municipally owned utility's power generation branch with a new company, Capital Power, and offer public shares.

"We believe city council acted illegally," Alberta Federation of Labour president Gil McGowan says. "We argued that the process followed by council contravened important sections of the Municipal Government Act, in particular the sections requiring council to make their decisions in public forums and the sections related to delegation."

Bill Pidruchney, a local lawyer and former head of the Alberta Securities Commission, attempted to get an injunction against the sale of shares in Capital Power on similar gounds in July, and lost.

Councillors have argued they are exempt from making decisions in the public domain while acting as shareholders, as they do with Epcor. However, McGowan thinks the shareholder title does little to defend their private actions.

"The MGA says that the council has to meet in public, but it doesn't say anything about shareholders," he explains. "The shareholders group has no legal existence under the MGA, which clearly states that city council can only delegate its decision making authority to committees of council, or the chief administrative officer.

"Therefore any decision made by that group is not valid."

Epcor spokesperson Tim le Riche disagrees: "The only thing we can say is what we've been saying all along, and that is that Epcor believes the claims are without merit, and we will vigourously defend ourselves as we have done."

With arguments from Epcor, city council, and the union coalition completed, the case now awaits Justice Stephen Hillier's deliberation.
If he decides the union coalition's claims do have merit, it is possible the sale of shares may be declared invalid.

McGowan recognizes the huge implications of such a ruling.

"There's absolutely no doubt that a declaration from the court nullifying the privatization will cause a huge headache for everyone who bought shares in the initial public offering," he says. "But in our perspective, the interests of investors have to take a back seat to the interests of the people who own the assets and didn't have a say in their sale."
A ruling is expected to come down in the coming weeks.

See Magazine, Thurs Sept 17 2009
Byline: Tim Cooper

Albertans, go home.

That's the message about 100 Alberta tradesmen got from furious locals in St. John, N.B., this week, who have been staging angry demonstrations against out-of-province workers.

It's gotten so bad that at least one of the local subcontractors, Calgary's Integral Energy Service, is bringing their employees back home to Alberta today until things cool down.

They arrived in the Maritimes hoping to spend three months building the massive Canaport liquid natural gas operation on the Bay of Fundy, but instead became political footballs tossed between out-of-work locals and the project's contractor, SNC Lavalin.

Edson's Alex Scott, 22, said when the crews arrived at the hotel that was to be their home for the next few months, they were greeted by hundreds of protesters screaming and carrying signs with slogans like "New Brunswick Jobs For New Brunswick Workers!!!" and shouting "Whose streets? Our streets!"

Scott said the crowd was so menacing that the Albertans were afraid for their safety.

"We felt trapped," he said.

"Things are only going to get worse before they get better," Toni Edgett, one of the protesters, said today as he prepared to head out for an evening of xenophobic demonstrations. "We got lotsa manpower."

Edgett, who has a job as a pipefitter, had earlier told the St. John media that "these guys are coming from out West and taking our jobs while our guys are collecting unemployment and sitting on welfare. They're evil. They want to take everything they can get their hands on and they don't care who they hurt in the meantime."

Today, the protesters were slapped with a court injunction forbidding them to come within 500 metres of the Hotel Courtenay Bay, where the Albertans and other out-of-province workers had been staying.
The St. John Police Force's riot squad was reportedly on stand-by.
"It certainly is escalating," said St. John East Liberal MLA Roly MacIntyre, in whose riding are both the hotel and the project.

MacIntyre, the former provincial labour minister, is mystified by the situation because out-of-province workers are nothing new in New Brunswick. Besides, he says, there are far more New Brunswickers working in Alberta than there are Albertans down east.

But what's unique in the Canaport case, he said, is that local tradespeople are being laid off and replaced with out-of-province workers.

"SNC Lavalin is really shaking the tree here," he said. "Legally, there's nothing the provincial government can do right now. There's an underlying issue here, but nobody has said what it is."

The head of the Alberta Federation of Labour thinks he knows what's at the root of the protesters' anger.

Some of the Albertan workers are members of the Christian Labour Association of Canada, which groups like the federation argue isn't a legitimate union.

"If this is a protest against CLAC, it puts an entirely different complexion on the protest," he said. "CLAC is an employer-designed, union-avoiding strategy."

He said CLAC negotiates "sweetheart agreements" with employers so legitimate unions are shut out of their worksites.

CLAC spokesman Alex Pannu said it is legitimate, but he agreed that they're being targeted.

"I don't necessarily believe that these are just a bunch of unorganized workers that coalesced at 5:30 a.m. and had a bunch of signs made up attacking our union, including the very same wording that they've used in other anti-CLAC campaigns."

But, he added, "the issue is the contractor, SNC Lavalin, decided to subcontract. And it so happens that the subcontractor brought some workers in from Alberta. It's unfortunate that some local workers weren't hired, but that's not the issue of the guys in that hotel. They're just there to do a job."

Edmonton Sun, Thurs Sept 17 2009
Byline: Andrew Hanon

EDMONTON - They carry little cocktail umbrellas to symbolize bringing people together under one roof.

And on Sunday a group that advocates co-operating with the other opposition parties to take seats away from the governing Progressive Conservatives in the next election hopes the provincial NDP convention doesn't hail on them.

The convention will vote on a resolution by the Democratic Renewal Project that the party work with the Liberals to run one candidate in winnable ridings and avoid the vote-splitting that helps the Conservatives in every election.

The DRP, which claims more than 300 members, will also try to defeat a resolution that the party run candidates in every riding in the next election.

Even if its resolution fails, as it did last year, the group believes it's the only way to elect an effective opposition and eventually defeat the powerhouse PCs, co-chair Alvin Finkel said.

"We have over 300 members and the momentum is growing. We will continue to go out to groups and conferences and put pressure on parties to change."

This year they have a quarter of the 160 conference delegates committed to their position, and others may swing over when it's time to vote, said Finkel, an Athabasca University history professor.

But party leader Brian Mason said Saturday vote-splitting can be a non-factor if candidates put in hard work over two, sometimes three, campaigns.

"Two or three months of work before an election is not enough. In a hostile political climate hard work, patience and perseverance are the keys," he told delegates in his keynote speech.

He called on the party to start nominating candidates now so they can field a full slate in the next election and end up with more MLAs outside Edmonton.

Alberta Federation of Labour president Gil McGowan said while he understands the DRP's frustration with a government that continues to make decisions against the best interest of Albertans, the party's labour caucus will be voting against the resolution.

Under the group's plan, the parties would agree on a fair division of seats across the province and run single winnable candidates in winnable ridings.

The NDP and the Liberals have the same policies on such key issues as health, a green economy, and education, yet they continue to slag each other and split the left-centre vote, Finkel said.

"We have to start rising above the pettiness because the only realistic hope of voting in an effective opposition, and potentially a progressive government, is to join forces with other moderates."

Last election the Conservatives won 83 per cent of the seats with 53 per cent of the vote, and Finkel said few Edmonton seats would go Tory if there was a united opposition.

The Liberal party is also divided on the issue, with about half the caucus supporting some kind of coalition, he said.

But until the parties work together, Albertans will continue to lose interest in provincial politics and voting in elections, he added.

"Because we are a one-party state, most people turn it all off. We have to give people a reason to pay attention again."

Finkel insisted they are not supporting a merger between the NDP and Liberals, or trying to to create a new party that would split the vote even more.

"It's the difference between a disaster and the merely unpalatable."

Edmonton Journal, Sat Sept 12 2009
Byline: David Finlayson

EDMONTON - The controversial Epcor deal was brought back to court Friday with a coalition of union groups arguing for a judge in the Court of Queen's Bench to review how the deal came together.

"The issue today is not about job and union contracts, the issue is about democracy," Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, said before heading into the courthouse.

McGowan, Terry Jardine from the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 30, and Leo Derkach from the Civic Service Union 52, are bringing the matter to court.

City council in April approved a deal that saw Epcor's power-generating plants carved off into a new company, separate from the city-owned utility. The public officials voted on the deal in a closed meeting on April 17.

Ben Henderson and Amarjeet Sohi were the only city councillors to vote against the deal.

Some councillors have said they were acting as Epcor shareholder representatives, not city councillors, when they made the decision. The city owns Epcor and city council's role is that of sole shareholder, acting on behalf of citizens, they argue.

McGowan said his group is arguing that the way the deal happened contravenes the Municipal Government Act.

"The notion that they can switch their hats and act behind closed doors ... we're challenging their right to do that," McGowan said.

This is at least the second time the Epcor deal has been taken to court. In July, a judge rejected a request for an injunction on the deal by Bill Pidruchney, a former head of the Alberta Securities Commission.

In court, Pidruchney argued taxpayers should be given the opportunity to vote on the sale because they built Epcor over 118 years and benefited from $138 million in dividends last year.

The new company, Capital Power, completed a $500-million IPO (initial public offering) in July and is now the largest publicly traded company based in Edmonton.

Edmonton Journal, Fri Sept 11 2009
Byline: Alexandra Zabjek

A trio of labour groups took EPCOR to court today to challenge the sale of the company's publicly owned power generation assets.

The Alberta Federation of Labour, the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 30, and the Civic Service Union 52 took issue with the city's April 17 decision to spin off EPCOR's power-generating assets and sell them without first consulting Edmonton citizens.

"We believe city council acted illegally when they met behind closed doors to spin off EPCOR's power generating assets," said Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour.

McGowan said the city contravened sections of the Municipal Government Act that requires city council to make decisions in public forums and through motions or bylaws, and restricts council from delegating decision-making powers to whomever they choose.

The union groups are now asking the court to declare the multi-billion-dollar deal void and have it potentially overturned.

McGowan insists the case is not about jobs or union contracts but about protecting the democratic process.

"We obviously have problems with the whole idea of privatization, we don't support it. But the arguments we made in court were not so much about the merits of the decision but rather focused on the process that was followed."

EPCOR spokesman Tim LeRiche declined to comment on the specifics of the case.

"The arguments have been made," LeRiche said. "We'll just have to wait to see what the judge's ruling is."

Edmonton Sun, Fri Sept 11 2009
Byline: Clara Ho

The law courts are the scene of a legal showdown over EPCOR today.

Union groups are trying to convince a Court of Queen's Bench judge that the city had no legal right to privatize EPCOR's power generation assets. Union leaders say it's all about the public interest, not about jobs or union contracts.

"We're paying thousands of dollars in lawyers to fight this kind of thing. They have a whole army of lawyers to fight this kind of thing, of which actually they're using our taxpayers' money to fight us with," says Dave Loken of the Coalition of Edmonton Civic Unions. "The whole things stinks to high heaven."

"Our case is really about democracy," says Alberta Federation of Labour president Gil McGowan (above). "There is a process the city should have followed, and that process is outlined in the Municipal Government Act."

EPCOR is taking a wait-and-see approach.

"EPCOR believes the case is without merit and we will vigorously defend ourselves," says Tim LeRiche with EPCOR. "Beyond that, the proper place for the issue to be discussed is in the courtroom."

Court is hearing arguments from lawyers on all sides today.

iNews880, Fri Sept 11 2009

It'll be a long day at court tomorrow as the City of Edmonton, EPCOR and various labour unions argue whether or not the decision to privatize EPCOR's power generation assets was legal.

The group of labour organizations, which includes the Alberta Federation of Labour and CUPE Local 30, argues that city council breached key provisions of the Municipal Government Act when they decided on the sale behind closed doors last April.

"If they did not have the legal right to make the decision, the decision cannot be considered valid," AFL President Gil McGowan in a release.

Both EPCOR and the City of Edmonton have filed extensive responses to the group's statement of claim, but spokesman Tim Le Riche told Metro EPCOR was ready for its day in court.

"EPCOR believes this claim is without merit and we will vigorously defend ourselves," he said.

The hearing begins at 10 a.m. today.

Metro News, Fri Sept 11 2009
Byline: Carmen Wall

The Alberta Federation of Labour and the city's two largest unions will be in an Edmonton courtroom on Friday.

They'll be arguing that the privatization of EPCOR's power generation should be declared invalid according to the president of the Alberta Federation of Labour.

"Basically what were saying is that those asset's have been owned by the citizens of Edmonton for the last 118 years," says Gill McGowan. "And that under all the legislation governing the way that city council does its business, they had no right under that legislation to make a decision of this magnitude without going back to the people who own the assets, and that's the citizens of Edmonton."

McGowan says they're asking the court to reverse the sale and put the question of privatization back into the hands of citizens.

iNews880, Thurs Sept 10 2009

Sept. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Capital Power Corp.'s purchase of electricity-generating plants from the City of Edmonton, which led to a C$500 million ($463 million) initial share sale in June, is being challenged by Alberta unions.

The Alberta Federation of Labour and the city's two biggest unions plan to ask a provincial judge tomorrow to block the sale of the plants that had been owned by Epcor Utilities Inc., the city-owned utility, the unions said in a statement today.

"We are arguing that city council had no legal authority to make the decision to privatize Epcor's power generation," Gil McGowan, AFL's president, said in the statement. "If they did not have the legal right to make the decision, the decision cannot be considered valid."

Capital Power, in the biggest IPO in Canada in 18 months, sold 21.8 million shares at C$23, and used the money to buy Epcor's power-generating business. The company produces about 3,300 megawatts from 31 plants in Canada and the U.S.

An Alberta judge on July 3 denied the unions' request to delay the closing of the IPO, ruling that he wasn't satisfied that there was any real merit in the unions' application, according to July 7 statement from Capital Power.

Capital Power and Epcor have denied any wrongdoing.

Bloomberg.com, Thurs Sept 10 2009
Byline: Joe Schneider