August 23, 2012

Letter to the Editor

Ontario Construction Finishing Industries Alliance takes issue with Merit Ontario

To the Editor:
Merit Ontario purports to represent a majority of Ontarians who earn a living in the construction industry. In fact they claim that “OpenShop” accounts for anywhere between 73 to 74 per cent of construction employers provincially.

Let’s examine the validity of that claim. What exactly is “OpenShop”? It’s Merit’s term for non-union. They’ve adopted the term as part of their name because it implies that they represent a much larger proportion of the construction industry than they actually do. Approximately 850,000 Canadians earn a living from construction and there are a quarter of a million contractors. Beyond the veneer of the 73 per cent statistic, Merit says they have 300 member contractors in Ontario. Most construction companies are small — 90 per cent employ fewer than five people in residential and 70 per cent employ five or fewer in non-residential construction. What this all means is that Merit actually represents far less than one per cent of construction workers.

In the Aug. 14 issue of the Daily Commercial News (DCN), David Salter, Press Secretary for Ontario’s Infrastructure Minister, Bob Chiarelli, wrote a letter to the editor, Ontario government ‘evaluating options’ for Toronto light rail procurement, to correct false statements by Merit Ontario’s President and CEO.

“Merit Ontario’s suggestion that their organization has engaged in lobbying efforts with Minister of Infrastructure and Transportation Bob Chiarelli is false and misleading. The Minister has never met with either Mr. Frank Viti or his organization,” Salter said.

(Editor’s note, Viti had said he lobbied non-political staff at Metrolinx. His subsequent comment that Infrastructure Ontario and Minister Chiarelli had “affirmed their position that best bid must rule” is what Salter addressed.)

In an article in the Aug. 7 issue of DCN, Toronto light rail construction open to all: Metrolinx, Viti refers to a paper called The Union Safety Effect — Myth or Fact, to suggest that non-unionized construction work environments tend to have better safety records than unionized job sites.

Never mind that the researchers quoted are from the United States or Germany, conducted their studies in the 1970s, or claim that insufficient data exists for Canada — but hey, let’s not let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Two glaring examples of non-union oversight leap to mind: Hoggs Hollow, and more recently the swing-stage collapse on Dec. 24, 2009, both accounted for a total of nine deaths.

Unionized contractors invest millions of dollars each year into apprenticeship and health and safety training. This investment is recognized and accredited by the Ministry of Training, Colleges, and Universities to the point where the ministry also contributes some funding. Non-union contractors do not make similar investments and in some cases poach from the unionized sector to meet their own workforce needs.

Without the unionized sector, there would be no apprenticeship training in the construction industry as things currently exist. And, most often, it is non-unionized construction companies which operate in the underground economy by improperly styling their employees as “independent operators”.

Merit is also spearheading a self-serving campaign of misinformation designed to dismantle the new Ontario College of Trades. They say the College will create an extra level of bureaucracy that will make it harder for construction contractors to compete. In fact, the industry will be able to regulate itself.

They say membership fees will amount to an $84 million tax grab. These are membership fees which apply only to members, not taxpayers, much the same as they do for every other regulatory college. The public record shows the 2013 budget to be $20 million.

Merit should ensure that all members that they represent are playing by the same rules as everybody else and they shouldn’t have to resort to exaggeration and misleading the public to make their point.

Jeff Koller
Industry Compliance Officer
Ontario Construction Finishing Industries Alliance

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