The various labor groups and employers in Alberta may not see eye-to-eye on how to provide crews to job sites, but they agree that worker mobility is crucial.

Last May, the nation’s premiers and territorial leaders reached an agreement to try to harmonize skills standards by 2009 as a requirement for smooth, automatic transfers of qualifications between provinces. The governments do not have to look far for a model, traditional crafts unions say.

Ron Harry, executive director of the Alberta Building Trades Council, says labor mobility is a reality for participants in a federal certification program called Red Seal. “That’s been around for a long, long time. That’s what’s used for mobility for qualifications from one provincial jurisdiction to the next. We don’t have any mobility issues from a qualifications perspective.

If you get your Red Seal, you can work in any province in Canada.”

The key to ensuring the right skills go to the right place is devising ways of ensuring workers can afford to be mobile. The trades council has been after the federal government for more than six years to create tax incentives for workers to move around Canada to jobs that last long enough to involve changes of residence.

“If you want to get value out of mobility, give people the tax incentives to be mobile in the country they live in.”

Stephen Kushner, president of the Merit Contractors Association, says his organization is “in favor of anything that can make our labor market more efficient. If a person is qualified in another province, we think he should be able to work here. And, similarly, if times change in Alberta, and workers here need to move to other provinces, we think they should have the opportunity to work elsewhere without having to go through this extensive qualification process, pay more fees and so forth.”

Paul de Jong, Alberta and north director of the Christian Labour Association of Canada (CLAC) says there’s nothing wrong with the basic concept of labor mobility, provided it doesn’t disrupt local skills markets.

“Let’s make sure qualified Canadians have the ability to work on sites here and elsewhere – but I don’t suggest it’s easy to do,” he says.

Pages: 1 2 3 4