The Canadian Construction Workers Union is not a trade union, the Ontario Labour Relations Board has ruled in a recent decision.
Labour Organization
The Canadian Construction Workers Union is not a trade union, the Ontario Labour Relations Board has ruled in a recent decision.
The Board states that in the CCWU’s recent application for trade-union status “the CCWU was unable to demonstrate that it was a trade union.”
In a decision last year, the Board found the CCWU was a trade union but Labourers’ International Union of North America Local 183 did not have intervenor status at that time, notes the Board.
The CCWU’s three voluntary recognition agreements and its applications to displace LIUNA Local 183, as the bargaining agent at some Toronto-area construction companies, were thrown out by the Board. Two of the CCWU’s voluntary recognition agreements were from one-person companies of which neither was a construction employer.
“Since such [trade union] status is necessary to bring an application for certification in the construction industry, such as these applications, the applications are dismissed,” the Board states.
The Board also concludes that if the CCWU attempts to prove it does have trade union status under another application it will be prepared to hear that argument at that time.
The Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) union made a $5 million loan over four years last summer to the CCWU. This loan was in addition to a $1 million loan the CAW made to the CCWU in February, 2007, to help it get off the ground during the 90-day open season.
CAW reportedly is sympathetic to the CCWU’s cause because it broke away from a U.S.-based union, just as CAW separated from the United Auto Workers.
Local 183 is now calling on CAW to break off its association with CCWU in light of the recent Board decision. Local 183 says the CCWU-CAW partnership is an effort to create “a front organization that would give the Autoworkers a backdoor entry” into the construction industry.
“Stop wasting millions of dollars of CAW members’ dues on an ill-advised and completely discredited effort to divide and weaken the Canadian labour movement,” says Durval Terceira, Local 183’s new business manager. The CCWU was established in November 2006 by Tony Dionisio, Local 183’s former business manager. Dionisio is the CCWU’s president and some of its founding members are former Local 183 executive who were also ousted from the union for “administrative irregularities and incompetent representation” Local 183 says.
A call to Dionisio was referred to CCWU’s legal counsel who could not be reached for comment as of press deadline.
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