OPINION

January 21, 2010

IBEW 213 Job Targeting Funds Disproportionately Allocated

by Philip Hochtein, President, ICBA

Documents introduced in court during a case between Local 213 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (lBEW) and the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association (lCBA) show that four contractors (Canem West, Inlet Electric, Mott Electric, and Canem Systems) received over 40% of the approximately $24 million in job targeting funds distributed by the union between 1992 and 2002.

The IBEW sued ICBA for defamation for comments made about its job targeting program in a 2002 Vancouver Sun news story. The judge ruled in ICBA's favour in a 2007 decision saying “ ... it is unseemly for the plaintiff (lBEW 213) to attempt to squelch discussion through resort to defamation action.”

ICBA had to go back to court when the IBEW objected to ICBA disclosing the documents introduced at trial. Just recently the ICBA won, with the Court of Appeal agreeing that it had the right to share the information about how the job targeting funds were allocated within the group of lBEW-certified contractors.

lCBA has consistently opposed job targeting funds (sometimes called union stab funds) on the basis that it violates the spirit of labour and competition laws in Canada, a position accepted by the Alberta government when it recently passed legislation strictly limiting how these funds are collected and used in that province.

Beyond the principled arguments against job targeting, workers and contractors who participated in the program may well have questions about how so much job targeting monies ended up being allocated to such a small number of contractors. For a complete list of recipients, projects subsidized and subsidy amounts, download this Excel file.