every construction site in the province of Québec are on Hold!
Construction site walkouts continue for second day in Montreal area
BY JAN RAVENSBERGEN, THE GAZETTE OCTOBER 25, 2011 10:23 AM
Cheered on by the crowd, a worker raises his fists as he and a line of cars exit the McGill University Health Centre construction site in west-end Montreal on Tuesday.
Photograph by: Phil Carpenter, THE GAZETTE
MONTREAL – A wave of full-scale walkouts from construction sites repeated itself Tuesday morning on Montreal Island and elsewhere in Quebec, extending job actions that began Monday.
An exodus shortly after 8 a.m. Tuesday of construction crews from the McGill University Health Centre building site – accompanied by whoops, high-fives and cheering – marked the second consecutive day of construction disruption at the west-end hospital project.
Some workers had clocked in at the site earlier, before the wildcat walkout.
However, fewer tradespeople than usual had reported for their shift starts Tuesday, according to Charles Chebl, a vice-president of SNC-Lavalin. He is manager of the project, the largest under way in the province.
Amid reports of widely dispersed walkouts, Gisèle Bélanger, a spokesperson for the Association de la construction du Québec, an employer group, said a count of job sites shut down Tuesday was still being compiled.
Asked at 10 a.m. for at least a running total, she responded: "I don't know yet."
Michel Arsenault, president of the Quebec Federation of Labour, whose member unions represent most of the province's construction workers, told a TV interviewer Tuesday morning: “I hope the work resumes normally in the Quebec construction sector.”
However, asked specifically whether he would instruct those who have been walking out to return to regular work, Arsenault responded:
“I can’t take each of the construction workers across 60 cities by the hand and lead them back in.”
Arsenault has repeatedly been characterizing the wave of walkouts as “spontaneous.”
He said workers as well as the QFL are angered by the provisions of Bill 33.
The proposed provincial law is the focus of Quebec National Assembly committee hearings this week.
It would remove control of construction-sector hiring from union hands and place it into those of the Quebec Construction Commission, a government body.
Arsenault is expected to appear at those hearings Wednesday.
The QFL is Quebec’s largest union federation.
It would be exposed to potential fines of $70,000 a day, per job site, if it could be proven that the QFL was behind the walkouts.
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