“You’re a total idiot if you think unions have been helped by government.”

The following post came from Adam Smith, a master journeyman electrician in Calgary.  (We are not sure if that is his real name, or if he was making a play on the name of the famous “Wealth Of Nations” economist!) Adam was responding to an earlier post that said governments are biased towards unions in their apprenticeship ratios and other policies.

In Northern Alberta, non-union firms have about 80 per cent of all the work. At Fort Hills the ratio is about 95 per cent non-union with only about 5 per cent of the work going union.

Next year, expect the industrial wage to drop from $47 to around $32 a hour. You can thank non-union companies and the CLAC for that. And no, there won’t be any extra work, just lower wages.

The government is, in fact, very anti-union and has been working very hard (with big business lobbying) to bust unions. You’re a total idiot if you think the unions have been helped by the government. Get your facts straight before you blame unions for locking you out of a job.

Flooding the trades with an over abundance of labor and driving down wages is only good for big business. For the trades person it is a good reason to leave the trades all together. Others won’t have a choice.

As a Master Journeyman Electrician I have found that, in general,  contractors are not looking for experienced journeymen: they want to hire the cheapest labor that they can legally hire. They only employ the minimum amount of journeymen that they are required to do so by the apprentice ratio laws.

The problem is that there is many more journeymen who now can’t find jobs because the contractors find journeymen way too expensive and would prefer to hire cheap apprentices (or cheaper offshore foreign workers). So big business lobbies the government and complains they need more apprentices and can’t hire them because of the ratios.

But the one thing that they won’t tell government is that there are plenty of unemployed journeymen electricians available that they can hire but don’t because they are too expensive.

I have been out of work for over a year now, unable to find a job as an electrician in Calgary and I do not have much hope in the future. There are no jobs available around Calgary for journeymen, but they are still hiring apprentices.

There is no shortage of trades people, just a shortage of cheap disposable workers.

Talk to a trades person if you want to know the real story, not some rich business tycoon whose is promoting what is best for himself and his stock owners.