August 19, 2008

LOCAL 2486, UNITED BROTHERHOOD OF CARPENTERS AND JOINERS

Sudbury MPP Rick Bartolucci checks out the work being done on the $1.5 million Local 2486 training centre in Sudbury.

Carpenters’ union Local 2486 builds new Sudbury training centre

DAN O’REILLY

correspondent

A strong economy bolstered by high nickel prices, expanding medical and educational facilities and a more diversified manufacturing sector are contributing to strong economic growth in Sudbury. As a result, construction trades in that city and other areas of Northern Ontario are in short supply.

“We expect will need another 200 to 300 carpenters in the next two years,” says Tom Cardinal, senior representative of Local 2486 of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America. The local covers an area stretching from North Bay to Timmins and over to Parry Sound.

While better organizing drives have been a factor, an improved economy driven by high nickel and other mineral prices has contributed to a near doubling of the local’s membership to approximately 800 in the past four-and-half to five years, he says.

But the local’s ability to meet the construction industry’s needs, both on the residential and non-residential sides, has long been hampered by a lack of adequate training facilities. While some courses were offered in rented premises, other courses were only available in southern Ontario and that meant expensive travel .

That’s why the local is building a 8,400-square-foot training centre on a five-acre site in Sudbury. The $1.5-million project is being financed primarily through the local’s membership training fund. It’s also receiving a $488,000-grant from the province’s Northern Ontario Heritage Fund, a special program designed to foster private-sector job creation in the north.

A flexible training schedule based on courses developed by the Carpenters’ District Council of Ontario and the union’s Las Vegas training centre will be offered. Just some of those courses will include formwork, scaffold training, blueprint reading and surveying.

“We will be offering courses at nights, weekends and when there’s a lull in employment.”

Not that Cardinal or other industry leaders expect much of a pause in the Sudbury construction market.

“We’re short of just about every trade — carpenters, drywallers, painters, electricians,” says Dave Arnold, a principal of Dalron Construction, a family-owned firm involved in both residential and non-residential building.

“But it’s not a boom. We have to put this into perspective,” says Arnold, explaining that construction activity is small when compared to what’s happening in larger centres such as Toronto.

Over the past 35 to 40 years, Sudbury has also gone through a lot of up and down economic cycles. “It’s been a wild roller coaster ride.”

With more emphasis on hospital and institutional construction, however, that ride will be a little less wild. “There’s even talk of a school of architecture being built. There’s a lot of confidence here.”

As a result Sudbury is attracting a lot of construction workers from other parts of Ontario such as Windsor, where construction is either slowing or stopped. Many are former residents who want to return home.

Somewhat surprisingly, Arnold says the area isn’t in competition with the Alberta oilsands for trades.

But it does lose workers attracted by the extremely high wages available in the mining industry, which is still the city’s economic bedrock.

Many of those workers, however, return to construction when they realize mining isn’t for them.

“I’ve got a lot of a respect for Sudbury construction workers. They’re a breed apart,” says Arnold, citing conditions which include working outside in subzero temperatures in the winter.

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