ORGANIZED LABOUR • BEST PRACTICES
Industrial maintenance may not seem significant to the average person but the sector employs thousands of construction workers and contributes billion of dollars a year to our economy.
Union agreements for maintenance are negotiated and administered by the General Presidents’ Maintenance Committee (GPMC). By working with the committee employers can engage workers from as many as 14 different unions under a single agreement with a streamlined grievance process and no work stoppages. The agreements can also be customized to suit individual projects or clients.
To help union members, contractors and project owners better understand how the agreements work, GPMC engaged me to write a series of case studies that describe maintenance operations in a range of industries across Canada, including:
- Potash production in Saskatchewan
- Electrical generation in New Brunswick
- Offshore oil production in Nova Scotia
- Heavy oil upgrading in Alberta
- Petroleum refining in New Brunswick
PUBLIC SECTOR • INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
When the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) approached the Federation of Canadian Municipalities for a case study about Municipal/First Nation cooperation that it could distribute internationally, the FCM called on Walker Communications.
The study explores the relationship between Fredericton, NB and St. Mary’s First Nation, which lies inside the city’s boundaries and shares its infrastructure and police and fire services.
The story is straightforward but, because it was for international readers, we needed to seamlessly include basic information about the Maliseet culture, French and British colonial history, First Nations’ relationship to the Crown, and the constitutional responsibilities of federal, provincial and municipal governments. Just a little story about sharing in Canada…
St_Marys_Case.pdf