I need a little help with a serious issue that is directly affecting my workplace.
(By the way mods...I checked the rules to see if using actual names of people was against those rules and I did'nt find anything.It is'nt my intention to break any right now,so if I do it's unintentional,so feel free to edit anything that could get the site in trouble...Thanks in advance)
A little background....
I am precisely what my handle says I am.I am a certified welder who is currently laid off from my job.I've been laid off for almost 6 months and I know how tough it is out there for tradespeople.My intention is to get my Red Seal endorsement which will allow me to be a Journeyman in my field and I can work interprovincially.The Red Seal stuff is'nt the problem.
It's my employer...It's a pressure vessel/boiler manufacturer in south-western Ontario. It was the old [name deleted] plant and when they got out of the boiler fabrication business,it was bought by some former employees.That was in 1995. One of the guys who bought the place was ready to retire and sold the business to two businessmen in the summer of 2008.Those 2 people are Mr F and Mr O. Right from the beginning, although saying they wanted to work with Union XX Local xx. In fact, our contract was up within approximately 1 month of the business changing hands,so negotiations had to start immediately after...And we did OK..We did get a sizeable wage increase and nothing else got touched other than some minor language issues.There were some warning signs however... Mr.O is more involved than Mr.F,wanted to start some monthly fund that he would pay into(250 to 300 bucks a month...I think) if no grievances were filed.He felt he wanted any issues handled "in house".Most of us saw what that was about,that being a way for him to circumvent the union and keep it out of the loop as to what was going on.
There were some minor things until April of '09,but nothing terribly serious.Right about the time the first waves of lay-offs happened,which was April of last year,there was a meeting with all of the Lead Hands.After about an hour preamble about safety and stuff...Mr O just blurts out..."Uh..I'm just runnin' this by you guys...What if we just went with no union?".This is,of course,illegal!.Now,when we told the union rep about this she was pretty pissed off. They requested a meeting with O and F over the matter.I was'nt at the meeting,however,it was made very plain that they were looking for a fight.I was told they demanded the union be decertified immediately(which was impossible if these two nimrods had even a rudimentary knowledge of labour law in the province).The counter response was basically it can't be done the way they wanted,and in fact,it was illegal for them to even bring up the subject.And that normally the Union would simply charge the employer under the Labour Ralations Act and take the case to the OLRB....And the charges start at about 100,000 large for union busting and go up from there!The Local did them a favour by only briging that fact to there attention and not following through.
I could go into many other things that went on last summer that we have grievances pending on,however,for the sakeof brevity I'll leave it for now...
This leads me to the problem and the question..In my travels of continuing to go to union meetings and handing out MANY resumes,I have heared some disturbing anecdotal stuff that,if true,would be grounds for a serious OLRB case against both Mr.F and Mr.O.In the last 2 months the very hot rumour is that [name of employer deleted] turned down sub-contracted work from another boiler manufacturer.And from some lower management of that company,that [name of employer deleted] is bidding on jobs at 3 to 5 times higher than they ever have before out of the blue!.The would jive with the owners union busting ethos,and seeing as they got their wrists slapped for their clumsy efforts a year ago,this would be a pretty good end run around the law...
My questions are these...
1.Is there any way a layperson could get involved in viewing the bidding process for boilers and pressure vessels?If so,is it possible to get that information from ...say...The last 4 to 5 years?
2.Is it against the law to basically collude to run your buisiness into the ground in an attempt to get rid of a union?
Thanks for taking the time to read this...