A dynamic year in British Columbia’s construction industry Skilled workforce shortage still the No. 1 issue By Chris Atchison, president of the British Columbia Construction Association (BCCA)
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t’s been another busy year for British Columbia’s industrial, commercial and institutional construction sector. The opportunities have come thick and fast, as have the challenges: all largely due to a complex political and economic environment shaped by local and international forces. Emerging issues are plentiful — steel and aluminum tariffs, small business taxes, Community Benefits Agreements, deteriorating public procurement practices and lack of prompt payment legislation in B.C., to name a few — but according to employers, the No. 1 issue is still the over-arching shortage of skilled workers. In BCCA’s 2018 industry survey, 68 per cent of employers — regardless of labour affiliation — say finding skilled workers is their biggest challenge. In addition to the hunt for tradespeople, they can’t find enough trained and experienced managers to replace the old guard that’s retiring. Interestingly, in the same survey, many of B.C.’s skilled tradespeople identified an “old-school mentality” as a problem they experience, with this theme running through their concerns about diversity and the adoption of technology. B.C.’s projected skilled trades gap shrunk about 50 per cent in the last five years to a projected shortage of 11,700 workers, according to a September 44 Vancouver Island Construction Association 2019
2018 report from BuildForce Canada, but there are persistent cultural and economic challenges that threaten to make the problem increasingly difficult to solve: • The male-dominated construction industry has a long way to go. At only 4.7 per cent women, it will take a concerted effort before construction employers can consistently and successfully attract and retain tradeswomen. While 90 per cent of the 700-plus BCCA survey respondents think more diversity is a good idea, 21 per cent of male respondents said industry should not do anything more to support women. • Construction trades are still not a preferred choice for most youth, who are often discouraged by parents under the influence of post-war stereotypes. Too many of our youth head off to university for a degree without a sensible career plan, and the post-secondary education industry is often not as innovative or flexible as today’s job market demands. • Government and the media continue to misrepresent statistics about the rate of opioid deaths in construction: while even one death is too many, exaggerating the numbers puts an unfair stigma on construction. • B.C. is reporting the lowest unemployment rate in a generation — all industries are competing hard for B.C.’s best and brightest talent,
making it even tougher to tempt the stars away from industries like technology. • Youths aged 17 to 24 are 51 per cent less likely to be unionized now than they were a generation ago. Today’s construction industry is barely 15 per cent unionized, but B.C.’s new Community Benefits Agreement mandates union participation for all workers on designated public projects: this conscription message risks our ability to attract and retain younger workers. • Many apprenticeship level courses are full, with potential participants waiting up to a year for a spot or relocating to another area of the province to find one. This makes it harder to complete training, which slows the entry of new journeypersons to train the next generation. BCCA’s strategy has long been to provide meaningful recruitment and retention programs and services for employers and apprentices, while shining a bright spotlight on the value of our industry and the modern career opportunities it affords. We are the only provincial organization representing employers of all labour affiliations, and we take that role seriously. Initiatives like Construction Month, which BCCA debuted in April 2018 and is bringing back even bigger and better in 2019, help to showcase the
