Worker Movement as a Union Issue: An Examination of Collective Bargaining Agreements in the Construction Sector in Alberta, Canada

Abstract

The fluctuating expansion of oil sands development in northern Alberta, Canada has led to employers hiring a large number of mobile workers. The working conditions for some of these mobile workers are modulated in part by unions through their role in negotiating collective bargaining agreements. Using a social reproductive framework, this study has two main findings: through collective agreements mobile workers are treated as a distinct category of worker, and there is a simultaneous expansion of workplace rules and regulations alongside a divide of the workplace from the home. The resulting expansion of the union regulated space in contrast to the divide of workplace from the home challenges union revitalization efforts, while also reaffirming traditional gendered experiences of mobility.

Managing liminal time in the fly-in fly-out work camp

“…In the case of the Athabasca Oil Sands, the temporal work required is shaped by the complexities of the spatio-temporal distances and disruptions of the FIFO regime as highlighted herein, but is also intensified by contractual and regulatory arrangements ( Cake, 2016 ; Siqueira Cassiano, 2019 ). Many FIFO workers are subcontracted within the oil sands industry, and all are embedded in an extensive set of institutionally dispersed labor practices and regulations.…”

“…The outsourcing and marketization of the social reproduction of FIFO workers through the mechanism of camp is core to sustaining the FIFO regime and thus to lowering costs and managing efficiencies for resource industries ( Dorow and Mandizadza, 2018 ; Peck, 2013 ; Rainnie et al, 2014 ). Its importance to the latter’s ‘shifting profitability frontier’ ( Hendriks, 2015 : 155) is evident in the contractual, regulatory, and securitized links between camp stays and industry employment ( Cake, 2016 ; Siqueira Cassiano, 2019 ) and in the direct operation of camps by some resource companies. For the most part, however, camp is a temporary entity that is not formally the workplace, and camp time is not formally paid work time.…”