{"id":178,"date":"2013-07-13T08:34:55","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T08:34:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/niagaraconstructionnews.com\/?p=178"},"modified":"2013-07-13T08:37:13","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T08:37:13","slug":"employers-win-lower-journeymenapprentice-ratios-in-early-ontario-college-of-trades-decisions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/niagaraconstructionnews.com\/?p=178","title":{"rendered":"Employers win lower journeymen\/apprentice ratios in early Ontario College of Trades decisions"},"content":{"rendered":"

OCOT supports interests of individuals and groups who wish the organization to be abolished, including Merit Ontario’s Phil Besseling<\/b><\/p>\n

Niagara Construction News staff writer<\/p>\n

The Ontario College of Trades (OCOT), in its first rulings implementing apprenticeship ratio reviews, has supported the interests of organizations and employers who have strongly opposed the organization’s establishment.<\/p>\n

The apprenticeship ratio review panels have reduced ratios in eight of the trade groups evaluated so far, and increased them in only one. In presentations and submissions to the review panels, employer groups favoured a ratio reduction, while unions called for increases or maintaining the status-quo, in many cases three journeymen for each apprentice.<\/p>\n

See details on individual trades’ ratio reviews here.<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Reduced ratios mean that employers can hire more lower-cost apprentices in relation to the number of journeypersons on the job. Employer groups including Merit Ontario and the Ontario Coalition of Construction Employers generally believe a one-to-one journeyman to apprentice ratio is sufficient.<\/p>\n

The OCOT has polarized the province’s construction industry. The Ottawa Construction Association decided last year not to continue its membership in the Council of Ontario Construction Associations (COCA) because the provincial organization has taken a neutral stand on the OCOT.<\/p>\n

The Ontario ratios have not been reviewed for most trades for many years, in some cases upwards of three decades or more. The OCOT has been mandated to conduct the ratio reviews once every four years.<\/p>\n

Among the surprising decisions, one review panel rejected a \u201cpreliminary motion as to bias\u201d to have former Merit Ontario chair Phil Besseling removed from the panel evaluating the sheet metal trade.<\/p>\n

The panel rejected a motion from representatives of the Ontario Sheet Metal Workers and Roofers’ Conference for Besseling to be recused. After deliberations, the panel then reduced the ratios for both sheet metal workers and roofers.<\/p>\n

Besseling, who receives $400 per day in compensation for his work as an adjudicator on four review panels, says he still wishes the OCOT would be closed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ratio reviews could have been done by the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities,\u201d Besseling said. \u201cThere was no need to set up a separate entity, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ministry . . . was doing a fine job and wasn’t broken,\u201d Besseling said. \u201cWhy did we set up this multi-million dollar entity to be the arbitrar of everything?\u201d<\/p>\n

Besseling, president of Besseling Mechanical in Hamilton, has been one of the leading proponents of the open shop movement \u2013 no friend of organized labour or the OCOT.<\/p>\n

The sheet metal workers, in their presentations to the ratio review panel asking for Besseling to be recused, asserted:<\/p>\n