Carpenters strike over, workers ratify deal

The Carpenters District Council of Ontario, United Brotherhood of Carpenters & Joiners of America announced on Friday that the province-wide strike of carpenters in the industrial, commercial and institutional (ICI) sector in the construction industry is now over.

Ratification votes took place across Ontario and the tentative agreement was successfully passed in the vast majority of each of the 14 local unions involved.

“There was huge turnout from UBC members from one end of the province to the other with over 77 per cent voting in favour of the new agreement,” union leaders said in a release.

The Carpenters Union had been on strike since May 9 in the ICI sector after its members overwhelmingly voted down a prior tentative agreement. 

15,000 carpenters were on picket lines in numerous Ontario communities. 

Approximately 250 skilled tradespeople with United Brotherhood Of Carpenters & Joiners Of America were on strike in the Sault.

About a dozen projects were affected by the strike locally.

“It’s all to do with wages,” a strike captain told SooToday May 9.

The province wide agreement impacts 15,000 members in 14 Locals throughout the province in communities including the Sault, the GTA, Sarnia, Ottawa and Thunder Bay.

Rod Thompson, Senior Rep for Ottawa, said “this agreement recognizes the crisis of affordability in Ontario and ever rising cost of living. The members fought for and achieved a better agreement by withdrawing their labour – now Monday its back to work and back to building Ontario.”

“We expect that the employers will begin work as soon as Monday, May 30 with some specific projects needing time to ramp up to full production which we should see in the next week or so. It’s great to have our 15,000 ICI members back at work building Ontario and driving the economy as we know we can,” the union stated.

The Carpenters’ District Council of Ontario (CDCO) is composed of 17 affiliated Local Unions of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters & Joiners across the province (14 of these locals represent members that are in the ICI sector). In total, the union represents some 25,000 women and men working in a wide range of skilled trades, including carpentry, drywall, resilient flooring, concrete formwork, underwater construction, welding, scaffolding, and a long list of other construction-related work.