Leveraging Government Construction Purchasing to Expand Training and Apprenticeship, Overcome Skills Shortages, and Promote a More Diverse Workforce

British Columbia has experienced a continuing shortage of skilled construction workers. Over half its apprentices fail to complete their vocational education and training (VOC) programs and an alarming number of workers leave the industry due to the precarious nature of the work and a toxic worksite culture, a problem of particular significance for Indigenous workers, women and racialized minorities. This article examines a unique experiment in reorganizing construction training and employment initiated in 2018 under a newly elected government. Its purpose was to address key factors that impeded the industry’s ability to achieve the government’s ambitious construction agenda by providing more extensive employer support for training and apprenticeship, recruiting a more diversified workforce and improving the workplace culture on construction sites. To advance this agenda, the government created a public corporation, British Columbia Infrastructure Benefits (BCIB), to train and employ the trades’ workforce on selected major infrastructure projects. To achieve the support of labour, it negotiated a community benefits agreement (CBA) with a council of 19 building trades unions covering its entire workforce. To enable BCIB to function as the employer on all its projects, the government made it a condition of its procurement contracts that successful bidders use BCIB’s employees and comply with the CBA’s terms, which prioritized local hire, apprenticeships and equity employment. To track its training and employment performance, BCIB established a comprehensive payroll-based database unique in the industry. This has enabled it to identify - and address - impediments to workforce renewal. To improve the worksite culture and deal with racism, sexism and homophobia, it created a mandatory two-day Respectful Onsite Initiative (ROI) orientation program which all its workers must take before starting their jobs. While the creation of a public employer has been controversial, BCIB’s workers have now logged over 500,000 hours, making it the second largest provincial construction employer. It has also documented significant progress in implementing its training and apprenticeship programs, achieving outcomes considerably better than the rest of the industry.