Saskatchewan Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council

The Saskatchewan Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council was created in 1989 as an umbrella organization for unions involved in Saskatchewan's construction industry. Prior to 1989, the construction trades had been represented since the 1940s by two councils, one in the northern and the other in the southern part of the province. The fifteen unions affiliated with the council are responsible for building much of the infrastructure and the places we work and live in; they represent a variety of trades, such as ironworkers, insulators, boilermakers, electricians, painters, millwrights, plumbers, pipefitters, sheet metal workers, plasterers, teamsters, operating engineers, and general construction workers. The affiliates are totally autonomous and negotiate their own collective agreements. The Building Trade Council represents all workers in the building, construction, fabrication, and maintenance industry, in order to foster safer working conditions and to improve the quality of life for those workers and their families.

The Building Trades Council assists in the selection process for labour representatives to many industry and government boards and commissions. They provide a forum for the unions in Saskatchewan's construction industry to develop a common front on issues affecting this sector, such as industry legislation, occupational health and safety, and trades apprenticeship. The council is affiliated nationally with the Canadian Building and Construction Trades Department in Ottawa, and internationally with the Building and Construction Trades Department, American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) in Washington, DC.

George Rosenau