Dave Sullivan
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Sept 05/01) - It could be that the best way to start a union in the North is to tell your workers it's not really a union.

The head of the BHP Employee's Association admits it had been successful in getting people to sign up by using the sales pitch: it's not a union.

But it is. During questioning at an unfair labour hearing last Wednesday in Yellowknife before the Canadian Industrial Relations Board, association president Gerald Oliver said he unwittingly told that to workers, because he didn't know the law looks upon employee associations as unions.

"That was before we got legal counsel. I don't know labour law," Oliver admitted.

The three-member federal labour panel, chaired by Julie Durette, convened the hearing after a complaint against BHP Billiton from Gerry Balmer, a BHP boiler operator employee He complains the association has close ties to BHP management.

Balmer is a supporter of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) and would like to see them represent BHP Billiton workers. The United Steelworkers of America has also tried to organize the miners.

The Canadian Labour Congress, the major umbrella lobby for the country's labour movement, doesn't think employee associations are independent enough from the employer and they fail to offer workers proper support including the lack of a strike fund.

Without this arms-length relationship, employee associations have little real clout in bargaining talks because members are more reluctant to strike -- the ultimate trump card unions hold -- Northwest Territories Federation of Labour Vice-President Steve Petersen said outside the tribunal.

Oliver said he realized later the association needs to be certified as a union to get BHP's attention.

"BHP denied us voluntary recognition," he said.

A BHP lawyer spent the hearing's second and final day repeating that the company was dead set against an employee association forming, as much as it would have been against any union. It's evidence contains binders full of letters in which the company continually rejects association overtures. Last November, BHP finally agreed to deduct $20 monthly dues from paycheques on behalf of the association, after it was shown to have the support of 247 workers at BHP's Ekati mine site.

The move allowed BHP to find out who was a member, a fact used as evidence by Balmer's lawyer Chris Buchanan.

"We don't need to prove the company directed association activities. All we need to find is a mutual goal," Buchanan said.

Companies are required to deduct union dues but the association had not been certified at the time. A certification vote took place this May but ballots remain sealed and uncounted, pending the hearing's outcome. BHP still deducts the association's dues.

Durette would said she could not speculate when a ruling by the panel would be made.