Photo: WorkBC
Construction-industry leaders in the Okanagan have sounded the alarm about how a shortage of tradespeople in the valley is driving up the cost of building and forcing many to wait or pay big to find contractors.
Organizations like the Southern Interior Construction Association pin the shortage on factors like retiring baby boomers and fewer young people entering the trades, but local workers say the reason is far simpler: money.
“It’s not that we don’t have the skilled people in the Okanagan, the problem is the wages,” says electrician Marnitz Kritzinger. “It’s been a problem for quite a number of years.”
Can’t compete with Alberta
Kritzinger, who immigrated to Kelowna from South America about a decade ago, says he experienced the wage gap first-hand after he left his Kelowna job for one in northern Alberta.
He explains that he had been with a Kelowna company for years when work started to dry up. As his debts began to mount he was eventually forced to look for work elsewhere—and was shocked by what he found.
In Kelowna, Kritzinger says he made approximately $55,000 a year—but once he moved to a similar job in northern Alberta his salary more than doubled and he was pulling in more than $120,000 a year.
Thomas Stitt, who calls himself a “jack of three trades, master of two,” says Okanagan contractors pay 25-30 per cent less than many of their oil-industry counterparts in Alberta, and that disparity keeps local young people from considering careers in the trades.
“Why would kids want to work in one of the most dangerous industries when they could focus on some paper-shuffling job that pays fairly, comparable to Okanagan construction trade wages?” he asks.
Wages ‘probably do’ need to go up
Phil Long is a manager with Kelowna construction company Maple Reinders. He says trades wages in the Okanagan “probably do” need to go up, but that he believes that will happen soon.
He says lower wages here are “an indication that people are busy, so if they’re going to take on more work they’re going to darn well make a good profit, rather than paying their guys more money.”
He says a big part of the reason wages appear to be lower in the Okanagan is the way contracts are bid on here, which incentivizes contractors to take jobs for as little money as possible.
Image: Contributed
A better system would help fix the wage issue somewhat, he says, but he also admitted some employers are using the so-called “sunshine tax” as an excuse to pay their employees less.
But while wages may be on the low side now, Long says the market will correct itself as contractors compete for the limited pool of local labourers.
“Eventually, the guy across the street gives you two dollars more for his job, then you go across the street and work for him, and I think that’s Phase 2 that we will rapidly get into,” he says.
What does the data say?
Data from Statistics Canada do show a gap in wages between workers in the Okanagan and Alberta, but also indicate Okanagan workers are paid in line with the national average.
A StatsCan survey mapping average wages across different geographical regions shows that, during the last quarter of 2017, tradespeople’s salaries in the Thompson-Okanagan were identical to the national average.
However, Okanagan trades workers’ salaries were significantly lower than their peers in Alberta.
In the Thompson-Okanagan, workers across all trades made an average of $21.25 an hour, which is exactly the same as the national average. Tradespeople in Alberta, meanwhile, made an average of $25.10 an hour.
The gap narrows when talking specifically about construction workers, and the StatsCan data shows Okanagan workers actually come in significantly above the national average.
In Alberta, Carpenters make an average of $25.65 an hour, while their Thompson-Okanagan counterparts earn $24.05 an hour (the national average is $22.85).
‘Some guys go completely nuts’
Kritzinger and his wife (who had to give up her teaching job when they immigrated) still live in Kelowna, and he says he would work in Kelowna in a heartbeat, but he still can’t find a job that will pay him the salary he needs to support his family.
He says flying in and out of job sites every few weeks strains any marriage, and he (along with many of his peers who also live in Kelowna and fly into Alberta for work) would love to stop.
“Some of the guys go completely nuts when they’re up there,” he says.
“If I want to come back, and this is the sad part of it, I just can’t. You can’t afford to make a living here, it’s just too expensive,” he says.
Long admits that salaries in northern Alberta are pretty good (“they’re paying stupid money up there”) and that local companies could never match that because their labour costs would price them out of all the jobs.
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