Divers had air supply cut off by strikers, hearings told
By Doug Elsey - Executive Director CADC ~ November 18th, 2011. Filed under: Latest Diving News.
MONTREAL — Quebec’s labour minister said it’s “unimaginable” that wildcat strikers would cut off the air supply to two construction divers on a worksite north of Montreal on Monday.
The divers in Trois-Rivieres, Que., about 140 km north of Montreal, were shaken but unharmed when a roving group of union delegates forcibly shut down the waterfront worksite.
The revelations were made Thursday in Quebec City during legislative hearings for proposed union reform legislation, called Bill-33.
Patrick Daigneault, president of the construction union representing the divers, told Labour Minister Lise Theriault that delegates from a larger union demanded the waterfront site be shut down the moment they arrived on Monday.
When workers refused, one of the delegates shut down a generator, which supplied electricity to radios, lights, and an air compressor that fed air to the underwater divers.
The two divers used their emergency air supplies to resurface safely. Eric St-Onge, a member of the diving team who was on shore when the generator was shut off, told QMI Agency union reps threatened him.
“I told them that there could have been an incident, or something serious, like a death,” he said. “They told me that I could also be involved in an accident.”
The company running the worksite, Maskimo Construction, has not pressed charges.
Calls to Maskimo on Friday were not returned.
Quebec’s two biggest construction unions called for wildcat strikers to return to work Wednesday after three tense days that included sabotage, vandalism and threats.
The two unions, the Quebec Federation of Labour (QFL) and the CPQMC union, represent 70% of construction workers in the province.
They are fighting Bill-33, which strips them of their power to decide which and how many workers are assigned to construction sites.
The government argues the two larger unions use this right to intimidate workers who are part of smaller unions by banning them from certain construction sites.
The smaller unions, which collectively represent 30% of Quebec construction workers, favour the bill. Meanwhile, the QFL said Monday’s situation was a misunderstanding.
“The version of the incident that I heard, is that one of the workers, in a moment of confusion, stopped the generator,” a spokesperson for the QFL said.
“If they shut down the generator on purpose, then that is unacceptable.”
