Although this blog is predominantly focused on my music
and DJ’ing career, I also want to share some information about my other
career: Canadian Reforestation.
The information in this post is part of a training series
from the Replant.ca website. More
information can be found at this link:
I’ll put the text and audio download link from this
training module below, but let’s start with the YouTube video for the module:
Section 05 - “Rules &
Regulations”
In this section, we'll
talk about Rules and Regulations that may be imposed by various levels of
government, by mills and organizations that pay to have trees planted, and by
the planting contractors themselves.
You'll notice that I often
refer to the term “contractor” when I talk about planting companies. That word doesn’t often refer to a single
person. Most of the time, it refers to
an entire tree planting company. That’s
because planting companies don’t plant trees for their own purposes, or on
their own lands. Companies are offered a
contract to do work planting trees for another organization, hence the term
planting contractor.
Within the overall scope
of Rules and Regulations, there are many layers that can affect a contractor or
an individual planter. First, there is
government. There are federal acts
within Canada, and provincial acts within the province of British Columbia,
both of which apply to companies performing work in BC. In rare instances, there may be other
governance regulations that need to be followed, such as municipal regulations
when planting within a municipality, or First Nations regulations when planting
for a First Nation. Many rules are
compliance obligations that apply due to legislative law that has been passed
by a government. If you break any laws,
either you or the company that you work for could be subject to discipline
through either the police and/or the court systems.
Next, there are rules that
may be imposed by the entity that is paying to have the trees planted. We’ll call this entity the Client of the
planting company. A Client could be a
small, family-owned and private lumber mill, a publicly traded corporation such
as Canfor or West Fraser, or a government branch such as British Columbia
Timber Sales, which is often just called BCTS.
These Clients also have to follow all legislative laws, but they can
also impose their own additional sets of rules and regulations that are defined
when a planting company signs a contract to work for them. Examples of these rules include things like:
- Deadlines for getting
work completed.
- Planting quality
standards and how they impact payment.
- Density requirements,
and how payment is impacted when requirements are not met.
- Stock-handling
requirements.
A contract offered to a
planting company can be several pages long, with a few dozen clauses, or it can
be hundreds of pages long, with thousands of stipulations. The complexity depends on the organization
offering the work to the planting contractor.
British Columbia has a government website called BC Bid where the public
can search for examples of contracts for various past and current projects.
It's important to
understand that agents of the provincial government (and other entities) can
have multiple sets of rules happening at the same time. For example, if a planting company is working
for BCTS, the BCTS staff will ensure that the contractor is following both the
legislative laws, such as WorkSafe regulations, and the separate group of
project-specific clauses that come into effect through contract law.
Next, a planting company
will also have its own set of rules and regulations that apply to all employees. These rules are embedded in the employment
contract that all employees sign when they start working for a company. These are the rules that govern employee
conduct on the worksite. Some examples
of rules created by contractors might include items such as “employees are not
allowed to bring firearms to work,” or “employees are not allowed to have open
liquor in the cab of a company vehicle.”
Be aware that a planting camp is considered to be a worksite.
Finally, there may be a
few informal rules that a camp or crew imposes, for the sake of ensuring that
everyone gets along better. These would
include things like setting a daily quitting time, or picking a time for
dinner.
Before I go any further,
let me clarify that although some of the rules I'm about to talk about are
federal and therefore apply within every province, most of the information that
I'm about to present is provincially regulated by the BC government. These laws therefore apply in British
Columbia, and may not be applicable in other provinces. For example, if you work for a company that
is based in BC, but you work for them on a project in Ontario, then you should
become familiar with the rules that are specific to Ontario instead of assuming
that the rules there are the same as in BC. However, if you do work in BC for a company
that is registered in a different province, the BC rules and employment
standards apply. There's a lot of
variety as you move from province to province, especially with things such as
minimum wage rates, regulations surrounding overtime, and so on.
Employment Standards
Act
The Employment Standards
Act falls under the purview of the Ministry of Labour. It's designed to ensure that you receive
basic minimum standards of pay and employment conditions. The Ministry also publishes a specific set of
clarifications that apply to silviculture workers in BC, since our situation is
a bit unconventional compared to most labour within the province.
This section is probably
the most important information in our entire training series, except of course
for the sections on Health and Safety.
If you find out that your employer presented information to you from
most of this training series but skipped this particular section, be very
leery. Your employer may be ignoring
some regulations that they hope you don’t find out about. Know your rights!
Let’s look at some of the
key sections of BC's Employment Standards Act, as they relate to planters.
You have the right to be
told IN ADVANCE what the piece rate is for your planting, in other words, the
amount that you'll be paid per properly planted tree. In addition, your hourly pay must meet or
exceed the minimum wage for the province, including any higher rates for hours
considered as overtime. In BC, anything
over forty hours in a week is considered overtime. Also, any hours over eight in a day are
considered overtime, even if you don't work forty hours in that week. Your overtime hours are worth 1.5x the amount
of regular hours.
You need to keep strict
records of the hours that you work, including driving time. This means that your work day starts or you
“clock in” from the time that your crew truck pulls out of camp in the morning,
until you “clock out” at the time that your truck pulls back into camp for
dinner. This calculation is called your
“portal-to-portal” hours.
Minimum wage top-up, when
required, is calculated on a per-period basis.
Pay periods are allowed to be one week long, two weeks long, or twice
per month, at the discretion of your company.
Almost all companies have two-week long pay periods, because that's the
easiest for them from an accounting standpoint.
Since top-up requirements are assessed per pay period, let me give a
brief example of how that could apply.
Let’s say that you work three days in a pay period. Let’s say that for the first two days, you
plant $10 less than minimum wage each day.
Then, on the third day, you plant $70 more than minimum wage for that day. During the period as a whole, you made a
total of $50 more than minimum wage for the total hours worked, so you will not
be eligible in this case for top-ups on the two days with daily earnings under
minimum wage.
However, your employer is
NOT allowed to use earnings from one pay period to offset a minimum wage
shortfall in a separate period. Also,
you must be paid at least twice per month, which means that an employer cannot
claim that a pay period is a month long, or three months long, in order to
circumvent the minimum-wage rule. A pay
period is not allowed to be more than 16 days long in BC.
All money earned in a pay
period must be paid out within eight days after the end of the pay period.
You cannot be forced to
work more than five hours in a row without a break of at least thirty
minutes. This does not mean that you must
sit down and take a break, if you don’t want to. It does, however, mean that if you’re having
a hard day and you sit down for thirty minutes in the middle of the day, your
company cannot discipline you. A company
is NOT allowed to deduct these mandatory meal break hours from hours worked.
Under most circumstances,
your shifts may not be longer than five working days followed by a day
off. Within a month, you must be given
at least two consecutive days off, OR at least eight non-consecutive days off.
Sometimes you'll be
working in remote camps, which can be defined as ones with no regular access
into and out of the camp. In such a
situation, your company is allowed an exemption to the standard work schedule,
which means that you can work up to nine days straight as long as you have two
consecutive days off afterwards, or you can work up to ten days straight as
long as you have four consecutive days off afterwards. However, in order to qualify for those exemptions,
two other conditions need to apply.
First, more than fifty percent of the employees must have agreed to the
schedule in writing, and second, the company must still provide a minimum of
eight days off in the month. If you do
not get the required number of days off, you are entitled to pay at 1.5x either
the regular wage or the piece rate for time worked on the extra days.
An employer may deduct an
amount from your gross pay for camp costs, although you must first agree to
this in writing. The amount deducted may
not exceed $25 plus GST per day if you're living in a camp. If you're living in a motel arranged for by
the employer, the amount of camp costs deducted may not exceed the actual cost
for the room.
Your employer cannot
deduct money from your paycheque to pass along quality penalties that were
assessed against the company. Having
said that, if you're planting sub-standard quality and it results in a penalty
being assessed against your employer, your employer has the recourse of
terminating your employment.
Performance bonuses that
are promised, such as an “end of season bonus,” must be paid, and cannot be
reduced or eliminated for any reason.
An employer cannot charge
employees for costs resulting from damage to company property or third-party
property, such as motel rooms, unless the employee agrees in writing. Of course, an employer may opt to terminate
the employment of an employee who causes such damages, depending on the
situation.
An employer is not
required to pay for work not performed.
A silviculture worker’s pay may be adjusted as a result of an
over-tally. In order to do this, the
employer must show that the individual over-tallied or over-counted before
adjusting pay, perhaps by counting the trees planted in their piece. An employer may not correct an over-claim on
a group basis.
Your vacation pay may be
paid on every paycheque at a rate of 4% of gross earnings, or it may be paid in
a lump sum at the end of the season. You
are also entitled to statutory holiday pay.
This relates to designated holidays that fall within your season, such
as Canada Day. Rather than paying on the
actual holiday, an employer is allowed to pay statutory holiday pay by adding
4% of the worker’s gross earnings to every cheque (separate from vacation
pay). If this approach is taken, which
is what many companies do because it's a lot easier, then any planters who
actually work on a statutory holiday are paid at their regular rate.
If you feel that your
employer is violating any of the regulations in the Employment Standards Act,
don’t be scared to lodge a complaint.
That is your right! There's a
complaint process, which involves using a “Self Help Kit” which is available
through links on the BC Employment Standards Branch website. The Self Help Kit is pretty
self-explanatory. You must give your
complaint to the ESB within six months of the offense. In other words, if you don’t want to cause a
lot of problems during the season for fear of getting fired, you can definitely
wait until the season is over and then start to deal with it, as long as you
file your claim within six months of the time when the problems occurred.
As a first year planter,
you may be very reluctant to look into a complaint if your employer is
short-changing you. Perhaps you think,
“That’s the way the industry works.”
Perhaps the vets at your company said that they suffered through the
same problems in their first season, so you shouldn't worry about it. Perhaps you’re worried that it means you
won’t be hired back the following season.
None of these excuses are things that should stop you. Besides, why would you want to plant for the
same company again next year, if it was cheating you? An experienced planter can get a job at just
about any company in BC with very little effort. Many companies in the industry are following
all the rules, and the only way to prevent the shady companies from abusing
their power is to lodge a formal complaint when you have the grounds to do so.
You should keep very
detailed records of your payroll-related information all season. Every planter should have a physical diary or
journal where they record all of the pertinent information every day. Keep as much information as possible,
including: the exact time you pulled out
of camp, the exact time you returned, the number of trees planted, the stated
price, the type of land, the block number (if you know it), the species and
stock type/size, the weather, and notes on whom you were working with that
day. All of this information can help
substantiate your claim. Most of the
time, if you dispute something, your company will show up at the ESB meeting
with a cheque in hand for you, because they'll know that they just got caught
trying to cut corners. If they don’t,
this written record will be a good indication that you have a legitimate
claim. If a company disputes the hours
that you've written down and provides a different set of hours that the staff
submitted, don’t be scared to dispute those hours if you feel that you're being
cheated. You have to ability to take a
photo with your phone every day as your truck pulls out of camp, and another as
you pull back in for dinner. You can
even use free apps that stamp your exact GPS coordinates on top of your
photos. All photos are time-stamped by
your phone, and will provide corroboration for your hours. Be honest though.
Workers' Compensation
Act
The purpose of the
Workers' Compensation Act is to ensure that your workplace is as safe and
healthy as possible. It's implemented by
an entity called WorkSafe BC. I’ll
quickly cover some of the points in the Act, and in the Occupational Health and
Safety regulations that it enforces.
Every worker must take
reasonable care to protect themselves, to work safely and in accordance with
regulations, to use and wear protective clothing and equipment, to refrain from
engaging in dangerous horseplay, to ensure that safety is not compromised by
drugs or alcohol, and to report any contraventions or risks to their
supervisor. In turn, every supervisor
must ensure the health and safety of workers under their direct
supervision. Be aware that in this
respect, a crew leader is legally considered to be a supervisor, even if that
is not their official title.
You may often hear that
you have the right to refuse unsafe work.
Actually, this is an obligation, not a right. If you refuse unsafe work, it is illegal for
your employer to treat you with discrimination.
You may be temporarily assigned to different work at no loss in pay
until the matter is resolved.
Here are a few other key
points:
- As a young or new worker
with a company, you must be given Health and Safety orientation specific to
your workplace. There is a lengthy list
of specific information that companies must cover in section 3.23 of the Occupational
Health and Safety Act.
- Before your crew starts
work in any new location, a safety meeting must be held.
Human Rights
The Canada Human Rights
Act is in place to protect Canadians from discrimination due to race, national
or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, marital
status, family status, disability, and also for conviction for an offence for
which a pardon has been granted or a record suspension has been ordered. It's against the law to refuse employment, to
pay lower wages for equal work, or to harass a person based on any of these
differences.
Also, British Columbia’s
Human Rights Code has a section (11) which restricts advertising for job
opportunities. It states that a person must not publish or cause to
be published an advertisement in connection with employment or prospective
employment that expresses a limitation, specification or preference as to race,
colour, ancestry, place of origin, political belief, religion, marital status,
family status, physical or mental disability, sex, sexual orientation or age
unless the limitation, specification or preference is based on a bona fide
occupational requirement. In other
words, it would be illegal to publish the availability of job opportunities and
to state for example that they are only available to people of a certain age
range, or to women only, or that transgender or Muslim applicants would not be
considered. You can state that certain
categories of applicants are encouraged, but not that they are preferred.
Minimum Camp Standards
for Silviculture Contractors
Your company is obligated
to meet basic standards within any tree planting bush camp that it operates, to
ensure that you're reasonably comfortable and healthy:
- Your company must
supervise and maintain the camp, its sanitary facilities, appliances, and
equipment.
- Your company must
provide an adequate clean and safe water supply in appropriate containers. Water that is tested as safe for human
consumption is called potable water. Be
aware that some facilities such as showers may use non-potable water, so you
shouldn’t drink the shower water. All
water sources in the camp should be labeled as either potable or
non-potable. Your cook or supervisor
must do a proper water test of the potable water at each camp location.
- Your company must ensure
that the camp is located in a good drainage area.
- Your company must ensure
that all communicable diseases be reported to the medical health officer and
that such reports, in turn, be forwarded on to WorkSafe BC.
- Your company must
provide safe and healthy food, prepared and served in safe conditions.
- Your company must
provide an adequate number of heated private showers, sanitary toilets, and
hand-washing sinks with safe/clean water.
Complying with
Client/Licensee Policies
Each client that your
planting company works for has their own policies, practices, and procedures
that must be followed, including safety and environmental policies, and
emergency and accident procedures.
Planting contractors must comply with and address all concerns of the
Client. The Client will have specific
expectations of your company, and therefore, your boss will have specific
expectations of you. For example, the
Client will probably require that a planting company be Safe Certified, have
their own safety plan, and that you, as an employee, are in compliance with
that plan.
Many clients are concerned
with meeting goals for internal programs of their own, or for third-party
certification programs that they're subject to.
Two certification programs that are commonly considered to be important
are ISO and CSA certification. Also,
many clients will be required under their external certification programs to
have a detailed written Environmental Management System, known as an EMS. Due to this, they'll impose rules upon
planting companies that ensure their EMS rules aren’t broken.
Employer Policies
Your employer probably has
a very extensive written list of policies and regulations that are embedded
into the employment contract that you sign:
- Your company will have
an Orientation policy. An extensive orientation of all workers is mandatory.
- Your company will have a
Safety Meeting policy. There are going to be different types of safety meetings
at some companies. You might have a
camp-wide safety meeting at the start of each contract, and at the beginning of
each shift. Your own crew should have a
smaller tailgate safety meeting for a few minutes each morning when you arrive
at the block, so the foreman can review the work plan for the day along with
potential hazards and response plans.
- Your company will have
an Incident and Injury Reporting policy.
You will be expected to report all incidents and near-misses to your
foreman or to a safety committee member, and all injuries to a designated first
aid attendant.
- Your company will have a
Personal Protective Equipment policy.
You will be required to provide appropriate and approved clothing that
will protect you from the elements, as well as appropriate work gloves and footwear. Your employer is required to provide all
other protective equipment.
- Your company will have a
WHMIS policy. Your employer will train
you, or have you trained, in the use and understanding of MSDS sheets and the
WHMIS system.
Your employer will
probably have an Emergency Response Plan, which is known as an ERP. This plan should be accessible to all
workers, and will cover information that you need to know if there's an
emergency. It includes things like
emergency phone numbers, evacuation procedures, alarm protocols, emergency
transportation procedures, and what to do if there's some sort of environmental
emergency or natural disaster. There may
be different types of ERP’s. There may
be one posted on a bulletin board in camp that lists emergency contact info
applicable to a camp emergency. There
will also be different ERP's in each crew truck that are specific to that
crew’s block for the day.
There are other practical
rules that may be found in your employment contract. Some possible examples might include:
- Pets are not permitted
in camp.
- Fires may not be started
in camp without the prior approval of the supervisor, and may not be started
when the Fire Hazard Index is High or Extreme.
- Seatbelts must be worn
at all times.
- Only approved personnel
may operate an ATV, and a helmet must be worn at all times.
- Employees must have fuel
dispensing training before being permitted to fuel generators and pumps.
Camp-Specific or
Crew-Specific Policies
Your supervisor may have
some rules that apply specifically within your camp. Some possible examples might include:
- Whenever there is a
camp-fire on a night off, someone must be picked as the designated person
responsible for the fire, and for ensuring that it is not still burning the
next morning.
- Dinner is at 6:30pm sharp. Nobody is allowed to shower before eating
unless you can be done your shower before 7pm.
This prevents the cooks, who are pretty busy, from having to stand
around waiting to serve someone.
- The fire pit location
must be pre-approved by the supervisor, and must be located at least 200m from
the fuel cache, and at least 15m away from standing timber.
Your crew foreman may also
have some rules that apply specifically within your crew. Examples might include:
- Planting stops at 5pm
sharp.
- Daily tallies have to be
submitted to the foreman before the drive home.
- The truck leaves for
town at 8:30am sharp on the upcoming day off.
Have your laundry ready.
These are just some
examples of the many rules and regulations that you’ll be required to follow.
Corporate Organization
One last topic, which
relates to the "camp" or "crew" rules that I just
mentioned, deals with the organizational structure of a company. There is definitely not just one standard
organizational format for tree planting companies. There are several different ways that
companies can be organized.
Some companies, especially
many of those that first-year planters work at, run bush camps for the majority
of their operations. If I had to guess,
I'd estimate that only about a third of all BC planting contractors run bush
camps, while the rest have crews that work out of motels. However, the contractors that run bush camps
are definitely the largest companies in most cases, and this group of companies
plants the majority of the trees in the province. If you're going to be working in a bush camp,
you'll be expected to bring a tent which you'll set up as your private sleeping
area within the camp, and there will be a full-time cook or cooks who will
prepare your meals.
Typically, there's one
person in charge of each project. In the
case of a bush camp operation, it's usually a camp supervisor, who's
responsible for overseeing the entire project with perhaps forty to sixty total
employees. On a motel-based project, the
crews are generally a bit smaller, perhaps ten to thirty employees. For a motel-based project, the person in
charge is usually either an owner or partner in the company, or perhaps a
project manager who is considered to be upper management but who might not
actually own a share of the company.
Next, there will be crew
leaders called foremen. A few companies
refer to these people as crew bosses. In
a typical camp, there will probably be between maybe three and six foremen. In a motel show, there may only be two or
three foremen. In some companies, each
planter is permanently assigned to a specific foreman. This is frequently the case in a bush camp
operation. In other companies, the
planters rotate between different foremen almost every day, with the project
manager assigning seats as planters show up to the trucks in the morning.
Some companies employ
internal checkers to assist the foremen with maintaining quality
standards. These checkers will perform
unofficial plots and check the planters' work, looking for quality or density
problems. If they find problems, this
doesn't automatically mean that the company's payment rate on the block is
going to suffer. These checkers are able
to provide immediate feedback to planters, before things get out of control, or
they can go talk to the crew foreman.
Either way, think of them as a first line of defense with respect to
quality issues. Many planters cringe
when they see an internal company checker coming, but in the long run, these
checkers are employed by the planting company to ensure that problems are
caught before the foresters come in to do their official quality and payment
assessments on the block. Not all
companies use internal checkers. In some
cases, the crew foremen do all the checking.
Other companies employ
people referred to as tree runners.
These employees assist with making sure that there are boxes of trees on
the block for planters to plant. This is
a type of position not commonly used at coastal or southern Interior
companies. It's one that is most
commonly seen at companies in northern BC, or in some other provinces, where
access on the blocks is especially difficult.
When a company uses tree runners, the foremen usually assume the duties
of quality checking.
A few of the larger
companies may occasionally have other worker designations, such as having a
full-time mechanic in a camp, or a driver for special types of heavier
equipment or tracked vehicles. There can
be some variety other than the standard hierarchy of supervisors, foremen,
checkers, tree runners, and planters.
-----
Here’s an Audio version of this material, in case you
want to listen while you’re driving, running, at work, or otherwise unable to
read or watch video:
Click on the down-arrow icon in the upper right corner of
the SoundCloud widget to download the mp3.
Once again, for further information about this series of
tree planter training information, visit:
I encourage you to share this information with anyone
else who might be interested. Thanks for
your interest and support!
-
Jonathan “Scooter” Clark
