GPMC celebrates 60th anniversary

June 5 2012

The GPMC/NMC is an alliance of all the building trades required for industrial maintenance. It negotiates and administers multi-trade agreements, which can cover from one to 13 trades, for maintenance work on industrial facilities.

“The organization has added more than a million work hours to its agreements every year for the last decade, and it is looking ahead to a period of unprecedented expansion,” it said in a release. “GPMC/NMC may not be a household acronym, but the organization plays an important role in the Canadian economy. GPMC/NMC agreements provide secure full-time employment for more than 14,000 skilled tradespeople and are worth $1.1 billion in wages and benefits each year. The organization works with more than 120 employers and has agreements in eight out of 10 Canadian provinces.”

The alliance administers maintenance agreements in several key industrial sectors including oil sands extraction, oil refining, petrochemicals, mining, electricity generation, pulp and paper, natural gas processing, offshore oil and gas processing, steel production and consumer product production.

“Over its 60 years in operation, the GPMC/NMC has earned the trust of unions, employers and maintenance customers by providing stable multi-trade agreements that cover critical maintenance activities. The agreements adopt the basic monetary terms negotiated by the 13 unions in the alliance, and feature a cooperative, streamlined grievance process. They also incorporate a clause ensuring that there will be no strikes or lockouts to disrupt essential maintenance activities,” GPMC/NMC said.

“Our maintenance agreements provide stable, long-term labour/management relations with a process that’s about as simplified as you can get. We meet owners’ needs in ways that would be impossible with 13 separate agreements,” added Budrow Tozer, UA International Representative and Chairman of the GPMC/NMC. “We also provide construction workers with long-term jobs where they can make good money in a work environment with very few grievances…The system works because the parties realize that it’s in their interest to trust each other and make it work for everyone.”

To learn more, visit www.gpmccanada.com.