Construction projects in Ottawa could be delayed during its busiest season as some 15,000 carpenters across the province in the industrial, commercial and institutional (ICI) sector are set to go on strike.

Members of the Carpenters’ District Council of Ontario have voted to reject their employers’ last offer, meaning that — unless there’s a last-minute agreement — they’ll walk off the job on Monday at one minute past midnight. 

The carpenters are set to join thousands of crane operators who went on strike last Monday. 

“There’ll be [a] shutdown,” suspects Kevan Young, the director of operations at SMDR Construction Inc, a project management company that works on commercial builds in Ottawa. 

“We outsource all of the work that goes on,” he said. “And if we lose the ability to contract to those people, then our projects definitely do come to a halt or certainly slow down.” 

The Carpenters’ District Council of Ontario is composed of 17 affiliated local unions of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners.

“Nobody wants to go on strike,” said Mike Yorke, the council’s president, in a press release issued last week.

Members are calling for a “fair wage increase,” the release said, to reflect the “spiralling cost of living increases.” 

“Our union hasn’t been on strike in the ICI sector for 34 years,” said Yorke. “But our members, from one side of the province to the other, have now voted overwhelming to tell their employers that we want a fair deal.”

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