Setting a fair wage policy for all City of Sarnia construction contracts is helping create a level playing field for workers and local contractors, the local labour council president says.

“This was never about unions. It was always about workers and contractors,” Sarnia & District Labour Council president Jason McMichael said about city council’s 6-3 decision earlier this month to extend Sarnia’s fair wage policy to construction projects with a value less than $50,000.

A wage-requirement policy for projects worth more than $50,000 was approved in the spring .

“The reality is we were having far too many out-of-town contractors being successful in their bids for local work with the City of Sarnia,” McMichael said, “and often that just happened to be because the contractors they were bidding against were already paying a fair wage … so what this did is it levelled the playing field.”

Extending the policy to lower-cost projects means overall city construction project spending could rise $100,000 to $200,000 per year, city staff estimated in reports to council.

Other increases could be pending, tied to inflation and supply chain challenges, they noted.

When the initial fair wage policy was implemented in May, staff estimated there’d be no increase to project costs above $50,000 because large contractors generally pay the prevailing wage rate.

An extra 200 hours of staff time per year to administer the policy was expected, and the policy was expected to impact 30 to 40 projects over $50,000 per year.

Extending the fair wage policy to projects below $50,000 means another 35 to 50 projects will be impacted, staff estimate.

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