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Construction Workers, Inc.
CONSTRUCTION
WORKERS, INC.
CANADIAN H-2B PROGRAM - OVERVIEW
This program is oriented
towards union contractors and supported by their
respective unions.
As an employer, there is no need to tell you about
the shortage of skilled workers in the U. S. construction
industry and the effects it is having on the industry's
stakeholders. Work is being lost to the nonunion element
and employers are being forced to run jobs with insufficient
manpower, hurting the Unions, employers, and the unionized
construction industry as a whole.
While that is the case here, our craft
brothers and sisters to the north are experiencing
extremely high unemployment in their trades and across
the country.
As a result of hearing horror stories
about employers making attempts to obtain H-2B visas
for Canadian workers to work in the states and the
hours and dollars that were wasted on those usually
failed attempts, in 1996, the International Union of
Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers (BAC) and the International
Council of Employers of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers
(ICE) decided to develop a mechanism to help their
contractors obtain H-2B visas for Canadian BAC members.
The resulting mechanism was a corporation, MIED, Inc.
(now named Construction Workers, Inc. or CWI), that
would act as a stand alone placement service so that
the applicant for the visas would always be the same
entity, creating an economy of scale that would make
the process more reliable, shorter, and less expensive.
Also addressing this issue in 1996, the National Electrical
Contractors Association (NECA) and the International
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) published
and distributed their "NECA/IBEW Blueprint for
the 1990's: Guide for Acquiring Alien Employees".
This guide aptly describes the process and tasks performed
by CWI and is still available for those contractors
who want to "go it alone." However, national
NECA and IBEW leaders endorsed this CWI program in
March 1999 for their contractor and local union participation.
IBEW local unions in the United States are encouraged
to support this program with their local NECA Chapter
and their contractors, and to coordinate these efforts
with their International Vice Presidents.
Additionally, other Building Trade
Unions and their respective contractor associations
are now participating in the CWI program. These include:
1) The International Association of Heat and Frost
Insulators and Asbestos Workers; 2) The Sheet Metal
Workers International Association; and, 3) The United
Association of Journeyman and Apprentices of the Plumbing
and Pipe Fitting Industry of the U. S. and Canada.
With the inclusion of the IBEW, the possibility of
a Policy Committee is being explored with the intent
of influencing government procedures and policies to
expedite Canadian visa approvals for union members.
The process will start when a company
signs a service agreement with CWI. The application
processes and the visas obtained through CWI are area
specific, meaning that once the worker receives the
visa he/she can only work in the area for which the
visa was obtained, as determined by the Department
of Labor (DOL). The workers can be moved to different
projects, as long as it is within the specified area
and the projects are listed on the original application.
CWI will obtain necessary information from your company
and a letter from the local union stating that there
are no union workers in the local union available to
fill the positions.
To obtain the visas, CWI has to go
through two application procedures. First, we have
to obtain "Temporary Labor Certification" for
your company from the DOL, through the State Employment
Security Agency (SESA). To receive certification, we
must show that there are no qualified U. S. workers
available to fill the open positions. In addition to
a letter from the IBEW local union, we must make use
of all NECA/IBEW mechanisms for identifying available
manpower, run an advertisement in the local newspaper
for 3 days followed by a 10 day "recruitment period",
and submit a "results of recruitment" report.
As part of that process, our clients must interview
all applicants identified through those sources and
by the SESA, hiring any qualified workers.
Once certification is granted, CWI
will identify available Canadian workers through an
internal registration process and contact those workers
to gather necessary information for the visa applications.
The next application is to the Immigration
and Naturalization Service (INS) for the visas. There
will be a separate application filed for each worker.
It is much simpler than the DOL procedure, requiring
only proof of the DOL certification and personal information
on the worker, and should take less time.
Once the visas are granted, the worker
can come into the U. S. to work for your company. CWI
will aid in the recruitment of Canadian union members
and the distribution of work authorization documents
and other necessary information. Your company will
pay CWI for the cost of the application procedures,
any sales tax, plus a 1% of Gross Wages administrative
service fee to cover other operational costs. Fixed
costs may be spread out among several contractors within
the same Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) as defined
by the DOL by "bundling" several applications.
The total processing time to obtain
H-2B classification for the first workers for a specific
project is usually about 10 weeks, but can vary due
to a variety of factors. Once the DOL certification
is granted, the INS process should take less than a
month, and if you choose to request more workers, the
DOL application will not have to be repeated, so those
additional workers can be obtained in the time it takes
to get visas from the INS as long as there is still
room for them on the certification.
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