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BY SEE STAFFWhat began as one of those wishful experiments with European innovation is threatening to take off and change the very nature of automotive transport in Edmonton.
The city’s first car-sharing co-op is small, but highly successful and is planning expansion in the near future. Scott Harris, who administers the program, says 19 members in the Old Strathcona area share a single car, a 1999 Toyota Tercel. He acknowledges that it’s a far cry from European co-ops, some of which have 40,000 members sharing 2,000 vehicles, but given North America’s deep psychological attachment to automobiles, Harris said the Strathcona experiment is a roaring success.
"It’s really going against the cultural ideal," Harris said. "It separates mobility from ownership. It reduces a car to what it really is: a means of transport, not a source of identity."
Here’s how it works: Members pay an annual fee which gives them part ownership of car. When they need to use it, they book it through the co-op and pay based on the number of hours they use it and the distance driven. Studies have shown that, on average, people use their cars 66 minutes per day while the true cost of owning a newer vehicle (including insurance, fuel, maintenance, loan payments and depreciating value) runs $6,000 to $8,000 per year.
"You look at it that way and that’s a very expensive 66 minutes," Harris said. The fees paid to the co-op cover all of those costs, so the members are only paying for the time they actually operate the vehicle.
In order for a car-share scheme to work, Harris said, there must be enough members all living within walking distance of a car to support a single vehicle. The project has sparked enough curiosity across the city that Harris is now looking at setting up another vehicle in a different neighbourhood.
– Andrew Hanon
The way Dan Martel sees it, the Internet and e-commerce could be the most powerful tools for economic development in Alberta’s aboriginal communities.
This week Martel, founder of Edmonton-based Four Winds and Associates, a consulting firm that helps aboriginal communities address economic, social and health issues, has launched aboriginalmall.com, which he hopes will help stimulate entrepreneurial spirit in the province’s most isolated regions. As far as he knows, it will be the most comprehensive Web site in the country tailored specifically for First Nations and Métis peoples.
The idea for aboriginalmall.com was first hatched when Martel saw statistics of native communities’ exploding population. By 2016, the birth rate among natives will be three times that of the country as a whole.
"I started wondering, how are we preparing for the new economy? Are these kids going to be equipped for the information age?" Martel explained. Certainly, the oil boom has provided a lot of employment, but Martel said that for the most part, aboriginals are employed as low-skilled labourers. When the economy slows, they’ll be the first ones thrown out of work again. Martel became convinced that the answer to long-term stability is in information technology.
The beauty of the Internet is that location doesn’t matter. One can live in an isolated village along the 60th parallel and be just as connected as someone in a downtown Edmonton high-rise. Martel acknowledged that it’s likely there is a lower proportion of aboriginal homes with access to the Internet, but said most band offices, friendship centres and similar organizations are on line and should be able to provide access.
For now, aboriginalmall.com is largely a retail Web site. Native artisans can market their products through the site. Customers can order directly from the producer, while inventory, accounting and e-transactions are handled by Martel’s company. "That way," Martel explained, "Grandma in Fort McMurray, who produces one set of moccasins a month, can sell them. We keep track of inventory so the number of orders never exceeds her ability to make them."
The site will also allow other trades people to market their businesses, thus connecting businesses with clients they might not otherwise reach. There is also a directory of events and organizations of interest to the aboriginal community.
– Andrew Hanon
If the city of Edmonton spent $1 million to expand the pool at the Kinsmen Sports Centre so it could draw world-class events, and if no one is buying tickets to those events, was the $1 million wasted?
In the face of pathetic ticket sales to this weekend’s World Cup Swimming event at the Kinsmen, that’s the question SEE put to city councillor Michael Phair, who chairs city hall’s community services committee.
The world cup competition is one of 10 such events being held around the world. It draws some of the best swimmers in the world – 250 athletes from 17 countries will be in the water here this weekend. But only about one-third of the 1,400 available seats per night have been sold. Swim Alberta needs to sell 80 per cent of those seats just to break even on the event, according to spokesperson Janice Johnston.
"Swim Alberta is on the hook for half the losses," she said. "And that goes back to the 35,000 kids in grassroots swim programs in this province."
So given the fact that even the Oilers have trouble selling tickets these days, was spending $1 million on amateur swimming a good investment for the city? A report submitted to the city’s community services committee Nov. 14 boasts of the achievement. The pool is run by the city’s Enterprise Portfolio of facilities, along with the likes of the Valley Zoo, Fort Edmonton Park and municipal golf courses. Those facilities pool their resources to operate self-sufficiently, says committee chair Phair.
"There is no question that money has been useful because it (the Kinsmen facility) is among the highest-use pools in the city," Phair said. "There certainly was a good case that that pool could use expansion for competitions. And people do pay an admission charge, so that helps to pay for it."
Phair suggests this weekend’s world cup event could perhaps have been marketed more aggressively.
"We’ve tried to assist in the last minute now by indicating to city staff and employees that the tickets are available," he said. "But perhaps the other aspect is that swimming doesn’t lend itself greatly to spectator sport in terms of sitting in the stands."
Tickets are indeed still available to the event, which features some of the world’s strongest swimmers. Three groups of tickets are available: Gold seats: $80/two days or $50/one day; Silver seats: $50/two days or $25/one day; and Bronze seats: $30/two days or $15 one/day. Tickets are available through Ticketmaster (451-8000).
– Richard Cairney
It took all spring, summer and fall, but the 104 locked out employees of Brewer’s Distributor Ltd. have pretty much closed an ugly chapter in their lives and in Alberta labour history.
"We had a wind-up party two weeks ago – everybody was in good spirits," said Brent Potter, who served as president of the Canadian Auto Workers Local 285. "About 70 per cent of us have found other employment and of the other 30 per cent, about two-thirds of them are taking courses or going to school."
Potter, who worked for BDL for 16 years, is now working as a welder – he earned his journeyman’s ticket before joining BDL and has returned to the trade.
The workers were locked out April 4 and BDL, which distributed beer for Molson and Labatt – the rival breweries jointly own the firm – has contracted their work out to a west end firm, MTE Logistix. BDL abandoned its warehouse on 50 Street, (it’s for sale), in favour of MTE’s west end site.
BDL has paid out $3.8 million in severance packages, Potter said.
"That is what it cost them to rid themselves of us and in this situation they are still stuck with that building for sale for the past three months. They just finished spending, reportedly, $5 million to expand it a year ago and now it sits empty on 50 Street."
One issue with the workers remains unsettled.
"The only thing still outstanding is the transfer of pension monies to individual employees," Potter said. "That has gone slower than expected but it should be done before the end of the year."
Still, life isn’t easy for the workers. One former BDL employee says he has had trouble finding a job because potential employers view him as a troublemaker.
"I had someone tell me that flat out," said Jodee Lee Sawan. "They see ‘BDL’ and ‘labour dispute’ on your résumé and they just don’t want you around."
Potter says the situation for organized labour in Alberta won’t improve soon. While the CAW won a legal challenge to Alberta labour laws and earned the right to strike at a secondary site – the MTE warehouse – that court ruling could be struck down.
"It’s being appealed," Potter said. "But not by BDL and not by Molson’s and not by Labatt – but by the Alberta government."
- Richard Cairney
A warm fire crackles in a portable wrought iron fireplace and pumpkin-head scarecrows, left over from Halloween, recline in their chairs. Striking workers emerge from inside a makeshift shelter cobbled together from wood and tarps to provide cover from cold winds. All signs suggest the strikers ought to replace those Halloween decorations outside the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees’ offices with cutouts of Santa and his reindeer – there’s no indication this strike will be over any time soon.
This is a labour dispute with a difference: some 75 unionized workers are striking against their employer, Alberta’s largest union. The workers serve as negotiators, clerical workers and support staff for AUPE and they’ve been on strike since Sept. 25.
This summer, they helped steer AUPE through an illegal strike, prying hefty pay increases for health care workers from the tight fist of the Alberta government. Now, they’ve been walking the picket lines for more than 50 days to protect themselves from concessions AUPE is demanding of them.
"No-concession bargaining has been the corner stone of this union," says one of the striking workers. "Now they want us to take concessions?"
The fact that AUPE wants its striking employees, members of the United Steelworkers of America, to take cuts to severance packages is a contradictory stance, the striking worker said. She wonders how AUPE negotiators are going to be able to stick to their no-concession philosophy when AUPE itself went against it.
"How are we going to say to an employer ‘the AUPE won’t accept any concessions’ when the AUPE forced concessions on its own workers?"
Union president Dan McLelland argues that it’s a matter of semantics. The strikers are saying they’ve got a list of some 60 concessions that AUPE is demanding, he said. But in fact, there are only four or five items on the bargaining table McLelland regards as actual concessions (he doesn’t consider losing a car allowance if you lose your driver’s licence to be a concession).
The AUPE, he said, is offering workers pay hikes between eight and 13 per cent over two years. The main stumbling block, though, is severance packages that are handed out to workers regardless of whether they quit, are fired or die.
But some workers fear that AUPE is taking advantage of them. By not settling the strike, the union is saving about $100,000 a week in payroll costs. And the union is facing tough financial times: it has already paid out a $400,000 fine for this summer’s illegal strike. It also has $1.8 million in union dues at risk in a Labour Relations Board hearing. The LRB could penalize the union by relieving the province of the responsibility of collecting dues on the union’s behalf for six months.
"There’s some suggestion here that they are paying off that fine off the backs of the staff who worked overtime during the strike and who got called to work in the middle of the night," the striking worker said.
McLelland denied that’s the strategy.
"That isn’t the case," he said. "The decision to strike was theirs. Now, by the way they’re talking, you’d think it was a lockout."
Steelworkers’ spokesperson Dennis Bennett was unavailable for comment. Contract talks resumed recently and are expected to continue this week.
– Richard Cairney
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