A group of construction union pension plans have threatened to pull $1 billion in investments and funds from RBC Investor Services if its parent company, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), doesn’t abandon plans to outsource some jobs by using temporary foreign workers.
Last Thursday, the business manager for the B.C. Insulators Union, acting for seven construction trades and industrial unions, announced the union had instructed the administrator of the pension plans to start withdrawing their business if the bank doesn’t abandon and reverse plans to ship Canadian information technology jobs overseas.
“A billion dollars is chump change to them, we understand that, but we certainly think that a billion dollars is a substantial amount of money in the B.C. economy and if they are not going to manage our money right, we will find others that will,” said Lee Loftus, the business manager for the B.C. Insulators Union and president of the B.C. Construction Trades Council. “This doesn’t jeopardize our fiduciary responsibility on returns, this is about finding partners that are willing to do business that’s acceptable to us.”
RBC is facing controversy from customers and the public about its recent decision to eliminate 45 Canadian technological jobs and to outsource contracts to offshore workers. The temporary foreign workers were being trained by RBC employees whose work they would take over.