Pre-registration is open for the 2012 Partners in Progress Conference scheduled for March 8 to 10, 2012 in Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The conference features a brand new program format with a revitalized focus on labour and management collaborating creatively to share ideas and overcome challenges.
Bruce Sychuk, executive director for SMACNA-BC, says the PinP Conference is an incredible opportunity for labour and management to network and learn about and from the individuals who make up a team.
“Secondly, it helps you to establish a gauge as to how your area’s labour / management program(s) rank compared to the rest of North America,” he says.
It also exposes teams to new ideas and best practices in a concentrated way so businesses can pick and choose those strategies that are a fit. “Why reinvent the wheel?,” he says. “The PinP offers and provides the answers to the questions of why some areas have successful programs, how they got there, what worked, and what didn’t work.”
New for this year’s conference are revised industry breakout sessions focused on devising solutions in specialty market sectors, as well as new educational opportunities.
The conference’s overall focus will be honest communication between labour and management with featured topics on best practices, the economy, and leadership. Keynote addresses from nationally known and respected turnaround expert Dr. Tom Schleifer and communications expert Stephen Gaffney will address recession survival and situational assessment. FMI will present a New Horizons study on the changing face of leadership.
“Once a successful partnership has been established, it must be maintained,” says Sychuk. “Market and personnel changes provide challenges to existing, functional partnerships. Attending the PinP is another tool in the toolbox that addresses all of the positives to maintain and increase market share.”
These sessions, along with focused groups on learning from within, marketing success stories, and entering new markets will round out an expertly devised program aimed at building business and industry in North America.
“Change is good,” says Sychuk. “It is far better to make decisions that are of a business nature as opposed to political.
Working with a team rather than as an individual guarantees that the results are always positive.”
For more information please visit Partners in Progress at www.pinp.org or contact SMACNA-BC at www.smacna-bc.org or 604.584.4641.
In other news, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty addressed the Calgary Chamber of Commerce on November 8 with an Economic Update that affects the construction industry in British Columbia.
Minister Flaherty announced that projected increases to EI premiums slated for January 2012 will be reduced from those announced earlier this year. The federal government proposed an increase to 10 cents per $100 of insurable earnings for employees and 14 cents for employers.
Based on the weakening global market and the federal government’s inability to meet deficit targets over the next six years, EI premiums will instead be increased to five cents for employees and seven cents for employers. Still not a bad deal for workers, says Flaherty.
“This measure will leave over $600 million in the hands of Canadian workers and businesses next year in 2012,” he says. “Our economy will only benefit as a result.”
The government is also extending a program allowing for arrangements in which workers agree to a temporarily reduced work week of between two and four and a half days per week, while their earnings are topped up by EI for the remainder of the week.
Minister Flaherty also announced the Next Phase of Canada’s Economic Action Plan, which involves a temporary Hiring Credit for Small Business, a two-year extension of the temporary accelerated capital cost allowance rate for investment in manufacturing or processing machinery and equipment, a boost to the Guaranteed Income Supplement for low-income seniors, and the extension of the ecoENERGY Retrofit – Homes program.
He noted that the government initiatives aimed at providing relief in response to the global recession are meant to be temporary measures, not a lifelong burden. He equated the way the government has responded to the economic slowdown to household budgeting:
“When your basement gets flooded, you don’t agonize over fixing the problem. You fix it, and recognize the full value of taking on the extra cost,” he says. “At the same time, you don’t react by building an addition on your house and doubling the kids’ allowance.”
While Canadians are beginning to feel the effects of a weakening overseas market there are still 600,000 more Canadians working now than there were at the end of the recession, and more people employed in construction in the Lower Mainland-Southwest region than there were at the peak of 2008.
Still, Canada’s success in weathering the storm is a slim survival that hinges on the country’s unprecedented stability among other G-7 countries, says Flaherty.
“As recent events have shown all too clearly, what makes stability rare is that so few countries today have been able to set out—and abide by—the conditions necessary to create it,” he says. “What makes it so precious is that it can slip through your fingers if you allow yourself to get distracted by fleeting demands.
“Canadians made that stability possible, and our government has been called to be stewards of this national strength. It’s a responsibility we take very seriously. And, in an unstable world, it’s a competitive edge we have every intention of preserving.”
