Friends and colleagues gathered Thursday to wish longtime Sarnia labor leader Ross Tius well in his upcoming retirement.
The United Association (UA) Local 663 pipefitter’s union business manager is set to retire July 1.
“He’s a giant in the industry,” said Ontario Labor Minister Monte McNaughton who, with Sarnia-Lambton MPP Bob Bailey, attended a retirement event for Tius at Hiawatha Horse Park.
“He has been such a champion for middle-class jobs here in Sarnia-Lambton,” McNaughton said. “He also represents the Canadian dream.”
Tius’s father came to Canada from Italy in 1951 and became a pipefitter. “And Ross followed in his footsteps,” McNaughton said.
Tius, 76, said he was a young child when his family joined his father in Canada in 1953.
“I had to repeat kindergarten because I didn’t know how to speak English,” he said.
Tius, who started as an apprentice in 1969, went on to serve as an agent with Local 663 for 10 years, then business manager for 23 years.
“He leaves an amazing legacy,” McNaughton said.
“I’ve enjoyed it immensely,” Tius said. “My whole focus has been on Lambton County and the building trades.”
He spoke of the working relationship local building trades established with large industrial clients and contractors in the Sarnia area.
“With that, we have a middle class,” and “unions, straight through,” he said. “I’m proud of it.”
Tius said he has made many friends over the years “on both sides – management and union” and leaves the job “with a smile on my face.”
Today, Tius said, the Sarnia area’s workplace safety record is “world class” because of work carried out by all those involved in local industry and construction.
“We had that legacy where we had the asbestos and all the issues of that time,” he said of the community’s earlier workplace health and safety record. “We worked through it and now we’re the safest and most diligent around safety,”
“We get our jobs done – we execute in a timely manner,” he added. “We have 5,800 building trade members here that give all they have to execute these huge projects that we’ve built over the years.”
Local 663 has 1,658 “very active” members and 400 retirees, Tius said.
Tius said his retirement plans include taking his grandkids to “learn to golf together, because I’m a notorious awful golfer.”