(Part of a series of blog postings from Graham Hicks'  two-day tour of PTI Group lodge-hotels in the Canadian oilsands) 

How Edmonton's PTI Group - Canada's largest owner/operator of worker hotel-lodges in remote industrial areas, builds a content and efficient hospitality workforce.

Yes, it's about the money, which, in Northern Alberta, is pretty darned good.

But it's just as much about the company's egalitarian culture, its hiring practices, and simply the way it treats its employees within a unionized context.

Without any government prodding, PTI maintains an open preferential/priority hiring system.

At the top of the list, hiring local First Nations members. About 250 permanent employees hail from the Saddle Lake, Meadow Lake and Driftpile First Nation bands and from the Fort McKay Metis (or Wood Buffalo) group.

Second preference is hiring Albertans who reside locally.

Third is Alberta-based aboriginals.

Fourth is  Albertans, period. I.E> Anybody with landed-immigrant status or Canadian citizenship that lives in Alberta.

Five is aboriginals from across Canada outside of Alberta

Sixth is all other Canadians.

PTI is justly proud of its work with the area's First Nation and Metis communities. The lodges work very closely with band elders to provide assistance and guidance to younger band members when they are first hired and are learning the ropes. "For the kids, it's a major culture shock," says PTI's hotel division chief Fred Bannon. "The elders have been a huge help."

With the Metis community of Wood Buffalo, PTI has helped in the setting up of Metis-run companies - mostly in trucking - and being their major client. 

In the hotels, the staff are a United Nations - with your "traditional" Canadians are large numbers of ethnic groups - Somalian, Filipino, Latin American.  Recent immigrants, Bannon says, are happy to work the long, unbroken hours that come with three-weeks of 12-hour work days then a week off. Earned income is usually about three-times more than the same jobs in urban Canada, PTI jobs come with full benefits, and, in the bush, there aren't many money-spending distractions other than the cost of flying home every four weeks ... for which there's a $400 a month travel allowance to all workers.

There's no shortage of willing workers from Canada - PTI has never entered into any foreign worker programs or contracts for the simple reason that it doesn't need to.  It comes as a surprise to many applicants that, in fact, there is a waiting list -  being somebody's relative or friend no longer means immediate employment.  

And the location itself and the unique working conditions tends to be self-selecting. "Those that aren't comfortable with the lifestyle and some of the rules it requires, usually leave of their own accord," says Bannon.

And while the Maritimes is still a major source of workers - there's plenty of Newfoundland accents around the hotels - Maritimers are no longer the dominant worker group. "We get just as many these days from B.C., the prairies and to a lesser extent, Ontario and Quebec," says Bannon. 

It says something about the company culture that all the ethnic groups appear to work very well together and are highly integrated. 

As for the egalitarian nature of PTI, some anecdotal evidence.  I was touring four PTI lodge-hotels with CEO Ron Green and Senior Vice President Fred Bannon.  Not once were they accorded any more special treatment than the average hotel worker - standing in line at the cafeterias, eating with the workers.   In fact, we had to drive an extra hour for our own accommodation that evening. The hotel-lodges we first visited were 100% full.  Doesn't matter how big a boss you are at PTI, customers come first.