THE WESTERN CANADIAN LUMBER WORKER 1st Issue Dec., 1965 BILL HAWKES By Britt HAwKEs After sepnding four days in Stockholm I went to the centre of Sweden as the guest of the Swedish Forestworkers Union, While I may have felt that Stockholm was rather cold and impersonal I have nothing but the warmest feel- ings for the centre of the country; wherever I went, I received great friendliness and wonderful hospitality. The general secretary of the Swedish Forestworkers very kindly met me at the train and took me to their national office. He spoke a little English and a secretary, -who worked for the Forest- workers, spoke excellent Eng- lish and acted as our inter- preter. A few times we had to refer to a Swedish-English dictionary and a couple of times we drew pictures, but we were able to have a long and interesting conversation. BILL HAWKES, a member of Local 1-85 IWA and Camp Chairman at the Franklin River Division of MacMillan, Bloedel and Powell River, who left last April to spend six months in the United Kingdom on a bursary offered by the Imperial Relations Trust, has submitted a series of articles describing conditions as he found them in his travels. The following is the sixth article in the series. w) SWEDISH UNIONS The Forestworkers Union are in the process of re-or- ganizing their structure. They have, at the present; a great many small locals and sub- locals within regions, The re- gions have full-time officers but, with only three excep- tions, none of the locals em- ploy full-time help. They are now eliminating the regions and merging the locals into large enough units to allow them to employ at least one full-time officer. Their structure will then be very similar to that of one of our Regions with sub-locals, locals, and a national body, executive boards at each level made up of officers elected by the membership as a whole with additional execu- tive board members elected by the area they represent. The Forestworkers Union _are faced with the problem of a declining membership due to mechanization. As they are very well organized, there is no chance for them to hold their level of membership by organizing the unorganized VISITS TO LOGGING, Highty percent of the Swed- ish forestworkers are on piece-work, the largest pro- portion are engaged in falling and making the pieces, Each man works alone, the logs he leaves where he makes them, the pulp he piles by hand. The majority of the forest- workers are employed by large companies or in state forests and get a full year’s work. There are some farm- ers who work in the woods only in the winter and farm the rest of the year, many of these are reluctant to join the union, I found that many of the complaints I heard in both Sweden and England had a familiar ring — poor agree- ments, people who are pre- pared to take all the benefits the unions can get them but do not want to pay their share, lack of attendance at meetings and members who continually complain but will not take office themselves. These seem to be universal problems, One condition the Swedish forestworkers have that I like very much, requires the com- pany to provide heated cabins TNE WESTEGN CANADIAN LUMBER Published twice monthl for the men to eat lunch in and keep a change of clothes in. These cabins cannot be just any type of shack but must be finished inside and out and have a minimum amount of space per man. These cabins cannot be more than 300 meters (984 ft.) from where the men are working. The forestworkers also get travel time from their homes. Until recently, horses were used extensively for pulling logs and pulp out of the woods to the roadside but now ma- chinery is being used to a large extent and the horse has almost disappeared. EQUIPMENT I saw several rubber-tired machines which were capable of going through the standing timber without roads. They were equipped with a boom and hydraulic tongs and could load and haul 15 cubic meters (530 cu. ft.) of pulp very quickly, The Swedish woodlands I saw were rolling hills unlike our steep rough mountains and I doubt if these machines i! WORKER y as the official publication of the «>»? INTERNATIONAL WOODWORKERS OF AMERICA, Western Canadian Regional Council No. 1, Affiliated with AFL-C1O-CLC 2859 Commercial Drive, Vancouver, B.C. Editor _.. et dee Bitinino Business Manager ._ . A Advertising Representative Forwarded to ever; member of the IWA Phone 874-5261 pene iin een, EE Kerr -—-~-=--_ Fred Fieber ~ oan, G, A, Spencer in Western Canada in accordance with convention decisions. Subscription rate for non-members $2,00 per year. Authorized as Second Class Mail, Post Office Department, Ottawa, and for payment of postage in cash, ; 27,500 copies printed in this issue. and, as Sweden’s forests are being cut as heavily as they can be under a sustained yield program, there will not be more production from the ex- isting work force but rather the same production from a greatly reduced work force. While this, of course, cre- ates problems for the union it is not too serious for the forest worker who becomes redundant. There is a labor shortage in Sweden and the government has a very good re-training and_ re-location program. RETRAINING A worker who becomes un- employed can re-train at his or her, full wages and, if re- training away from home, they will also receive a living- out allowance and travel ex- penses. In fact, a lower paid forestworker could receive more in wages and allowances while re-training than he did when working in the woods. PLYWOOD AND would be efficient on the West Coast of B.C. They might work well in the interior of B.C. Their trees are smaller than ours and their logging very selective, in many areas the trees to be felled are first marked by the forester. Their log sizes are as fol- lows: Down to 13 ft. long, 6 ins. in diameter, saw logs. Down to 10 ft. long,3 in. in diameter, pulp. Down to 10 ft. long 2 in. in diameter, chips for chipboard. They make plywood from logs down to seven inches in- diameter. I saw a chipboard plant where they use the small logs. The larger logs are peeled in a mechanical barker and chipped, the smaller ones are chipped bark and all. The chips go to separate hoppers where they are mixed with a powdered glue. CHIPBOARD They make the board by spreading a layer of the good grade chips, a heavy layer of the low grade chips which contain bark, then another layer of the good grade chips. Heat and pressure are ap- plied for about 25 minutes and you then have a good solid 4 ft. by 8 ft. board which, when sanded, is very suitable for sheeting both in- terior and exterior walls. These chipboard factories are often owned. by the log- ging company and make a profit utilizing all the small pieces, all that is left in the woods are the limbs. Families who are willing to move from depressed areas to - areas where there is a short- age of labor are relocated at the government’s expense. Before moving, both the husband and wife have the opportunity to see the pro- posed area, also at the govern- ment’s expense. This way, be- fore they make up their minds, they can see the in- dustry he will be working in, the housing they will be liv- ing in and what educational, cultural, and social amenities their new home has to offer. Sweden is now re-training 40,000 people a year out of a total population of 7,687,000. Since 1947, the union has had an unemployment insur- ance fund into which each member pays$1.20 per month, When unemployed, they re- ceive $6.00 a day plus an ad- ditional 40c a day for each child. At the present time the government provides 70 per- cent of the benefits a wood- worker receives, the remain- ing 30 percent is provided by ube union oe their unem- loyment fund. e The proportion of benefits the government pays will vary from one industry to an- other depending on the de- mand upon that union’s un- employment fund, the union concerned paying the total and being reimbursed by the government. The. unemployed member first has to go to a government employment of- fice and obtain a card stating he is legitimately unem- ployed, this he has to either take or send to his union in order to receive payment. They do not have either union shop or closed shop in the forest industry, or indeed in most of Sweden’s indus- tries, and the unemployment benefits are a great aid in signing up new members. All workers are entitled to the State’s share of the un- employment benefits whether or not they are union mem- bers but apparently not all of them are aware of it. I got the impression that when the job stewards are signing up new members they often for- get to mention this fact. COMPARE I stayed for five days with a Swedish forestworker, Olaf Forsborg, in a little village called Bjérkberg. He had worked in Canada from 1928 to 1939 and was also out to the B.C. coast on a three- months’ study trip in 1962. While staying with him, I saw some of their methods of logging and reforestation and we were able to compare working conditions, standards of living, etc. SAWMILL OPERATIONS I visited two sawmills, one about 20 years old, one about five years old, both of them used a lot of electronic equip- ment. The logs first went through a metal detector then through a machine which measured them. These ma- chines controlled the convey- or belt the logs were riding on and automatically tripped them into the right pocket as they were carried along. SPOTLESS The newer sawmill was finished inside as well as out, no exposed beams to catch dust and, above every saw, there was a vacuum machine which sucked up all the fine sawdust. It was almost spot- lessly clean and the air was free of dust. I was shown a lot of their reforestation. They are justly proud of their forestry pro- gram and spend a lot of money, not only in reforesting and thinning, but also in re- search and training. In some areas they leave seed trees for natural regen- eration but as most of the ground is covered by a very heavy layer of moss they have to either burn off the top layer or scrape back the moss before the seeds will germinate. It is rather hard to compare standards of living between one country and another on the basis of a very short stay, but I understand that Sweden is supposed to have a slightly higher standard of living than Canada and I am inclined to agree. Talking to Olaf and com- paring wages, prices, taxes, etc., I would say that a B.C. coastal logger is receiving a wage which is above the Canadian national average, while a Swedish forestworker is below the Swedish national average, approximately 92 percent of the Swedish na- tional average. Another thing that must be taken into account is their higher welfare benefits. It is hard to put a cash value on these but they do seem to be a long way ahead of us in this field. They claim that there is no actual poverty or slums in Sweden and I do not think we can say the same. I enjoyed my visit to Swe- den very much and I think that we could learn a lot from that country. While, of course, it is by no means per- fect, they have achieved a great deal of value. bcal ‘FLY B.C. AIR LINES’