ist Issue, December

B.C. LUMBER WORKER

3

IWA WINS WIUC STRONGHOLD

Representation vote conducted by the Labor Relations

Board in the operations of

Passmore Lumber Co. Litd.,

Passmore, B.C., has given a decisive majority in favor of

IWA certification, and has repudi:

ated the bargaining

authority of the WIUC, held by that Union since the
October, 1948, LPP-Communist secession of some lumber
worker bargaining units in the Kootenay area.

After several weeks’ delay,
caused by disputes regarding the
voting eligibility of some employ-
ees, the official results were re-
leased this week. Out of 240
employees eligible to vote, 201
voted — 166 favored the IWA,
and 31 the WIUC, four ballots
being spoiled.

The recent IWA victory is re-
garded by IWA officials as a
death blow to the WIUC orga-
nization, which since 1949 has
been confined to the East and
West Kootenay lumbering opera-
tions.

Immediately prior to this re-
cent representation vote, both

Unions had waged a bitter cam-
paign for the allegiance of the
Passmore Co. employees, many of
whom are members of the adja-
cent Doukhobor communities. It
‘was recognized on both sides that
matters had reached a climax in

the seven-year war between the]!

Unions in that district.

The Passmore Lumber’ Co. was
the largest operation in which
the WIUC has held bargaining

rights. The next largest, the
Glacier Lumber Co., situated near
Nelson, will be contested in an
official vote, December 12.

“Not True,” Says

Irate Tony Poje

Attempt of the General Manager of Western Forest
Industries Ltd. to blame the employees for a Honeymoon
Bay shut-down from December 22 to January 3, with a
four-day work week to follow, was promptly challenged
recently by President Tony~Poje, Local 1-80, in an open
letter to TWA members affected.

General Manager B. B. Gattie,
in a notice posted for the inform-
ation of the employees insinuated
that the loss of fourteen shifts
was entirely due to what he de-
scribed as an “illegal stoppage
of work”, caused by the action
of the fallers and buckers, when
they sought redress for the Com-
pany’s “chiselling” on their rates.
Onus Rests with Company

In an open letter addressed to
all the workers in the operation,
President Poje places the blame
squarely on the Company man-
agement. He does not deny the
shortage of logs complained of
by management, but states that
there would have been no such
shortage if the Company had re-
frained from violations of the
agreement on rates and had paid
the rates established for the area,

He points out that the fallers
and buckers had been provoked
into a legitimate protest because
of the fact that management had

Printers of

The B.C.
LUMBER WORKER

AUN A

LIMITED

An Employee Owned Co.

not acted in good faith. The fall-
ers and buckers, he states, were
being forced by the Company to
work without a contract, because
of the Company’s intention to de-
prive them of the benefit of rates
already established by agree-
ment.

The unanswerable argument
which appears in President Poje’s
letter is that, as a result of the
firm protest made by the fallers
and buckers in the Gordon River
and Meade Creek camps, they are
now working under a collective
agreement with the terms and
rates which the company had
formerly agreed to and later at-
tempted to repudiate.

In scathing language, Presi-
dent Poje states that the com-
pany is guilty of posting “de-
liberate untruths”, which can
only result in a further deterior-
ation of good labor-management
relations.

His suggestion is that the Com-
pany has resorted to a “childish”
form . of vindictive retaliation,
only because the company itself
had been exposed in a serious
breach of ethics in dealing with
employees.

UAW SPOKESMEN for 17,000 members on strike in
Columbia, and here get a sympathetic hearing from [WA District President Joe Morris.
Morris, Don Smith, UAW Oshawa, and Les Rudrum, UAW, St. Catherines.

G.M. STRIKERS TELL STORY

five Ontario plants of General Motors, visit British
(From left) Joe

UAW Men
Appeal
To IWA

Appeal directed to IWA
Local Unions recently, by
visiting representatives of
the United Automobile
Workers now on strike in
five General Motors’ plants
in Ontario, predicted that
the strike which involves
17,000 workers will not find
an early settlement.

Visiting spokesmen for the
strikers were Auto Workers, Don
Smith, Acting Chairman of the
Bargaining Committee, UAW,
Local No. 222, Oshawa, and Les
Rudrum, Executive Officer, UAW
Local No. 199, St. Catherines,

Ont,
Their appearance at the last

See “STRIKE APPEAL” Page 10

A Real Union Shop
And No Mistake!

No less than TEN unions work in harmonious
essociation with the management of The Van-
couver Sun to produce the daily issues of Western
Canada's leading newspaper that go into two out
of three British Columbia homes. The Sun is happy
to be a real Union Shop throughout, with agreeable
relations with all its organized crafts and personnel.

PHONE TAtlow 7140
FOR DAILY HOME
CARRIER DELIVERY

oo

New UIC Rules
Hit Loggers

Disqualification of some loggers for Unemployment
Insurance benefits following early seasonal closures in

some camps, and caused by

amendments in the Act, as

approved at the last session of Parliament has been the
subject of enquiry by the IWA.

Continuing efforts are being
made to eliminate the confusion
caused by changes in the quali-
fications now based on weekly
earnings instead of the former
daily basis.

In an effort to provide auth-
entic information on the subject,
District President Joe Morris re-
cently interviewed the officials of
the Regional Office of the Com-
mission. The answers received
were conveyed to the Union’s
membership over the Green Gold
radio program.

One point made, which has not
been generally understood is that
those who do not now qualify for
the ordinary benefits will have
their ‘claims automatically con-
sidered for the seasonal benefits
which commence on the week in-
cluding January 1. Claims now
submitted for ordinary benefit
and rejected during December,
will be processed to determine
eligibility for the seasonal bene-

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CORNER ROBSON & GRANVILLE

“OLD DOC”

fits, extending from January to
April.

The answers received to a
number of stated questions are
as follows:

What are the principal
changes in the Act?

Answer: The new Act which
came into force on October 2nd,
this year, stipulated three main
changes.

(1) Contributions will now be
based on the amount of earnings
in a week.

(2) The scale of contributions
has been revised so that the ratio
of Contributions to weekly salary
is very much the same in each
earnings class and

(8) three new earnings classes
have been added, and these will
allow greater benefits to em-
ployees who move into those new
earnings classes.

Are the benefits under the
new Act an Improvement?

Answer: There isn’t any doubt
about it. When the actuaries were
studying the effect the new bene-
fit formula might have, they took
1953 as a sample year. The total
number of benefit days actually
allowed under the old Act was,
of course, known. They then es-
timated the number of benefit
days that would have resulted
from the new formula, They
found that over three million ad-
ditional benefit days would have
been allowed to those claimants
under the new formula.

What decides how much an
unemployed person will be pald.
. Answer: When the original

legislation was passed in 1940, a
See “RULES” Page 9