34,000 copies
printed in this issue

Published as the off
Western C:
Sth Floor,
Editor — Clay Perry

jan Regio

ayithewestern canadian
lord lumber worker

jal publication of the INTERNATIONAL WOODWORKERS OF AMERICA
Council No. 4
West Pender Street, Vancouver, B.C. V6E 482 Phone 683-1117

Affiliated with AFL-CIO-CLC

Business Manager — G. A. Stoney

Forwarded to every member of the IWA in Western Canada in accordance with convention decisions.
Subscription rate for non-members $2.00 per year.

Two hundred workers at Sooke Forest
Products and another 100 employed at
Lamford Cedar (a Vancouver subsidiary),
have lost their jobs — more victims of log
exports, of bank practices and of bad legisla-
tion respecting employer bankruptcy.

Most critics of the federal “bankruptcy
act” focus on the unpaid wages problem.
This law requires payment of wages only
after all “secured debt” (i.e. bank debt) is
paid!

This is an injurious piece of class law,
fashioned by representatives of capital (like
Turner and Mulroney) for the protection of
capital. But the worst aspect of the way
“belly-up” companies are wrapped upis that
the receiver places no emphasis at all on
what should be the chief consideration: the
preservation of the jobs concerned.

The purpose of the bankruptcy act (quot-
ing from the 1981 parliamentary commit-
tee’s report on the subject) is twofold:

1. to provide a means whereby honest
insolvent debtors can be discharged of
their debts so that they may have an
opportunity to re-establish their individ-
ual, personal or corporate commercial
lives, and

2. to provide a reasonably expeditious and
inexpensive means whereby the availa-

. ble property of insolvent debtors can
ultimately be distributed to their credi-
tors in an orderly fashion.

For those who don’t understand what we
mean when we say that we'll get more of the
same under majority Liberal or Conserva-
tive governments, consider that the first
purpose of the law is to protect the bankrupt
businessman, and that the payment of
wages comes third in the purposes, after
trying to insure that the businessmen will
have an opportunity to “re-establish” him-
self, and after the payment of secured debts.
Trying to find a way to preserve the jobs,
and thereby the employees and the com-
munity, is not even mentioned.

Throughout western Canada, IWA opera-

NDP leader Ed Broadbent speaks to laid-off |WA members

ii

VICTIMS OF BANKS, BAD LAW

tions that could have continued to operate
once the crushing debts created by monetar-
ist excess were removed, have been sum-
marily shut down by receivers. They made
sure that the banks were paid and as much
as declared “to hell with the workers and the
community.” 4

In Williams Lake, 114 IWA members lost
their livelihoods when Ultratherm of Can-
ada (waterbeds) went belly-up. The com-
pany had only been operating for a short
while, largely financed by a federal govern-
ment loan of $500,000 and an additional
$500,000 in October of 1983. (As often
happens, this money became hard to trace
after the closure.)

IWA Local 1-425 immediately set about
trying to save the jobs. They negotiated with
the French bank that had called the loan,
and seemed to have made a deal. They
talked to federal officials about making a
further advance and that looked good too.

The receiver then gave them reason to
believe that another buyer was interested,
so they held back, waiting developments.
But it turned out that there was no other
buyer, and the whole thing collapsed.

On August 8, Socred government officials

“(representatives of the British Columbia
Development Corporation) shut down Port
Mann Planing (35 man crew). No effort to
see if the operation could be saved. In
Penticton, 75 jobs at Greenwood were lost.

In Kelowna, Canamera Homes closed
down, throwing 30 people out of work. It
soon re-opened as Chapperelle Industries,
under essentially the same management.
The union (Local 1-423) had to fight to retain
the agreement. The called-back employees
have not yet received their last paycheque or
holiday pay from Canamera, despite the
very close relationship between the old and
new companies.

These are just a few examples of workers
and communities having the rug pulled out
from under them. There are hundreds more,

Labor Review, June, 1984.

NOBEL WINNING _
ECONOMIST ON
- UNEMPLOYMENT

The prospects of reducing unemployment
to 1979 rates, let alone 1973 rates, are dismal
for the remainder of the 1980’s. For the
governments of the major locomotives of the
world economy — Canada, France, West
Germany, Italy, Japan, the United King-
dom, and the United States — significant
reduction of unemployment is not a high
joint or individual priority. The prevailing
attitudes, among both governors and
governed, are fatalism and compla-
cency :

Macroeconomic expansion is the key to
progress against unemployment. It will not
solve all the problems. The pathology of
urban neighborhoods cannot be cured by
monetary and fiscal policy. Macro policies
and general prosperity will not restore the
old high-wage jobs in smokestack industries
in the American Midwest or the Ruhr. There
is plenty of room and need for intelligent
public policies to treat these difficult cases.
But they will be hopeless unless general
prosperity and growth are restored.

James Tobin, Sterling Professor of Eco-
nomics, Yale University.

Quoted in U.S. Dept. of Labor’s monthly

B.C. NDP leader Skelly at meeting, comments on banks

cases in which the jobs, the people, the
communities could be saved.

But the law, created by Conservatives,
and preserved by successive Liberal and
Conservative governments, decrees other-
wise.

They will tell you that that is the way it
has to be, that people have to take second
place to money. But western European

countries have found ways of putting the’

worker first. The difference is that they have
governments that try. We do not.

LEST WE FoRter..
fins pee oneal
WHEN J CLOSED THE MINE!

Reprinted from Globe & Mait

4/Lumber Worker/August, 1984