Message from the President

Strengthening labour
in the 1990’s

The passing of the nineteen
eighties provides another moment
for the Canadian labour move-
ment to stand back a little from
our immediate preoccupations,
and look into the future.

One trend which we have to
come to grips with is the weaken-
ing of the State. The so-called
“Free Trade Agreement” with the
United States was one of the
most prominent of many recent
symptoms, at least for Canadi-
ans, but it was only one. Prior to
that, there was the development
of multi-national corporations,
international banking, the in-
creasing intervention of the
International Monetary Fund and
the World Bank into what had

been regarded until a couple of
decades ago as the internal affairs
of nations, states, and so on.

The accumulated force of all
these developments is immense,
and they have all diminished the
strength and potential of the
State. So how should Canadian
labour react to this? 3

We can and should go on tacti-
cally resisting the trend. Over the
generations, we have constructed
under the umbrella of the State
some vital defences against the
excesses of “the free market
system”; legislation legalizing
trade unions, full collective
bargaining rights, old age
pensions, Medicare, U.I.C., univer-
sal education, to name a few, and

by Jack Munro

all of these are threatened by the
transfer of power from the State
to giant corporations. Depending
upon our success in interrupting
that transfer, a lot of people will
have decent lives, or be plunged
into misery.

And we have to have political
units within which to exercise
political rights. The democratic
principle of “one-person, one
vote”, has been at the root of all
successful assertions of human
values against capital.

But in the strategic sense, we
should be careful not to be offer-
ing unqualified support to the

nation-state as we have known it.

As this issue goes to print, I
will be attending meetings in Sin-

gapore, trying to assist people
working in the forest industries
of that part of the world, to
strengthen their labour organiza-
tions, and win at least a start on
the wages and conditions that we
take for granted in Canada.

The successes of labour in
North America and Western
Europe have done precious little
for these people, and if we choose
as our long-term strategy only
the strengthening of national bar-
riers to protect ourselves against
Singapore conditions, we will not
only continue to do precious little
for them, we will indirectly be
adding to the forces that now
undermine our generations of
accomplishments.

The following article by IWA
-CANADA Forest and Environment
Planner Claire Dansereau, exam-
ines the Audit Report by forestry
consultant Robert Wood on Tree
Farm Licence #46 on Vancouver
Island which was released in early
October.

The performance audit, which
looks at forestry practices on
southern Vancouver Island, was
commissioned by Forests Minister
Dave Parker in March of this year.

The spring of 1989 was a sad
time for many Vancouver Island
IWA-CANADA members. Four-
hundred and twenty-five of them
were told that the wood supply had
run out and with it their pay
cheques. How could this happen
when B.C. has supposedly been
practicing sustained-yield forestry
since 1945? How could this happen
when the Management and Work
Plan for the area predicted stable
employment for years to come?

British Columbia Forest Prod-
ucts Ltd.’s 1986 Management and
Work Plan didn’t even hint that
there would be a problem. On the
contrary, a rosier picture could not

have been painted. Fifty-three
years of old growth left they said!
The Victoria mill was well equipped
to shift towards processing smaller
logs they said! Yet, when the mill
closures were announced, insuffi-
cient lumber supply and anti-
quated mills were the stated
causes. Who is to blame? Well, the
Government said it wanted to know
the answer to that question, so, as
Governments do, it requested that
an audit be done to study the cor-

Claire Dansereau
ee

Sustainable Development

poration’s behaviour for the past
twenty years.
TERMS OF REFERENCE
Unfortunately, again as Govern-
ments do, they set the terms of
reference for the audit so narrowly
that no real questions could be
answered. The auditor has speci-
fied that his job was not meant to
analyze or “... provide commen-
tary on Government statutes, reg-
ulations and policies ...”, which
means that if there is something
wrong with the system of govern-
ing our forests the auditor was not
allowed to look at it. What this
does show us though is that if the

company did nothing outside of

the laws and people were laid-off,
then the laws and policies must be
at fault.

The audit shows, beyond a
shadow of doubt, that British
Columbia forestry tenure arrange-
ments are not designed to protect
workers or their communities.

Two key problems with the ten-
ure system are obvious from the
analysis of TFL 46:

e the practice of blocking-up
was prevalent in the company’s
history (blocking-up is to concen-
trate the cut in one part of the TFL
while still calculating the AAC over
the entire area)

e the company increased its
AAC through measures such as
reinventories, intensive forestry
and improvements to utilization
standards among others, but these
measures did little to increase the
amount of mature timber. Yet, it is
mature timber only that is of value
for harvesting so that cuts could be
increased over the years without an
equivalent increase in the mer-
chantable timber.

These two activities have con-
tributed greatly to the overly rapid
elimination of old growth within
the TFL leading to the predicted
‘downfall’ in timber supply. Unfor-
tunately, these practices are preva-
lent throughout the province and
do not appear to be happening any
less than before the audit.

MERGER IMPACTS

The company promised the Goy-
ernment that no jobs would be lost
because of the merger between
Crown Forest Products and B.C.F.P.

Yet, the auditor specifically states
that:

... FCCL has a current short-

No questions answered by TFL audit

age of most grades of logs. Lack of
suitable, available, (i.e. Hemlock
Balsam) log supply was a contrib-
uting factor in the closure of Til-
bury and Victoria. This was further
compounded by locational and
technical obsolescence factors
related to these mills and to the
availability of more efficient FCCL
manufacturing facilities . ..

The auditor should have been
able to note whether or not the
more efficient facilities were part of
the same company prior to the
merger but his terms of reference
did not permit him to do so. The
impacts of the merger on the work-
force were not what he was required
to study. This is very unfortunate
since the Minister promised that
no jobs would be lost when it per-
mitted Fletcher Challenge to merge
BCFP and Crown. Jobs were lost

and no one is allowed to find out
why.

COMPENSATION AND
LAND-USE PLANNING

The impact of land withdrawals
for the purposes of creating parks
is shown in the audit to contribute
directly to diminishing log sup-
plies. In addition to not being pro-
tected through the tenure system,
it is interesting to note that when
lands were removed from the com-
pany for Park additions, the com-
pany was fully compensated —
either in cash or in kind — for a
reduced AAC. No compensation
was made to the workers or to the
communities that were affected.

Many lands were withdrawn
from the company’s holdings so
that they could be added to the
Pacific Rim National Park. These

(Continued on page 13)

RE

4/LUMBERWORKER/DECEMBER, 1989