[W095 THUNDER BAY ONTARIO HOSTS HEALTH AND SAFETY CONFERENCE Organizers go on membership blitz IWA-CANADA’s National Organiz- ing Department reports that both National and Local Organizers across the country are becoming very suc- cessful in signing up hundreds of new members into the union. Since mid-February more than 600 new members have been certified to the national union. “At the pace we're going it looks like we'll surpass our membership drive in e Alberta Local 1-207 President Mike Pisak (1.) meets with new union members Nick Jensen, John Micku, John Anderson, and Doug Mosiuk at Weyerhauser Dray- ton Valley. the past year by a long shot,” says National Organizing Director, John Smithies. Brother Smithies says that in the past fiscal year, ending in September 1989, over 900 new members were organized. In one of the most welcome success stories, Local 1-207 in Alberta boasts of 240 new members at Weyerhauser Canada’s sawmill and oriented strand- board plants in Drayton Valley. Weyerhauser, which took over the manufacturing operations from Peli- can Lumber in May of last year, is the single largest employer in Drayton falley, a community of 5,000 people, (Continued on page 2) | TRADE | CERTIFICATION e In Ontario the union has played a big role in intro- ducing trades cer- tification for cut- ters and skidders id HARVESTING THE TSITIKA: LOGGERS WHALES CAN CO-EXIST PAGE 8 VIEW FROM THE NORTH © With over 5,000 members in Nor- thern B.C., Local 1-424 is also the province's largest local PAY EQUITY VICTORY — Local 1-700 members (I. to r.) Carol Richard, Charajit Jaj- wan, Kuljeet Bhullar, Paula Furtado and Antoinette Grelle are among the first [WA- CANADA workers to receive pay equity wage adjustments. The women work at Mac- Millan Bloedel’s Kingtrim Division in Weston, Ontario.— see page 14. | THE CARW ANAH DECISION, Union slams plan IWA-CANADA officials expressed bitter disappointment over an an- nouncement by British Columbia’s provincial Forests Minister, Claude Richmond that the Carmanah Valley on Vancouver Island’s west coast would be divided in half for parkland and logging. That announcement, made on April ap 10th, provides for the establishment of a 3,592 hectare park in the 6,731 hectare valley. No resource extraction will be allowed in the park area (the lower Carmanah) and any harvesting of timber in the upper Carmanah will be subject to further studies. “We are dissatisfied with the deci- sion because the government is not showing leadership,” said IWA -CANADA first vice-president, Gerry Stoney. “The government is still choosing to make crucial land use decisions on a valley-to-valley basis without concern for regional/provin- cial ecological or economic impacts.” The removal of productive forests lands will have an impact on MacMil- lan Bloedel’s logging and milling oper- ations in the Port Alberni district. MB, which holds the rights for the Tree Farm Licence #44, claims that there will be a timber shortfall of 66,000 cubic metres from its annual cut. Along with the removal of other productive areas from TFL #44, the company could lose up to 200,000 cubic metres of log production annually. Port Alberni local 1-85 president, Earl Foxcroft, also says that the deci- sion was not based on economics or common sense. He says that the gov- ernment ignored the Forest Service’s recommendations to harvest timber in the area and that the Carmanah decision is “purely political.” Foxcroft says a decision in logging in the upper Carmanah, which con- tains mostly hemlock, balsam and some douglas fir, “could take months or even years.” “Why they decided to cut a line across the valley and then impose further studies on logging is a com- plete mystery,” said Brother Foxcroft. Photo by Lyle Pona Continued on page 2