Free trade problems
to get much worse

T has now been more than three years that we

have been living under the provisions of the

Canada-US. Free Trade Agreement and we all

know of someone in our family or a friend who

has been affected by it. However, the change to
Canadian society as a whole has been much more
insidious and damaging.

In the past three years we have witnessed the per-
manent loss of over 350,000 jobs in the worst decline
since the Depression of the 1930's and the picture is
getting worse.

Although the Mulroney government vowed that
Canada’s agricultural supply management system
would remain intact under FTA it has accelerated the
removal of tariffs which are essential to the system’s
preservation. At present Canada is being pressured
by GATT to do away with supply management con-
trols over farm products. Farmers are in the worst
slump they have seen since the Depression and food
production jobs in Canada are disappearing for good
as we become more and more dependent on the U.S.
for our food supply.

_ Worker retraining and adjustment programs prom-
ised to displaced workers have not appeared and thou-
sands of Canadians have been-put on the welfare roles.

As Canada’s tax base has collapsed, the federal gov-
ernment has cut social and regional programs which
it said, during the 1988 election, that it would protect.

In medical transfer payments alone, Mulroney has
cut over $8 billion to the provinces and has destroyed
the principle of universality in Old Age Security pro-
grams and Family Allowances.

The Mulroney government has also dismembered
regional and industrial development funding while
American states have rolled out the red carpet with
incentives and subsidies to lure hundreds of Canadian
companies to the U.S.

Businesses are pushing the Canadian government.
to slash and weaken social standards, environmental
standards, health and safety. standards, workers com-
pensation standards and many other regulations.

And a North American Free Trade deal is just
around the corner as we head towards a regional trad-
ing bloc under U.S. domination, a nation which bla-
tantly abuses power against other nations such as
Canada and Mexico.

The same corporate interests who bought the 1988
Canadian election for the Mulroney Conservatives are
pushing the Mexican initiative, in search of permanent
freedom from government regulation in order to trade,
produce and organize financing around the maximiza-
tion of profits.

We're talking about corporate interests like General
Motors, Ford, General Electric, Northern Telecom,
Motorola, Johnson and Johnson, Whirlpool, Campbell
Soup, Gillette, Electrolux, Kimberly Clark, Westing-
house, Black and Decker, and IBM who have shut
down operations under the FTA and retained tariff
free or reduced tariff access to Canadian markets.
"Those same companies have been investing heavily in
Mexico's Maquiladora trade zone where workers are
paid an average $.98 U.S. per hour according to 1989
statistics from the U.S. Department of Labour.

Over 90% of North American trade is executed by a
small group of multinationals while over 78% of trade
in manufactured goods, according to the Canadian
Labour Congress, is “intra-firm trade” (the cross bor-
der shipment of goods from one facility to another
owned by a single firm).

As this accelerated corporate restructuring contin-
ues, Canadians will lose hundreds of thousands of jobs
to Mexico's Maquiladora and the U.S. sunbelt states.

e LUMBERUIORKER

Official publication of 'WA-CANADA

NORMAN GARCIA,

GERRY STONEY President

Baier NEIL MENARD... Ist Vice-President
ROGER STANYER 2nd Vice-President
5th Floor, i i
1285 W. Pender Street mee BORON pa Vice-President
Vancouver, B.C. ecretary-Treasurer
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Canadian unemployment skyrockets
as jobless rate hits 1.5 million people

The unemployment statis-
tics are staggering. Today
over 1.53 million Canadians
are without a job and tens of
thousands more have stopped.
looking for work. More than
11.1% of Canadians are with-
out a job and there’s no end in
sight.

Added to these shocking
numbers are the facts that,
according to Statistics Can-
ada, almost 70,000 manufac-
turing jobs were permanently
lost in the final 3 months of
1991. Last year, in Ontario
alone there was a 53.1% rise in
unemployment to over 1/2
million people.

In that province, over
60,000 people ran out of UI

benefits in the last 3 months -
of 1991 and were forced on the ©

provincial welfare rolls in an
already cash strapped prov-
ince. Although the Feds fund
about half of social assistance,
more burden has been shifted
to the Bob Rae government.

Most of those jobs are gone
for good.

Even the chief economist
for the Canadian Manufactur-
ing Association Jason Meyers
says the writing is on the
wall: “Forget about rational-
ization,” he says, “this is the
end for a lot of these com-
panies,”

For IWA-CANADA mem-
bers the unemployment sta-
tistics in our union are even
more shocking. In a B.C. wide
survey in late October and
early November of last year,
conducted by our Research
Department results reveal
that 28.2% of our members
have been put out of a job
since mid-June, 1989.

Nearly half of all plywood
mill workers are out on the
street, 29.4% of sawmill work-
ers are unemployed, and
25.7% of the unionized log-
ging sector is jobless.

In other parts of Canada,
the unemployment numbers
are worse for IWA members.

In central Canada the pulp
and paper industry has been
running at only 70% of its
regular capacity. This has
destroyed markets for our
wood chips and logs.

The major culprit in job
loss has been the Canada-U.S.
Free Trade Agreement signed
in January of 1989. Up until
that point our economy was
going great but in the past 3
years the country has lost
over 369,000 jobs in goods
producing industries.

Industrial production in
Canada has dropped by 7.5%
or $10 billion since 1989 as we
hit the recession well before
our major trading partners.

More and more
Canadians are dealing
with the reality that
their jobs are
gone forever

All wrapped up in the free
trade deal is the cold fact that
we haven't even resolved what
constitutes an industrial sub-
sidy in most sectors while
Canadian producers, such as
in the softwood lumber sec-
tor, are being subjected to
ongoing harassment from the
U.S. Derek Burney, Canada’s
Ambassador to Washington,
said that “Canada faces tough
times ahead on the trade
front.”

Although Mulroney sold
the 1988 election on the prom-
ise of free access to. the U.S.
market, the opposite has hap-
pened. However the Ameri-
cans have gained increased
access to our resources as the
FTA has ensured that Cana-
dian users of Canadian re-
sources will enjoy no pricing
advantage over U.S. import-
ers of the same.

So the question remains,
what is Mulroney and his
gang of turncoats doing
about the unemployed?

Instead of helping the
unemployed survive, in Janu-
ary of this year the govern-
ment increasing UIC premi-
ums by 7.1%, after an increase
of 24% in July of 1991.

Finance Minister Don Ma-
zankowski’s decision to raise
premiums (a worker with
$26,000 in UI insurable earn-
ings must now fork out $780
in annual UI payments) com-
pletely ignores the advice of
business, labour, and his own
Unemployment Insurance
Commissioners.

He has also turned his back
on his predecessor Michael
Wilson’s 1990 pledge to fund
UIC. shortfalls with federal
money, after of course, the
insurance scheme was com-
pletely abandoned by federal
funding.

The facts remain simple
and bleak for Canadian work-
ers. Canada does not have a
labour market policy that will
help unemployed workers.

When good paying jobs are
lost due to free trade, market
shift, or technological change,
there is a desperate need to
have a program in place to
re-skill workers so that they
can get good paying jobs
again.

The Canadian Job Strat-
egy, introduced by Mulroney
in 1985 as the major plank in
the Canada Employment and
Immigration Commission's
retraining program is a com-
plete bust. The program has
been an administrative boon-
doggle which has had its
funding chiselled away at the
same time that UI cuts have
been made.

The paradox is that Can-
ada is experiencing a labour
market shortage of workers
with critical skills while the
unemployment lines get
longer.

LUMBERWORKER/APRIL, 1992/5