* Aspen logs began to pile up in the yard between Christmas and New Years.

Weyerhaeuser gets OSB plant
going after 18 month closure

SLAVE LAKE, ALBERTA-There’s
some very good news in the air here
for the people of this rural forestry
community, about 150 miles north of
Edmonton. In February, Weyer-
haeuser Canada began producing ori-
entated strand board here after buy-
ing out Weldwood Canada’s moth-
balled plant. The news is good for two
reasons; first the workers are back
after an 18 month shutdown, and sec-
ond the plant is back in the IWA.

Getting the plant signed up to a
union contract was quite a bit differ-
ent than it usually is. In fact, Weyer-
haeuser, which operates two other
OSB plants in Alberta (Drayton Valley
and Edson), first contacted IWA Local
1-207 to see what it could do in
achieving a labour agreement and co-
operate in recalling former IWA mem-
bers that were laid off in April, 1991.
At the time of the start-up, Weyer-
haeuser had recalled many of the orig-
inal crew employed at the end of the
Weldwood era.

Weldwood mothballed the plant
after it was unable to find a purchas-
er. Despite spending over $9 million in
a 1988 modernization program, the
mill claimed to subsequently lose
money and it had to be sold.

Now that market prices for OSB
have jumped back up again, Weyer-
haeuser thinks it can make a go of it,
so the plant is back in business.

In addition to the direct IWA jobs
created in the mill, the community of
Slave Lake will benefit from the hun-
dreds of jobs that are re-created in
logging and hauling. Wood began to
trickle into the mill yard between last
Christmas and New Years.

The OSB plant has a solid supply of
aspen timber. The Alberta govern-
ment let Weldwood hang on to its For-
est Management Agreement for 18
months until it could find a buyer and
now Weyerhaeuser gets the wood.

IWA-CANADA Local 1-207’s Finan-
cial Secretary Bob DeLeeuw, who
negotiated the back to work contract,

says the workers will be starting up at
their former seniority levels with a full
benefit package.

The contract will expire in April of
1985 and workers will get an 85¢/hr.
increase in wages next year.

As IWA members should be aware
Alberta labour laws are anti-worker
and organizing a union in the province
is next to impossible.

“With the labour laws the way they
are, the big thing we can be happy
about is that we got a collective agree-
ment,” says Brother DeLeeuw. “Cer-
tainly if Weyerhaeuser wanted, they
could have taken us through some
hoops if we had to re-organize the
plant.”

IWA-CANADA Local 1-207 has dealt
with Weyerhaeuser at an oriented
strand board plant in Drayton Valley,
Alberta; which it organized in early
1990. Labour relations there are fairly
good by all standards.

Certainly getting the OSB plant back
in the union should help the IWA in
the community of Slave Lake, where it
has been on strike against the Zeidler
Industries plywood veneer plant since
March of 1986.

Zeidler has taken IVA members
through the ringer for nearly seven
years and wants to operate complete-
ly non-union. The IWA has also been
striking against Zeidler’s Edmonton
plywood plant since early 1988.

“I think that anyone who believes
we are the bad guys in the Zeidler
strike will be wondering how we can
sign an agreement with Weyerhaeuser
without problems, while the Zeidler
strike is dragging on’, says DeLeeuw.
“This should help us gain more sup-
port in the community.”

Terry Jewell, Weyerhaeuser’s
Human Resources Manager for Alber-
ta, says the company wants the ex-
employees. “They are all welcome to
come back and anyone who wants to
come back is there now,” says Mr.
Jewell.

Start up Manager Percy Champagne

said that a phone was set up in the
plant starting November 8, 1992 and
the company received over 600 appli-
cations. He says over half of the for-
mer employees who worked at the
aut contacted Weyerhaeuser about a
job.

The mill started at one shift for
eight hours, then has added an addi-
tional crew. Mr. Champagne says the
goal is to run 7 days a week, 24 hours
a day.

Since the shutdown in 1991 some

Weyerhaeuser has
chosen to work with
the IWA in a com-
munity torn by the
Zeidler strike

former employees have moved to Hin-
ton, Alberta where Weldwood has a
pulp mill and logging operations and
some tradesmen have headed north to
the new ALPAC pulp operation.

The expertise of the recalled work-
force will help Weyerhaeuser reach its
production targets in Slave Lake
which are up to 2 million square feet
of OSB on an M 3/8” annual basis. Mr.
Champagne says the company will
start out at 3/8” and eventually pro-
duce thicker board when it gets the
production techniques perfected.

One of the factors inhibiting higher
production is the fact that the plant
only has a four foot production line
while most of its competitors have an
eight foot line.

Brother DeLeeuw says he would
not be surprised if Weyerhaeuser
eventually goes to an eight foot line
somewhere down the road.

Local 1-424 gets agreement
at Louisiana-Pacific plant

Nine months after the IWA was cer-
tified to Louisiana-Pacific’s oriented
strand board in Dawson Creek, B.C.,
the union has ratified a 2 year con-
tract. On December 16 of last year 150
IWA-CANADA Local 1-424 members in
the plant approved an agreement with
an 63% majority.

For the union, getting a first agree-
ment is a victory of sorts. The IWA
battled company interference since
1988 in order to bring the workers
into the union and now they have got
an agreement.

“It’s all pretty damn significant,”
says Local 1-424 president Frank
Everitt. “After four runs at the place
we're happy to have these new mem-
bers in our union. Certainly the sup-
port we got from national organizers
and local organizers were the major
factors that helped us achieve our
goals.”

The collective agreement which will
expire at the end of 1994, gives work-
ers a 2% across the board increase in
each of the two years. The workers
also now have proper seniority reten-
tion including layoff and recall protec-
tion.

The union negotiating committee,
headed by Brother Everitt, also
included Local 1-424’s first vice-presi-
dent Jack Higgins and new IWA mem-
bers in the plant. They are Wally Brain,
Ed Henderson, Terry Ireland, June
Allen, and Doug Henchell.

Bargaining began in July 1992 and
wrapped up with a final offer from
Louisiana-Pacific on December 10.
Although the local union is not com-
pletely satisfied with that contract,
especially in areas such as manage-
ment’s rights, just getting an agree-
ment with Louisiana-Pacific is a feat
in itself.

“There is definitely some contract

language we'll have to work on for the
next collective agreement,” says
Brother Everitt. “This is just a first
agreement and that’s the way we look
at it.” g

Most importantly, the workers have
job security, seniority, and a griev-
ance procedure to look forward to.
Both are needed as L-P has a deserved
reputation as being one of the most
anti-union employers in North Ameri-
ca.

After Local 1-424 cértified L-P last
year, the company fired one worker
and suspended eight others for wear-
ing IWA-CANADA stickers on their
hard hats.

The union took L-P in front of the
provincial labour board, and eventual-
ly all 9 workers were given their jobs
back with back pay and benefits.

“Now you can bet there’s workers
who wear their hard hat stickers very
proudly,” says Everitt.

In the five organizing drives since
1988 (three of them went to a certifi-
cation vote), the union spent well in
excess of $100,000 in its struggle with
L-P. The first union dues came into
Local 1-424’s Prince George office in
February.

“We certainly didn’t go after the
plant for the amount of union dues it
can produce,” says Brother Everitt.
“We went after L-P because they were
routinely violating the rights of work-
ers in this province.”

The local union president says he
hopes that L-P can modify its manage-
ment style and work with its workers
instead of being such an authoritarian
employer.

“I think the company now recog-
nizes that the IWA is a legitimate play-
er in the B.C. forest industry,” com-

Continued on page sixteen

LUMBERWORKER/MARCH, 1993/11