e IWA National president Gerry Stoney said industry actions are putting good faith and long-term stability at risk. Collaboration and power sharing needed in industry says Stoney “One of the most disturbing aspects of the job loss pattern of the past is that little or nothing was done by industry or government to preemp- tively deal with those who were losing their jobs,” said IWA-CANADA Presi- dent Gerry Stoney who appeared before delegates to the Annual Gener- al Meeting of the Council of Forest Industries’ Northern Interior Lumber Sector. During the presentation, which took place in Prince George on April 2, 1993, Brother Stoney outlined some of the IWA’s concerns that need to be addressed in the near future as timber supplies are being reduced. “We have possibly reached the point where it’s put up or shut up for the forest sector in this province,” said Stoney. “. . . The timber supply picture in B.C. is changing and no matter where you sit in the scheme of things, our collective interests are going to be served by some kind of coordinated or strategy effort to man- age the impacts of that change.” Brother Stoney said it’s high time for all those involved in the forest sec- tor to work together and warned of the dangers of not working together. “We don't have to look very far for examples of sectors that couldn't get their act together and are now scram- bling to pick up the pieces before fur- ther damage is done. Because that is what is happening right now in this province's fishing industry, the mining industry, and in our health care sys- tem.” “The problems aren’t just of indus- try’s making, any more than they’re of labour’s making,” Brother Stoney told the meeting. “As the owner of the for- est resource the provincial govern- ment owns a fair number of them.” “And just as industry and labour have to step outside our traditional view of ourselves and talk in very straight-up terms about how we are prepared to respond to the current dilemma, so must government . . . In particular government has to look very seriously at how it coordinates its responses to various forest sector issues across all of its many ministries and agencies.” Stoney said that to get results then all parties must try different ways of operating. He said that the parties should “be more pre-disposed to real 2/LUMBERWORKER/JUNE, 1993 power sharing, real consultation, and real collaboration with each other.” “The resource owners and the resource users are now being forced to, at the very least, re-think and, more likely reconfigure themselves around a more intensive approach to industrial development and growth.” That intensive approach, according to Brother Stoney, involve more value-added production, re-manufac- turing, and new product and new mar- ket development in the manufacturing sector. In the logging, and forest man- agement side of the business, Stoney said its time for intensive silviculture and closer wood utilization. The speaker said that in the past the union has given of itself collective- ly without receiving enough in return. They said that the IWA’s acceptance of technological change was based on an assumption that sustained yield would be a reality. “With close to 20,000 fewer IWA jobs in the industry today compared to the late 70’s, you can understand why there might be some second thoughts about what a sector strategy process will do in terms of jobs.” The IWA president told the audience that a sector strategy in the future must have concrete examples of how everyone will benefit from the change. He then outlined some current areas of conflict which are affecting the IWA’s relationship with manage- ment today. Stoney said that the union is still negotiating with three major employer associations over parity with the 1992 pulp settlement. “Some employers are already mak- ing up the difference, others are drag- ging their feet, but either way, the issues of good faith and long-term sta- bility are being put at risk.” Brother Stoney said that the issue of contracting out is still a critical one for the IWA. “Despite all of the battles and bitter- ness of (the) 1986 (strike over con- tracting out), we — and here I am referring to both sides — have not found a way to resolve this thorny and tough issue,” he said. “Trust, openness, balance, win - win- / all those good things are going to end up on the rocks somewhere if we don’t get back to understanding why it is important to promote and protect each other's interests.” Mexican unionist says NAFTA creating worse life for people — “In Mexico we believe that this free trade agreement (NAFTA), far from resolving the problems that we are confronting in our region, is just going to make the difficulties much bigger,” said Mexican trade unionist Isais Gar- cia to a Vancouver B.C. audience on March 11th. Brother Garcia, a repre- sentative with the Frente Autentico de Trabajo (FAT), a group of unions par- ticipating in a Mexican coalition net- work opposed to NAFTA, said the trade deal is going to “precipitate an exploitation of people and resources that is much more serious.” During the last four years Garcia said the Mexican government of Car- los Salinas de Gortari has initiated a program of “so-called modernization at all levels of government” in order to prepare Mexico for NAFTA. The gov- ernment has changed laws and the constitution which has principally affected the workers of Mexico, said Garcia. Examples of this are new trade lib- eralization laws which give foreign capital all the rights and privileges of Mexican business interests. In addi- tion basic changes to Mexican consti- tution regulating the ownership of land in the agricultural sector is see- ing the people forced off the land. “Now with the change any individ- ual inside or outside the country can buy land,” said the speaker. Wage limits “ amposed by their government are ensuring that Mexicans will pro- vide among the cheapest labour in the world “Before the changes the owners of property were the peasants who worked the land that they owned,” said Garcia. “Now big agribusiness is establishing itself for the exportation business and peasants who were own- ers are now working up to 12 hours a day with no benefits and wages of $5.00/day. The Mexican government has also cutback on public services, health and education which has affected working people. In other areas of public spending the government has been privatizing state enterprises and laying off tens of thousands of workers. Mr. Garcia said the unemployment has increased during the years approaching NAFTA and that the Ma- quiladora free trade zones are not solving the jobless problems in Mexi- co. In Mexico today there are about 2,000 Maquiladora factories which employ about 500,000 workers. Broth- er Garcia said Mexico needs to create 1.5 million jobs annually to solve the problems of growing unemployment. Wage limits imposed by govern- ment are ensuring that Mexico will provide among the cheapest labour in the world. Garcia said that during the past 10 years the buying power of Mexican workers had dropped by 60%: as wages have been restricted and kept low while inflation has remained high. “The quality and quantity of food that workers eat has worsened con- siderably because the wages are so low,” said Garcia. A great number of children are suffering from malnutri- tion and the education of the popula- tion is low. To fight back against the NAFTA Brother Garcia said that the FAT is informing as many Mexican’s as possi- ¢ Isais Garcia ble and that alliances are being made among organizations of workers and citizens to form a common front and propose alternatives to the free trade agreement. “No trade agreement must come about at the sovereignty of the coun- try and the cost of well-being of a majority of us,” Garcia told the audi- ence. Patricia Hume a Mexican environ- mentalist and social activist from the state of Morales said that the NAFTA is anti-social, anti-democratic, and anti-environment. She said that the Salinas govern- ment has not informed the population on what is being negotiated in NAFTA. “For us it has been very difficult to even know what kinds of terms that have been negotiated in the trade agreement,” said Hume. “What we want is a democratic process . . . to have trade agreements that are equitable and to seek out a quality of life for people that comes before the profit motive.” Ms. Hume said that in Morales there is increasing contamination of work- ers and the environment with the pro- liferation of pharmaceutical factories owned by such multi-nationals as Cin- tex, Baxter, and Dupont. Many workers are now faced with chronic illness from exposure to toxic substances. Men are suffering from sterility while many women have suf- fered spontaneous abortions. She said that the exploitation of the environment has gone hand in hand with exploitation of workers.