Save Our Johs committee makes
video to fight misinformation and
communicate views of workers

Television watchers in most regions
of British Columbia have recently had
the rare opportunity to get a glimpse
of how ordinary workers feel about
the ongoing issues of land use and
how workers feel when they think
they are going to lose their jobs due to
the creation of more wilderness and
parks areas.

Nowhere have workers been more
effected than in the Cariboo and
Chilcotin region of the B.C. Interior.
About 1/3 of the land base in these
regions is either set aside or is being
deferred for further studies as uncer-
tainty has the workers and the com-
munities very concerned.

For over four years a local action
group, which is led by Local 1-425
members Terry Tate and Mitch Van
Dale has been expressing concerns
over the dwindling forest land base. In
April the “Save Our Jobs” (SOJ) Com-
mittee released a 48 minute video
which deals with some important
issues that woodworkers and commu-
nities in the Cariboo-Chilcotin are
faced with.

The video production, called “A
Forest Held Captive”, was produced
through payroll donations from work-
ers in the Cariboo-Chilcotin, and some
‘small businesses.

So far the video has aired in the
Cariboo-Chilcotin, Prince George, and
Quesnel area. It has also been broad-
cast on local TY stations in the Koote-
nays, the Okanagan, Salmon Arm and
out to the north coast Terrace and
Kitimat areas.

I's a straight forward documentary
of what workers feel and why they
want to communicate their concerns
to the public. The production also
sends out a message to the public that
it must pay more attention to people
in rural communities before they ask
forest workers to sacrifice their jobs.

Of the 10 million hectares of land in
the Cariboo TSA, only half is accessi-
ble commercial timber of which 2.5
million hectares are preserved in
parks, wilderness and restricted area.
Bordering outside of the TSA are the
giant Wells Gray and Tweedsmuir
Parks which add an additional 1.5 mil-
lion hectares to the preserved land
base.

New major park proposals near
Chilkco Lake, Spruce Lake, and Churn
Creek propose to set aside well over
900,000 additional hectares.

That has people upset and worried
that they could see their livelihoods

disappear. The video talks directly
with the workers who could be affect-
ed if the pressures of preservationism
succeed.

“I feel my hands are tied. Nobody
asked me about these issues, how I
feel about it . . . ,” says Steve Lamont,
a de-barker operator at Lignum’s
sawmill in Williams Lake. It seems
like a hopeless situation, whatever
happens is out of my hands.”

Brother Lamont, who appears in the
video, is one of thousands of workers
in the Cariboo whose jobs depend
directly on the forest industry.

There are 12 communities and
78,000 people who are dependent on
the forest industry in one form or
another.

Some of the workers in the video
feel that urban environmentalists
from large population centres in the
province don’t understand or care
about what happens to rural commu-
nities.

Eileen Pigion, a single mother who
works at Weldwood’s Williams Lake
plywood mill says, “a lot of people
who are pushing for the parks are
people who live in Vancouver and in
some cases I don’t think they realize
how much that (the forest industry)
supports the lifestyle that they have in
Vancouver.”

Garfield Lamb, an employee at
Weldwood’s sawmill in 100 Mile
House, and an Executive Board mem-
ber in Local 1-425 expresses in the
video a concern that the public
doesn’t understand that forestry prac-
tices are changing for the better.

“Tt gets rather scary when you have
people that don’t recognize what kind
of impact that they have on our lives,”
says Brother Lamb. He also says that
some environmental groups are feed-
ing half truths to the public.

The video details the logging prac-
tice used in the region from clear cut
to selective logging. Bob Flinton,
Woodlands Manager at Fletcher Chal-
lenge, which has a sawmill in Williams
Lake, demonstrates that clear cutting
is the best method to harvest lodge
pole pine which exists in the Cariboo
and most of the Chilcotin. The pine
has an 80 year rotation. It is naturally
destroyed by fire every 60-80 years
and grown back naturally in even age
stands.

In areas of Douglas Fir the compa-
ny prefers to selectively harvest
stands which are uneven aged. Har-
vesting prescriptions say that it is bet-

e Truck unloads lodgepole pine at West Fraser Timber’s log yard in Williams

Lake.

° Save Our Jobs committee chairman Terry Tate (1) and vice-chairman Mitch
Van Dale say video has received positive response.

ter to come back to the stand every
20-30 years to selectively take out the
trees. Other methods of selective log-
ging that the company is using
includes helicopter logging.

“I think that environmentalists are a
little bit late on the draw as far as
waiting and crying about what we’re
doing in the bush,” says Eric Belrose,
from Weldwood Canada’s Quesnel
operation.

Many opponents of logging and
other forestry operations, say that

tourism is a visible alternative to
maintain the economy for laid-off

workers. What those opponents don’t
realize is that 60-65% of the tourists in
the Cariboo come from the Cariboo.
The well paid people working in the
forest industry are those who support
the tourist economy.

“They (the environmentalists) talk
about tourism jobs and I’ve not met
anybody here who can live off 6-7
bucks an hour,”: says Ellis O’Toole a
lumber grader at the West Fraser Tim-
ber mill in Williams Lake.

For displaced forest workers now
or in the future, there are few job
opportunities. Retraining or other
assistance programs are few and far
between.

Save Our Jobs Committee Chair-
man Terry Tate succinctly expresses
worker's concern in his comments at
the end of the video.

“We are the ones with the most to
lose. Industry, government and enyi-
ronmentalists can continue with their
battles win, lose, or draw, but we’re
the ones that lose. We're the ones that
face the sacrifices and the down-
tums.”

The Save Our Jobs Committee says
its video production “A Forest Held
Captive” has gone over well with the
public and that more needs to be
done. The largest share of the nearly
$19,000 it took to make the video has
come from workers pockets.

Mitch VanDale, vice-chairman of
SOJ, says that “we've had quite a few
phone calls very much in support of
the video” and that all the feedback
has been positive. As expected, SOJ
has not received any response from
environmental groups.

The NDP government in Victoria
has seen the video. SOJ sent copies for
Forest Minister Dan Miller and local
MLA, who is Minister of International
Trade and Economic Development.
Both politicians say they have
watched the video and understand the
workers’ points of view.

In the past and at present, the SOJ
committee has been quite vocal in its
criticizing governments of the day
both Socred and NDP.

“We have a lot of freedom to criti-
cize the government for not doing
enough in ensuring the welfare of
rural workers in this province,” says
committee Chairman Terry Tate. “We
don’t care who’s in power. If they are
making lousy decisions they will hear
about it from us.”

Tate says that “we’ve been attack-
ing the misinformation that environ-
mental groups are putting out on a
regular basis, we’ve asked environ-
mentalists a number of times, to
explain to workers why we should
give up our jobs.”

Contract truckers

Continued from previous page

that they (LRB) will not be challenged
in court somewhere down the road.”

There are a lot of eyes set on what
is happening in this dispute over
union certification.

“On behalf of the IWA and the
labour movement in general this is a
big case,”. says Brother Symmes. The
case will set the ground rules for
determination of dependent contrac-
tors for the future under current
labour laws.

The local union president says
there will be implications for all phas-
es in logging such as feller buncher
operators, slashers, and loaders.

“It should allow most contractors
that are phase contractors to orga-
nize,” added Brother Fisher.

All eyes and ears are waiting for an
outcome in the Labour Board process.

Word over the dispute has spread
like wildfire through union, trucking
associations, and employer circles.

At the end of all this the union
could make some important gains for
independent contractors in the
province's interior.

The West Fraser truckers are bro-
ken down into three seniority sec-
tions. One division is off-highway dri-
vers who haul to Quesnel Lake.
Another is highway driver who haul
up from booming grounds near the
other side of Quesnel Lake. The other
group is the highway drivers who haul
from West Chilcotin country.

The issues to be addressed with
West Fraser are job security, benefits,
per tonne/hr. hauling rates, and turn
around times.

LUMBERWORKERJJUNE, 1993/7