eSheet sorter Maria Longo at Evan's plywood mill in Golden, British Co-
lumbia.

Plywood plant o.k. after

union helps

Over 194 Local 1-405 members at
the Evan’s plywood plant in Golden
B.C. have been fairly busy since the
recession in the forest products indus-
try ended over a year ago. Today the
plant works three shifts a day, five
days a week, producing some of the
best quality fir, spruce, and hemlock
plywood on the market.

The plant has been one of British
Columbia's first to receive the JAS
(Japanese Standards Association)
grading stamp that allows it to grade
its sheathing for direct shipment to
Japan. Although the Japanese market
constitutes less than 10% of total pro-
duction it’s an important portion of
the company’s total revenue. Most of
he sheathing, however, is sold in
Canada, and is used in the construc-
tion industry.

The mill has been on its site since
the mid-1950’s when it was known as
the Kicking Horse sawmill. A plywood
mill was built in 1966-7 under the
ownership of the Evan's family. Sub-
sequently it was bought out by U.S.
owners. In 1987 ownership changed
hands again to a company which calls
itself Evans Forest Products Ltd.

During the period that the mill was
under American ownership, things
were let go and capital was drained
from the operations. The mill didn’t
keep up with technological change in
the industry. By the late 1980’s the
mill was a financial mess.

The workers agreed to take some
temporary wage deferrals to help the
mill modernize. The workers helped
the mill’s owners out to the tune of
$2.5 million over the recession period.
They also urged the owners to up-
grade the operation.

Currently the mill runs on a 3 shift
basis (two 8 hour shifts and a 6 1/2
hour bobtail shift).

it survive

One plywood product that the mill
can make is hemlock sheathing.

“At previous times in the province’s
history, hemlock was considered to
be a waste wood,” days the plant’s for-
mer chairman Blaine Butler-Hender-
son, who is also Local 1-405’s second
vice-president, “Now we use it for ply-
wood and get full utilization.”

Hemlock makes a very porous ve-
neer which really soaks up the glue.
It is rough when peeled and sticks to-
gether almost like Velcro.

As a specialty product the hemlock
needs an extra 2-4 lbs. of glue weight
when it is put on the lay-up line. After
it is laid-up pressed and trimmed, the
hemlock is often pressure treated and
then used on such structures as base-
ments.

The plant’s lathe takes the peelers
down to a 3 1/4” core. Then the cores
are used for fence posts or landscape
ties. The lathe handles up to 2500
small diameter logs per shift up to a
maximum of 36.” Although the plant
has 2 clippers it only uses the rotary
one that is fast enough to keep up.

The core veneer goes to a veneer
welder and is laid up with a good one
side sheathing veneer. The best ply-
wood produced is an extra select ply-
wood that is solid with no core gaps
and a knot free grade “A” face. The
plant produces plywood with welded
core thicknesses of 3/8 - 3/4”.

The mills timber supply comes from
two majors operations. One is the
Birch River logging division about 100
km. north-east of Golden where there
are 80-90 employees and Sullivan Riv-
er, 150 km. from the mill where up to
150 loggers and other workers are em-
ployed. All the logging is non-union,
as it is in most of the interior, the ma-
jority being owner-operators.

Hydraulics course

Continued from page eleven

Willie Lange, a millwright charge
hand at The Riverside Forest Products
sawmill in Kelowna says the hy-
draulics course being offered “really
informs the workers.”

“Everywhere you look in a sawmill,
you'll find hydraulics,” says Brother
Lange. “They are all over the place in
hoists, motor drives, cylinders, and
gates.”

The courses help millwrights and
electricians troubleshoot and main-
tain hydraulic systems.

Bert Dechense, a certified mill-
wright at Riverside says the course is
a good one and that workers need
training in areas where there are hy-
draulic/electric interface.

Brother Dechense says that his mill-
wright job is broken down into about
50% hydraulics and about 50% convey-
er and other systems, and that the per-
centage of work with hydraulics is on
the increase.

The stationary hydraulics instructor
is Don Greenwood who is a college in-
structor in the applied industrial tech-
nology division of the University
College of the Cariboo’s Kamloops
campus.

Cariboo College developed the
course after studying the results of
the needs analysis,

“I think it’s excellent that these
guys are taking he initiative to up-
grade,” he says. “Let’s face it, technol-
ogy is changing really fast and alot of
what controls the hydraulics is electri-
cal now.”

The students receive classroom in-
struction in the theory and application
of hydraulics and also get some
hands-on experience on a control
board with various components used
in applications of hydraulics (i.e.
pumps, motors, filters, relief valves,
direction control valves, cylinders,
and adjustable motors, flow control
valves, sequences valves, deceleration
valves, linear and rotary actuators,
and gauges, etc.)

Those students with little experi-
ence are given easier tasks to begin
with and can look in on students do-
ing tougher tasks. In the lab the stu-
dents are asked to set up eleven
different scenarios of hydraulics ap-
plications using principles taught on
blueprints.

Barry Smith, a 30 year millwright
who has worked in just about every
region of British Columbia, says he’s
taken alot in during the course.

“There’s alot of things that I thought
I knew,” he says. “But when you go
through the course you find out that
there’s some things that you don’t
know.”

that companies may try to get work-
ers to do someone else’s job after they
go through skills upgrading. In the
past the industry has tried to combine
job categories and eliminate posi-
tions.

Joe Kastor, an IWA-CANADA mem-
ber and millwright at Weyerhaeuser’s
Princeton sawmill, does maintenance
work on the mill's chip n’ saw.

He says: “We have enough combina-
tion jobs. We don't need need to make
any more combination jobs than we
already have.”

More training in the
Suture will be in
hydraulic/electric

interface

The union has made it clear that the
skills upgrading courses must be used
to create job stability for workers who
require training. They are not to be
used to combine jobs and eliminate
bargaining unit positions.

Traditionally training in the hy-
draulics field has been put on by the
manufacturers of the equipment,
many of which are in Washington
State and Oregon.

Mr. Greenwood says that any such
training will help the majority of
workers.

“What you do with it once you get
your ticket or diploma is up to you,”
he adds.

The Committee has just finished de-
veloping a new computor tutor on hy-
draulics which will be installed in the
mills to reinforce the material covered
in the Hydraulics Level One course.
The computor tuor is designed to be
user friendly in order to allow trades-
men who have very little or no com-
puter experience to gain access to the
program with a brief introduction.

In addition the Committee has be-
gun to develop the electrical/hydraulic
interface course which will start
folowing the completion of the sta-
tionary hydraulics and PLC courses.

°Two heavy duty mechanics that have enjoyed the course are Don
Paine(left) and Jack Salvino, at Riverside Forest Products in Kelowna.

18/LUMBERWORKER/APRIL, 1994