e At a meeting of the committee at the Somass operation are, l. to r. the IWA's Jack McLeman, union members
Gary Thompson and Dave Bryant along with MB's George Brubaker and Jim Ritchie.

Port Alberni members activate pilot
project at MacBlo’s Somass cedar mill

After all the great statements of in-
tentions to help disabled workers out
have been said, then comes the real
work of actually putting something to-
gether that makes sense and works.
The testing ground for reintegration
disabled workers is now designated
as the MacMillan Bloedel Somass
cedar mill in Port Alberni.

At Somass the IWA and the compa-
ny have signed an agreement to put a
new pilot project into place which will
hopefully come up with some con-
crete examples of how the disabled
can be helped. Even though there is a
lot of goodwill shown early by both
sides, the program will not be easy to
implement.

Both management and the union
will have to work hard together to see
that the program produces results and
that it can serve as a model for other
union operations. A similar agreement
has been reached in principle be-
tween MacMillan Bloedel and the
Chemical, Energy, and Paperworkers
union at the company’s Powell River

Government priority

Continued from previous page

with disability policy issues. The strat-
egy will include ministerial resposibil-
ity for disability issues, a regional
resource group of people with disabil-
ities based in communities, and an in-
ter-ministry committee on disability
issues.

The model was brought forward by
the Premier’s Advisory Council for
Person's with Disabilities.

The new office, expected to open
its doors in September, will operate
for 18 months as a pilot project to per-
mit the government a chance to coor-
dinate policies across ministries.

When asked as to whether or not
the B.C. provincial government is
looking at legislative measures to
push employers to hire the disabled
Miller responded.

“I am not actively looking at legisla-
tion at this point in time,” he said. But
he did not rule out legislation in the
long run if efforts to reintegrate the
disabled into the workplace go
nowhere.

The Minister said that actions on
disabled issues have to involve the
disabled themselves and that trade
unions and employers have to be part
of the solution as well.

Miller says he is encouraged by the
efforts of the unions in the forest sec-
tor and their early pilot projects to get
disabled workers back on the job.

“It’s very clear that right now the
pace-setter (for reintegration) is in the
private sector,” added Miller. To these
ends his ministry has been assisting
the parties in the forest industry get
together to address the issue of fund-
ing for the Disability Management In-
stitute at the new North Island
College campus in Port Alberni. In
mid-April of this year Assistant
Deputy Minister of Labour Roger
Stanyer convened a key meeting of
employer and union stakeholders
from around the province to talk
about contributions to the endow-
ment fund.

But it’s not all up to the goodwill of
those in the private sector. The gov-
ernment has some employment equity
initiatives underway. Employment
and Investment Minister Glen Clark
said that in major new construction
projects the government is ensuring
that the Crown corporations negotiate
employment equity provisions into
their collective agreements with pri-
vate sector contractors. Those provi-
sions will address equity issues for the
disabled, women, natives, and other
sectors of society which have tradi-
tionally been discriminated against.

Clark is the Minister responsible for
overseeing such Crown corporations
as the B.C. Buildings Corporation,
B.C. Hydro, B.C. Transit and B.C. Fer-
ries. He said he intends to pursue
some of the equity goals with applica-
tion for funding through BC21.

On the upcoming Vancouver Island

¢ Glen Clark

Highway projects there will be em-
ployment levels of over 2,000 persons
per year for a period of six years. The
government will ensure that a portion
of those jobs go to persons with dis-
abilities.

The Minister also said that the gov-
ernment is aware of the disability
Management Institute and supports its
objectives, seeing its own Crown cor-
porations as potential benefactors.

Clark says that very few of them
have disability management programs
in place and that this will be reviewed
in the future.

pulp and paper complex.

The general agreement to set the
program up was signed by IWA-
CANADA First Vice-President Neil
Menard and MB's Director of Labour
Relations Manager Peter Lawrie in the
fall of 1993. At Somass Division there
was a specific agreement signed
shortly thereafter to establish a Case
Management model at the plant with
active participation from management,
and labour.

The Lumberworker recently visited
the Disability Management committee
at the Somass operation to see how
things are going in the early stages of
the program. As of press time the pro-
gram is just getting up and running
and so far enthusiasm for its objec-
tives has been maintained. Sitting on
the union’s part of the committee are
sub-local chairman Jack McLeman,
and IWA Local 1-85 members Gary
Thompson and Dave Bryant. Sitting in
for the company are personnel man-
ager Jim Ritchie and saw filer fore-
man George Brubaker.

At this early stage in the game the
committee is trying to deal with a
number of outstanding injury and dis-
abled cases that have been outstand-
ing even before the Case Management
model was signed.

The key goal that the committee is
trying to achieve is to establish a
process that injured and disabled
workers can go through to get back
into the workforce.

“We want to make sure that work-
ers know that there will be a system
that can handle their cases, whether
they are hurt or disabled on or off the
job,” says Brother McLeman. “We re-
alize that there are many obstacles to
overcome in getting such a process in
place and we are trying our best to do
so.”

Many of the operations in Local 1-
85 have been looking for answers for
injured workers within gradual return
to work programs but none of them
have looked towards a comprehensive
program to reintegrate disabled work-
ers.

The committee is considering just
how it will implement a seniority sys-
tem that will not violate the basic
principle of seniority, yet be sensitive
to the needs of the disabled and ac-
tively create open positions for them
to go to.

So far the committee is looking at
three categories of disabled. They are
the temporary disabled, the perma-
nently partially disabled, and the total-
ly disabled.

The committee is looking at creat-
ing benchmark jobs that will fit the
temporarily disabled and the perma-
nently partially disabled. However
since the forest industry is a heavy in-
dustry with traditionally physically de-
manding jobs, what may be a partial
disability in other lighter industries
may be a permanent disability in the
forest industry.

“We are going to see that the jobs in
the mill are evaluated and broken
down and analyzed for the abilities
that are required,” says Brother
Bryant. “If there are accurate determi-
nations made then those jobs will be-
come benchmark jobs which we will
be able to go by in the future. It is bet-
ter for us to describe the job to a doc-
tor than the doctor make a
determination on his own because we
know what the job is about. If a guy
has to bend over frequently or slug
heavy weights around then we will
write that in the job description for
the doctor's reference.”

Brother McLeman says that seniori-
ty will still be a top priority in the op-
eration. Somass now has two separate
seniority lists, one for production, and
one for maintenance. The committee
is looking at developing a separate se-
niority list for disabled workers. That
will not, however, guarantee that a
worker with a temporary or perma-
nent partial disability will get a job.

“If divisional seniority won't let you
in the plant gate then a disability
won't let you in either,” says Brother

Continued on page ten

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LUMBERWORKER/JUNE, 1994/9