e¢ Boom man and Local 1-405 member Ron Smith undoes log bundle outside the mill on Slocan Lake.

Slocan sawmill doing well despite timber
supply pressures in southeastern B.C.

As provincial contract negotiations
proceed in British Columbia the TWA
is seeking collective agreements with
employers in the province’s interior
regions. Fortunately this set of negoti-
ations will see Slocan Forest Products
back within the Interior Forest
Labour Relations Association
(IFLRA).

The company, with sawmills in the
Slocan Valley, Radium Hot Springs
(Local 1-405) and Valemont and
Vavenby (Local 1-417), is in good fi-
nancial shape now and, like other
sawmillers, is making money hand
over fist as it enjoys record lumber
prices.

So it is good for local unions that
the company has decided to come
back into the fold of association bar-
gaining as this year’s set of talks pro-
ceed. Slocan dropped out of the
IFLRA in 1986 and the union has had
to bargain with it separately for the
last three sets of contract negotia-
tions.

Last year the Lumberworker visited
the company’s Slocan Valley sawmill
for a brief tour to find out what some
of the concerns are there. The mill,
which is situated in the rural commu-
nity of Slocan, produces dimension
lumber for a number of markets, pri-
marily in the United States, Canada,
Europe, and Asia.

The mill saws both cedar and white
wood species into everything from 1
inch stock up to 2 by 12’s. It is one of
the few mills in the local union which
manufactures both species.

Although things are going good eco-
nomically, there are some concerns
over long term timber supply. The mill
now runs year round on two shifts a
day, five days a week producing over
200,000 finished board feet per shift. It
consumes over 420,000 cubic meters
of wood a year.

After a timber supply review last
year the Ministry of Forests told the
company that its Crown timber supply
had to be reduced over a 10-15 year
time frame. The company decided to
take hard reductions in their cut and

there was a 50% drop in harvests in
some areas.

“Where we get the wood from in the
future is a major concern for us,” says

Stan McMaster, plant chairman for the
union. “A lot of the larger old growth
wood is gone and the harvesting is
getting into steeper areas where the
wood is harder to get at.”

The mill operates a full size headrig
on its large log side and has a chip
and saw on the other side which han-
dles about 2/3’s of all log input.

There are some concerns that envi-
ronmental pressures and the current
round of talks that have wrapped up
with the Commission on Resources
and Environment (CORE) will further
limit timber supplies.

The CORE process in the Koote-
nays region is split into the East and
West Kootenays. The Slocan Valley

mill is in the West Kootenays and has
its own sub-regional part of the CORE
process called the Slocan Valley Pilot
Project which got off to a start about
two years ago.

Brother Matters says that the Pilot
Project has almost had its day and af-
ter much difficulty, results are yet to
be seen.

Historically the area has been one
of confrontation between protection-
ists and pro-logging interests. The
union has tried to bridge the gap be-
tween the environmental concerns
and the maintenance of employment
in the region. The job has not been an
easy one. To do that the union has
been pushing for better logging prac-

tices by the company and its contrac-
tors and has spoken out for more
labour intensive value-added produc-
tion in the mill to create more jobs in
the community.

So far there have been mixed re-
sults with the union making some
headway in certain areas.

The company and the union have
agreed to work together in search of
alternative harvesting techniques that
can be applied in the Slocan Valley,
especially in environmentally sensi-
tive areas like watersheds where
there are pressures to halt all logging.

“Technology isn’t always up to date
with logging in the area,” says Brother
Matters. “A lot of times we find out
later what should have happened.”

The alternate harvesting committee
has agreed to post new job openings
for workers in the mill who are inter-
ested in going out to work in the bush
and trying some new harvesting tech-
niques in the region. The committee is
now looking at going into sensitive
watershed areas to prove that logging
can be done in a proper and environ-
mentally sensitive way.

“I think that in the future we are go-
ing to go back to high lead logging and
skyline logging in those areas and in
steep slope areas,” adds the local
union president.

Brother McMaster says that the
company has traditionally contracted
the logging out to non-union crews
and has often been accused of turning
a blind eye to some bad logging prac-
tices.

So too says millworker Ken Delpup-
po. He says that contractors have
been logging steep hilled terrain
where the soil is thin and logging
equipment such as skidders causes
considerable erosion and environmen-
tal damage.

“Basically the ground has paid the
price for cheap logs in the past and
we have to change those harvesting
practices,” say Brother Delpuppo.
“The price of timber is up. They (the
company) can afford to pay more for
logs and can afford to put more envi-
ronmentally friendly harvesting sys-
tems out in the bush and probably
employ more people.”

Hopefully those will be union peo-
ple.

“We prefer to see environmentally
or visually contentious areas logged
by union people using company equip-
ment,” adds Delpuppo. “That way the

Continued on page sixteen

e Edith Skiber, then local union financial secretary, stopped in for a tour and met with Barry Scannell when the
Lumberworker visited the mill in June of 1993.

14/LUMBERWORKER/JUNE, .1994