PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

Liberals follow Mulroney
in attacking unemployed

by Gerry Stoney
 /) ein the labour movement have

/ always contended that the Lib-

/ erals are the same as Tories

/ when push comes to shove.

1 age J However we never said that

‘1 they were worse than Tories.
Perhaps until now.

Jean Chretien’s federal Liberals have really
got it in for working people these days. In their
deliberated panic to cut the nation’s deficit they
are taking out the knives to further cut social
spending.

At the same time that Human Resources Min-
ister Lloyd Axworthy has released a discussion
paper on the review of social programs, Fi-
nance Minister Paul Martin is setting parame-
ters for drastic spending cuts to Canada’s social
programs. Both ministers are working on the
same agenda of the “slash and burn” politics
that former Tory Prime Minister Brian Mul-
roney introduced in the 1980's and early 1990's.

’ The government plans to take special aim at
the Unemployment Insurance system, welfare
and education transfer payments to the
provinces, the Canada and Quebec pension
plan. It plans big cuts in these areas of social
spending.

In the government's eyes, the unemployed
are the class of society that must be punished
for being unemployed. Despite numerous cuts

and restrictions that
have been intro-
duced to the UI sys-
tem over the past
six years, the Liber-
als are planning fur-
ther drastic action
to clobber the un-
employed.

The government
also believes that
badly needed pro-
grams such as Un-
employment
Insurance, Workers
Compensation, and’
provincial welfare
programs are based
on policies that dis-
courage workers
from working and

out indiseess
It is entirely
sonable to expect
sonal workers in
part of the econoi
whether they be |
gers, fishermen,
tourism workers, to pay
more and receive less
from a system which is
almost entirely paid for
by premiums from
workers and employers.
The cuts to seasonal
workers are made un-
der the assumption that
loggers and fisherman
can easily be retrained
er for other jobs that we
know most times don’t
often exist.

discourage employ-
ers form hiring.

In Axworthy’s discussion on social reform,
the government proposes a two-tier Unemploy-
ment Insurance system: one tier that will raise
premiums and reduce benefits for chronic and
repeat users and one that will give reduced pre-
miums and greater benefits for those who use
the system less.

In their perverse logic the Liberals think that
those who are unemployed more frequently are
guilty and should be subsequently punished for
having no work.

We say this is unacceptable. Such changes
are designed to disenfranchise seasonal work-
ers. We have many seasonal workers in our
union, especially in the logging industry. Many
workers are also repeat recipients of UI pay-
ments because of the cyclical nature of the for-

- We must fight to keep
UI benefits for seasonal workers. We have had
them in one shape or form since the 1950's and
we need them more than ever. Jobs are harder
to find these days. Especially in resource de-
pendent communities where UI plays a vital
role in stabilizing those communities.

UI allows forest workers to stay rooted in
those communities during seasonal periods of
unemployment such as winter shutdowns, fire
seasons, and cyclical downtums in the econo-
my. The money received from UI cheques goes
back to feed families and help:pay for the es-
sentials of life. It is money that stays in the
communities.

What we need are some sincere and innova-
tional efforts to create jobs and an economic
climate for jobs, not more of the slash and burn
tricks of the Mulroney years.

LANDS Al RESTS ‘

Beware of false claims
on job loss, tech change

by Kim Pollock

he more often someone says something,
the more you should question it.

There is, for instance, the claim that the
forest sector is some kind of “sunset in-
dustry” that is just shedding jobs like a
hound sheds hair. Hand in hand with that

belief is the one that our union has sat by and
watched while we lost thousands and thousands
of our Sisters and Brothers to new technology.

Well; I've heard those claims so many times that
I began to wonder if they were really true. I did a
bit of research and guess what?

First, according to Statistics Canada figures cit-
ed in the federal report The State of Canada’s
forests 1993, Canadian forest employment in-
creased by 7.6 percent in 1993, while solid wood
employmient was up by 11.9 percent. For British
Columbia, the increase for all forest industries
was 8 percent, from 87,000 to 94,000.

Well, you'll say, that was just a function of the
economic recovery - what goes down must go up.
Yes, exactly: an awful lot of recent job loss was
due to the economic cycle in the industry, not tech
change.

But look, even over the past 10 years in Canada
there has been an average annual rise in jobs of 1.7
Percent in solid wood and 0.2 percent for the for-
est industry overall.

And again, B.C. forest employment was up even
more. Between 1983 and 1993 there was a 20 per-
cent increase or 16,000 jobs while solid wood em-
ployment rose by 11,000 or 21 percent.

During the recession, while our employment
numbers were down, we were being constantly at-
tacked for giving all our jobs away and for ignor-
ing tech change. What we were doing fighting
forest preservationists when we didn’t give a damn
about job loss caused by technology?

: One example: Joyce Nelson, writing in the Victo-
ria Times Columnist, claims the IWA “cut a deal”
with the boss and agreed to job loss in exchange
for higher pay, and act she describes as “shafting
your fellow workers for the sake of your own high-
er paycheques.”

Strong words and you'd think she would check
her facts before she said something like that,

I'm still waiting for her and other environmen-
talists to either apologize or congratulate us on all
the new jobs in the industry.

But the other part of
the argument - that
we've been somehow
soft on tech change -
holds about equally as
much water.

Recently I got a copy
of the Canadian Labour

Congress’ booklet Tech
Change: a handbook for
union negotiators. Re-
‘ viewing a 1992 survey of
\ | over 1100 collective
agreements, the CLC
concludes that: “It is
clear from this data that, aside from advanced no-
tice provisions, other tech change provisions are
neither rare nor common and that, through a
decade marked by a difficult bargaining climate,
there have been some modest advances.”

So how do our feeble efforts stack up? How bad
was the terrible deal we cut with forest employers,
compared with the CLC’s results, based on agree-
ments covering 2.4 million workers across Cana-
da?

So, there you go. Basically the IWA has a collec-
tive agreement that can hold its own with almost
any in Canada with respect to its commitment to
protect workers from the effects of new technolo-

It’s not to say the agreement is perfect and can’t
be improved. It’s not to say that we haven't lost.
jobs to technology, along with almost every union
in the country.

But just as often, we've lost jobs because the
employer would not invest in new technology.
Look at the plywood industry, where about 4000
jobs were lost during the 1980's, largely because
employers resisted new technology and a better
marketing strategy in the face of American protec-
tionism and competition.

All of which goes to reinforce our point: recent
drops in jobs in the forest industry have more to
do with economic cycles than with tech change.
The forest industry, far from a “sunset industry” is
growing much faster than the economy as a whole
and we really do have more to fear from those
who would preserve us out of existence than from
economic forces.

Speaking of those

The following com-
pares the CLC results
to the IWA Coast Mas-
ter Agreement, (in
parentheses).

e Mention of tech
change: CLC: 50% of
collective agreements
(IWA, yes Article VI)

e Advance notice:

The forest industry is far
from a “sunset industry”
and is growing much faster
than the economy as a whole

who would preserve us
out of existence, Green-
peace went hunting for
horror stories recently.
In cooperation with the
Sierra Legal Defence
Fund, Greenpeace stud-
ied 10 cutblocks in
Clayoquot Sound and
elsewhere on Vancou-

CLC: 33 percent of
agreements and 39 percent of employees (IWA,
yes - 6 months)

° Notice of layoff: CLC: 9 percent of agree-
ments and 8 percent of employees (IWA, yes 6
months)

e Right to retraining: CLC: 22 percent of agree-
ments and 25 percent of employees (IWA, yes -
commits companies to “cooperate with the gov-
ernment of B.C. and participate in every way pos-
sible in training or retraining of employees”)

° Reference to retraining: CLC: 25 percent of
agreements and 29 percent of employees (IWA,
yes see above) ees

¢ Relocation allowance: CLC: adjustment for 6
months, 6 percent of agreements and 6 percent of
employees (IWA, yes - provides rate adjustment
for 6 months, then either new job rate or sever-
ance pay of 1 week per year of service up to 30
weeks)

e Employment guarantees: CLC: 11 percent of
agreements covering 12 percent of employees
(WA, no but a new coast agreement includes sec-

tion on access to new work under Forest Renewal
B.C.)

ver Island, they claimed
to have found 67 violations of guidelines or regula-
tions.

Concerned about the seriousness of these alle-
gations, the Ministry of Forests investigated every
one of them. The results give Greenpeace a batting
average far lower than that of former basketball
star Micheal Jordan: out of 67 allegations 45 alle-
gations “could not be substantiated as non-compli-
ance with standards”; ten were deemed to be
non-compliance but had already been noted by
Forest Service staff and were due for correction;
ten were essentially errors by Greenpeace and the
Sierra Legal Defense Fund, for instance incorrect
classification of fish streams; two were judged
“very serious and are under review for further
charges or penalties.”

In other words, Greenpeace’s forest “experts”
hit two targets out of 67, a frightful waste of pow-

der and shot - even if they were obviously cheap
shots.

Kim Pollock is the Director of IWA-CANADA’s
Environment and Land-Use Department.

4/LUMBERWORKER/NOVEMBER, 1994