EDITORIA

Labour in for a major
battle against Mac Blo

e in the labour movement know that
we are in a big fight with MacMillan
Bloedel. There are no ifs ands or
buts about it. MB is out to bust the
/ union movement under the guise of
becoming more competitive.
There’s nothing wrong with MB's
e bottom line other than it is making
too much money in Canada and not ploughing enough
back into this country where it has built its corporation.

The NexGen paper mill site in Port Alberni is the first
major production facility that MB has created in Canada
in over a decade. Over the past 15 years MB has been in-
vesting all over the world while paying little attention to
its Canadian operations.

It ran its Port Alberni plywood plant into the ground
with antique equipment until it finally had to shut down,
eliminating over 350 jobs in 1991. We told MB to keep
the plant open; now plywood prices are very high but
the plant is gone. MB didn’t listen.

A few months later MB shut down an entire mill at
Somass division in Port Alberni while it increased ship-
ments of cedar logs out of the Alberni Valley. We told it
not to. It didn’t listen.

Those closures caused IWA-CANADA Local 1-85 to
call for the withdrawal of MB’s timber. The union want-
ed MB out of the valley. The city of Port Alberni called
the company’s loyalty into question.

During 1991 negotiations, MB threatened to pull out
of Alberni if it didn’t get the concessions that it wanted.
It was going to pull out and “leave the keys in the drive-
way.”

Then and now it was and is a giant corporation with-
out respect for its loyal workers.

Today MB is becoming as despised a company as
Fletcher Challenge was less that six years ago. That is

something that it should be concerned about.

What MacMillan Bloedel is doing, however, should
not be seperated from what the agenda of multinational
corporations really is. What MB is promoting is a cheap
labour strategy pure and simple. It is using Port Alberni
as a testing ground for its open shop and promotion of
company unions and non-union labour. Pure, straight
and simple.

Look where MB has just invested. A particle board,
sawmill and planer in Durango, Mexico. Despite advis-
ing their employees that the North American Free Trade
Agreement was nothing to worry about, MB is leading
the way into Mexico where it can get even cheaper
labour than exists in company unions in this country.

When one of MB's officials returned from “negotiat-
ing” a contract with Mexican workers he told one of our
members that it only took MB four hours to get an
agreement paying Mexican workers $25.00 a day with a
few food stamps thrown in.

MB is proud of what it has accomplished in Mexico.

And at a time when it is making record profits in
Canada, MB is out to gut organized labour by introduc-
ing company unions and non-union labour into tradi-
tionally unionized work sites. MB’s audacity knows no
limits nor bounds.

MB has clearly stated that company unions and non-
union workers will be used in their future projects all
over North America. In the new age of NAFTA, MB is
out to get rid of organized labour.

It doesn’t care about what it does to the community
of Port Alberni or any other community for that matter.

Better watch out MB. Workers are going to tell you to
get out of Canada. But the trees stay. And you can leave
the keys in the driveway.

LUINBERUORKER

Official publication of WA-CANADA

RMAN GERRY STONEY . . President
No Edi eae NEIL MENARD . . Ist Vice-President
FRED MIRON . . 2nd Vice-President
WARREN ULLEY . . 3rd Vice-President
5th Floor, HARVEY ARCAND . . 4th Vice-President
1285 W. Pender Street ‘TERRY SMITH. . Secretary-Treasurer

Vancouver, B.C.
V6E 4B2

BROADWAY @ PRINTERS LTD.

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AS YOu CAN SEE, WE'RE

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INGRIO ECE FOR THE LUMBER WoreKER

MAC BLO REFUTES CHARGES OF GREED

America’s free trade agreement follows NAFTA as
Liberal feds become champion of free markets

The Liberal Party of Cana-
da is not at all the party it was
when it opposed the Canada-
U.S. Free Trade Agreement
during the 1988 federal elec-
tion campaign. From from be-
ing an opponent of free trade,
the Chretien government is
now a leading proponet of in-
creasing free trade.

Prime Minister Chretien is
sounding more and more like
Brian Mulroney all the time.
At a recent Miami summit of
34 countries in the western
hemisphere, from Canada to
Argentina, it was announced
that Chile will soon join the
North American Free Trade
Agreement with Canada, the
US., and Mexico.

With the leaders of the oth-
er countries present, Chretien
said: “For one year now we
have been the three amigos,
starting today we will become
the four amigos.”

At the end of the hemi-
spheric summit Canada
joined other countries in sign-
ing a declaration which calls
for a hemispheric trade agree-
ment within 10 years. That
agreement has been dubbed
the Americas Free Trade
Agreement (AFTA).

The declaration called for
the removal of tariff barriers
between countries and the
protection of intellectual
property. As for labour, the
accord called for “the obser-
vance and promotion of
workers’ rights.” That was it.

So within the next 10 years
we will be dealing with AFTA.

Chile will be part of the
NAFTA by January 1996.

By including Chile in the
deal, multinational mining
corporations will now be
more readily able to exploit
cheap Chilean labour and low
environmental standards.
Without NAFTA, Canadian
mining corporations have in-
vested over $4 billion over the
last four years in Chile.

Greeting the entrance of
Chile, Chretien joked that
“Now we (Canada, Mexico
and Chile) will be three to

watch the elephant (the Unit-
ed States).”

That all being said, Canada
still counts on the U.S. for
80% of its exports. In the soft-
wood lumber industry last
year we exported about $6.4
billion worth to the U.S.
which supplies about 35% of
that country’s ever-growing
lumber needs.

And after being hammered
with countervailing duties by
the U.S. over the past decade
and having won each dispute
fair and square (the most re-

The U.S. will
continue to
probe into our
timber pricing
practices at the
same time there
is no clear
definition of a
subsidy

cent being a free trade panel
victory is August) the long
arm of the United States in
reaching deeper into Canadi-
an jurisdiction.

In exchange for returning
some $800 million to Canadi-
an lumber producers the U.S.
has asked for and got a new
bi-national industry and gov-
ernment group where it will
be able to more thoroughly in-
vestigate Canadian provincial
timber pricing practices and
regulations, such as log ex-
port restrictions.

In addition, the Coalition
for Fair Lumber Prices, the
lobby which drove the coun-
tervailing attacks against

Canada, says it will still insist
that Canadian producers will
pay more for their own logs.

All of this will continue to

occur at the same time that it
has been clearly proven that
Canadian lumber exports to
the U.S. do not harm domes-
tic American lumber produc-
ers. In fact the U.S. does not
have sufficient timber re-
sources to meet its own de-
mand, either for quantity or
for quality of lumber produc-
tion.

And the U.S. will continue
to probe into our timber pric-
ing practices at the same time
that there are no clear rules
spelling out what constitutes
a subsidy in the industry.
Those rules were already sup-
posed to be in place but the
USS. has refused to sit down,
as part of the FTA or NAFTA
agreements, and define with
its trading partners, what con-
stitutes a subsidy.

The U.S. prefers to make
the rules of the game up as it
goes along.

On December 1, the U.S.
Congress passed legislation
which gave American ap-
proval to join the World Trade
Organization (WTO), which
will be an international trade
regulation body replacing the
General Agreement of Trade
and Tariffs. Congressional Re-
publican support for Bill Clin-
ton was based on the fact
that, if a WTO decision goes
against U.S. interests, then
the supremecy of U.S. trade
Jaw will prevail.

The elephant will prevail,
as long as those mice around
it remain timid.

Less than a week after
passing legislation to join the
WTO, the U.S. announced its
intent to unilaterally impose
huge tariffs against Canadian
sugar products.

The Canadian sugar indus-
try estimates that over 2,800
direct jobs will be lost in this
country. Those are jobs that
we cannot afford to lose. At
the same time the U.S. will
continue to heavily subsidize
its own sugar industry.

LUMBERWORKER/DECEMBER, 1994/5