@ A local 500 me:

mber puts together plywood and lumber crate in Tillsonburg.

Local 500 represents over 300
workers at packaging plant

by Denyse O’Leary
ost people think that they
know everything there is to
know about boxes.
Six sides, right? Anyone
can knock it together, stuff it full and
throw it in the back of a truck.

Most people would know better
than this if they worked in the export
packing industry, alongside the work-
ers at Total Distribution Systems
(TDS) in southwestern Ontario.

1.W.A. CANADA Local 500 repre-
sents the 300 bargaining unit mem-
bers at the London, Hagersville, and
Tillsonburg operations of TDS.

These workers make over 600 dif-
ferent types of wooden boxes for

packing just about anything for over-~

Seas shipment. “Any type of packaging
that is done in wood, we've done it at
some point in time,” says Hagersville
operations manager Jack Brohman.

“We packaged a neonatal unit about
a month ago. We’ve packed kidney
dialysis machines, computers - even
airfield lighting kits, right down to
every last nut, bolt, screw, and the

iesel generator to make it run.” In

ecember they were packing a Gener-
al Motors assembly line to go to Chi-
na.

Packing valuable machinery or
equipment in wood for safe shipment
overseas is both an art and a science.
It begins in the box development area
at the Tillsonburg plant, where work-
ers experiment with box designs, us-
ing sample parts supplied by the
customer.

Then, at the Hagersville plant,
working from the blueprint provided
by an autocad operator, the Hager-
sville workers prepare the specialty
boxes for Tillsonburg and London.
They also pack custom shipments,
like the ones listed above. In recent
weeks, they have been packing vacu-
um-sealed electronic parts and com-
puters destined for Russia. The
computers are packed so as to be
sorted for years without damage.

AUTOMOTIVE EXPORT PACKING DRIVES
THE BUSINESS

The Tillsonburg plant packages ex-
clusively for GM - that means sepa-
rately packing every single part of a
car or truck that you can think of, to
go by container shipment to the GM
plant in Venezuela. Workers carefully
remove engines, panels, and frames
from the racks offloaded from the
trucks arriving from the factory. Then
they place them - to exact specifica-

tions - in the containers that they have
developed for shipping them over-
seas.

The London plant, which opened in
1974, packages the export parts for
Chrysler Jeep Eagle destined for Chi-
na.

The business originated in 1941 as
Livingston Export Packing Limited.
Founder Gerald Livingston started
producing wooden crates in London,
Ontario, for storing and transporting a
variety of manufactured products. In
1943 he moved the firm to Tillson-
burg.

Business with the automotive com-
panies began in 1946 when Livingston
got a contract to manufacture wooden
parts for the Buick Estate Wagon. By
1950, he was providing packing ser-
vices to Ford Motor Company. In 1955
he began export packing of Ford parts
to overseas assembly plants. In 1964,
General Motors also became an ex-
port packing customer.

A year later the Hagersville facility

H was opened, in a row of hangars origi-

nally built in 1939 for training World

°° War II bomber pilots. After the war,

the site became a storage and repair

$ depot for over 8500 army vehicles. A

year after the Army moved out in
1964, Livingston bought it. In 1967, the
company became a public corpora-
tion. Then TDS bought the company
from the Livingston family in 1986.
MORE THAN A JOB, IT’S A WAY OF LIFE

Export packing has been a way of
life for many Local 1-500 members.
Earl Troyer, for example, who was at
one time the Local president, has
worked for 36 years at the Tillsonburg
plant.

He lives just down the street from
the plant and walks to work in seven
minutes.

Troyer has lived in the area all his
life. His dad was general foreman in
the Hagersville plant for many years,
starting in 1948.

“ve seen the good times and the bad
times,” he reflects, “Our membership is
150, compared to 800 ten years ago.”

He started out at the plant making
bases and crates for Westinghouse ap-
pliances. For a while, he worked in
sample identification, but now he dri-
ves a lift truck.

Troyer notes that the Tillsonburg
plant is fortunate in having a very ac-
tive safety committee. “We have meet-
ings once a month, discuss problems
and work them out.”

Saul Marques, the union business
agent, recalls, “We used to have
propane lift trucks. Working indoors,
the fumes were terrible. But now they
are electric. It’s an example of a big
step forward for this plant in dealing
with safety.” Troyer agrees; of the
new lift trucks in general he also says,
“You can see a lot better; you can do a
lot more with them.”

LW.A. Local 500 is in the middle of
contract talks with TDS right now.

Home care

Continued from page thirteen

The nature of the employees’ job
presented some unusual challenges
and issues for a union that’s accus-
tomed to negotiating in the forestry
industry. For example, some VALID
clients require around-the-clock su-
pervision, so some employees must
spend nights in the homes, sleeping
for part of their shift. The new collec-
agreement gives employees a sig-
ificant increase in wages for this
so-called “sleep-shift.”

1.W.A. negotiators had to work
closely with the employees to over-
come their lack of familiarity with
VALID. They met to prepare for nego-
tiations and during bargaining ses-
sions.

T wasn't totally familiar with all of
the issues, how the organization oper-

ated,” Mr. Pisak says. “I needed some-

one who could share some insights
into the day-to-day operations, some
of the unique problems and some of

the issues that had to be addressed.

This co-operation got us an agreement
that is in the best interest of the em-
ployees and the clients.”

IWA BECOMING MORE DIVERSIFIED

It isn’t the first time local 1-207 has
been asked to represent employee
groups outside the forestry industry.
The union will represent non-tradi-
tional employee groups that wish rep-
resentation, and more of these groups
are coming to the I.W.A.

“We're becoming more diversified,”
Mr. Pisak says. “The vast numbers of
our members in the I.W.A. are in the
forest industry, but we're getting into
other areas.”

There are many examples of Cana-
dian I.W.A. locals that represent em-
ployees in non-traditional sectors. The
Alberta I.W.A. local’s 1,300 members
include employees of a mobile-home
plant in Lethbridge, a pre-fabricated-
home manufacturer in Lloydminster
and a Travelaire recreational-vehicle
plant in Red Deer. Municipal employ-
ees in Grimshaw are also unionized
under the 1-207 banner.

VALID employees organized their
own petition to ask for a supervised
vote. That vote overwhelmingly sup-

ported the call for the local to repre-
sent them.

The resulting agreement is in force
for just over two years, expiring
March 31, 1997. It includes a clause
that allows for the renegotiation of
wages in the final year if the funding
situation has changed significantly.

Employees unanimously ratified the
collective agreement. “We don’t have
everything in the agreement that we
wanted, but it is the first one and it’s
something to work on,” Mr. Pisak
comments. “There’s no question we
got them a better agreement than
what they had. They didn’t have a col-
lective agreement before.

“We're looking forward to a long re-
lationship with these employees.”

Whether the next negotiations in
1997 are easier and more lucrative for
employees of the Vegreville Associa-
tion for Living In Dignity depends
largely on the level of funding in two
years. One thing is certain: VALID em-
ployees believe they're better off with
LW.A. Canada Local 1-207 than they
would be on their own.

Wayne Rothe is a freelance writer
JSrom Alberta.

“Hopefully in the new year, we'll have
another contract,” says Troyer.

HOW I.W.A. BENEFITS TDS WORKERS

The union has done a lot to improve
working conditions at the TDS plants.
Marques, who has been the business
agent for seven years, says that the
biggest improvement has been the es-
tablishment of seniority in layoffs.

“When it comes time to lay off, they
have to lay off in order of seniority.
This is probably the largest contribu-
tion the union has made. Before they
were organized, the plants laid off
whoever they wanted to lay off.”

ECONOMIC DOWNTURN COSTS JOBS

Unfortunately, there have been a lot
of layoffs. Back in the late Seventies,
Tillsonburg had 800 workers and
Hagersville had 300, working two
shifts. But because of downturns in
the economy, Tillsonburg dwindled to
70 and Hagersville to 85.

Those job losses were caused by a
number of things: Massey and White
Farm went out of business. So TDS
was not packing much agricultural
equipment any more. The volume of
material from Ford and GM went
down, as overseas factories began do-
ing some of their own manufacturing.

The workers make
over 600 types of
boxes for packaging
just about anything
overseas

Also, the nature of the materials
and methods of packing are continual-
ly changing. There are more container
shipments, more shipment in corru-
gated boxes, and more shipping in
reusable containers than there used to
be.

“This isn’t one of the richest compa-
nies in the world.” Marques admits,
“And the reason is that General Mo-
tors, Ford and Chrysler have asked
for severe price reductions. And the
one-way boxes are being replaced by
clip lock boxes, which are returnable.
It'll cut down quite a bit on the num-
ber of boxes manufactured in
Hagersville.”

Clip lock boxes are becoming more
popular for environmental reasons.
“Where at one time in this province
and elsewhere, you could take wood
to your landfill, today they’re not ac-
cepting it, or if they are it’s at a high
cost, priced by the ton,” Marques ex-
plains.

“Corrugated boxes is another thing
- they’re getting into recycling corru-
gated products. And we have a real
task to deal with that because it takes
jobs away from some of our I.W.A.
members.

On the other hand, TDS is trying to
develop a larger market for the clip
lock boxes in North America, now
that GM wants to use them to ship its
products to Venezuela. This could
lead to more jobs in the future.
INCREASED NON-UNION COMPETITION

Another big problem is increased
non-union competition with I.W.A.-or-
ganized plants. When Livingston start-
ed in the industry, there were very
few competitors. Now there are liter-
ally dozens of them, bidding for the
same business that TDS is bidding for.

“We suffer because this is an estab-
lished business, and they pay decent
wages,”Marques explains, “but people
in the States open up plants and pay
just above minimum wage.”

Since the parts come from the Unit-
ed States anyway, it’s tough to hang
onto the American customers when
U.S. suppliers pay minimum wage and
then underbid Canadians.

Continued on page fourteen

LUMBERWORKERAJUNE, 1995/13