EDITORIAL

Workers need to mobilize
to get forest renewal jobs

ore than a year after its formation, the
Forest Renewal Plan for British Co-
lumbia is beginning to move into gear.
However, many of our members are
starting to wonder where all the jobs
are. Where are the
union jobs? Jobs for union workers
will come if the companies that they
work for get busy and submit proposals to do Forest
Renewal work. And if these companies agree that this
new work can and should be done by union members,
then the jobs will come, after approval by the govern-
ment.

But we can’t sit around and wait for the industry to
make moves which will benefit workers. We have to get
in there and move and shake to make things happen.

The labour movement has never gotten anything with-
out a struggle or a fight and the same goes for Forest
Renewal jobs. The government has the money but the
companies have to submit forest renewal plans for ap-
proval.

In LW.A. logging operations our members have to ask
companies what they are doing. Are they on-side as far
as Forest Renewal is concerned? Are they prepared to
put some projects which will involve union members?
Are they going to plan their proposals to get a mesh be-
tween the new work and existing crews?

The industry can see value in Forest Renewal work
but the best bet is that they want to use contractors to
do the work. The challenge for the industry will be to
take existing work crews and do some new things.

That is why the I.W.A. negotiated an agreement on
New and Evolving Work as part of the collective agree-
ment signed in 1994. The agreement sets a framework
for the union and the companies to sit down and dis-
cuss anything to do with new work, including Forest
Renewal work.

There are hundreds and even thousands of jobs to be
created in Forest Renewal. Whether those jobs are in
watershed restoration or putting old logging roads to
bed or are in silvilcultural works such as thinning, prun-
ing and spacing, our members should have first shot at
those jobs.

Those jobs should go to people who already work in
the forest and are already skilled forest workers. If the
jobs can be done in the operation by an I.W.A. member
it should go to an J.W.A. member.

But the jobs will not fall into our laps. We must mobi-
lize within the operations and push employers to work
with us to create good paying, stable jobs.

We must be out there and out front in defending For-
est Renewal as well. There are those out there, includ-
ing Gordon Campbell's Liberal Party, who would like to
trash Forest Renewal B.C. and put the revenue into oth-
er government projects. When Forest Renewal was vot-
ed on in the legislative assembly last year, Campbell
voted against it.

Liberal Forest Critic Wilf Hurd was no better. He is il-
literate on forestry issues and his party has no long-
term policies to deal with the economics or the environ-
mental concerns of the industry. The Liberals don’t have
anything constructive to say about the forest industry
because they don’t know anything about it.

The I.W.A. has fought for a program like Forest Re-
newal for the last 15-20 years. Before it there was no
firm committment by the government.

Forest Renewal assures long term planning for long
term stability. It represents the first attempt of a provin-
cial government in Canada to invest considerable
amounts of capital in the future of the forest.

We must work to ensure that Forest Renewal B.C. re-
ceives full support and survives, no matter what govern-
ment is in power. We need to push industry to put prop-
er proposals together which will involve union

members.

LUMBERWORKER

Official publication of 1.W.A. CANADA
NorMAN Garcia

GERRY STONEY  . President

Editor NEIL MENARD. . Ist Vice-President

FRED MIRON  . 2nd Vice-President

ore WARREN ULLEY . . 3rd Vice-President

loor, HARVEY ARCAND . . 4th Vice-President

1285 W. Pender Street ‘TERRY SMITH . . Secretary-Treasurer
Vancouver, B.C.

VG6E 4B2

BROADWAY + PRINTERS LTD.

At the same time that Cana-
da’s largest trading partner,
the United States of America,
is proposing a new trans-At-
lantic free trade zone, work-
ers in Europe should take
note of the pressures that
Canadian workers are facing
under the North American
Free Trade agreement.

Take a look at the lumber,
grain, fishery, poultry and
dairy product sectors and see
what is in store for workers
under this new era of “free
trade.”

Only ten months after the
USS. lost its third countervail
case against Canada in the
past 15 years, the Americans
are looking to stick the Cana-
dian lumber industry with an-
other tariff. This time, as lum-
ber prices have fallen and
Canadian lumber exports to
the U.S. have jumped by a bil-
lion board feet in the last
year, the Washington-based
Coalition for Fair Lumber Im-
ports (CFLI) is beating the
war drums for another tariff
war.

During recent discussions
with Canadian forest industry
officials, the CFLI told the
Canadians that they must
mover to a “freer market pric-
ing system” for timber sales
or face action.

In a letter to members the
Coalition said that if Canada
does not change its lumber
pricing “we will proceed with
litigation and legislative ef-
forts as appropriate, probably
including a new countervail
case.”

The Coalition intends to get
a war chest of some $25 mil-
lion to fight Canada and slap
a tariff on Canadian lumber
which exceeds the last one of
6.5%.

Such a tariff would result in
the loss of thousands of Cana-
dian jobs at a time when the
industry has bounced back
from the recession of the ear-
ly 1990's.

The Canadians have told
the U.S. that they have al-

NEWTERED.

ready made significant
changes in the way stumpage
is collected and that there are
no legal grounds for the
Americans to win a fourth
countervail case.

Also facing threat of job
losses are Canadian farmers

who have been forced to re-
strict shipments of wheat into
the U.S. After being threat-
ened with huge tariffs in 1994,
western Canadian wheat
farmers voluntarily agreed
not to send wheat exports ex-
ceeding 1.4 million tonnes in
the U.S.

In spite of spring flooding
in the U.S. midwest, which
has made the U.S. market
more lucrative, Canadians
have been forced to limits ex-
ports.

At the same time the U.S. is
saying it will remove the “vol-
untary” cap if Canada dis-
bands its wheat board. Since
its formation in 1935 the
Canadian Wheat Board has
served western Canadian
farmers well to the point
where Canada now exports
20% of the world’s wheat.

With a weakened or abol-
ished Canadian Wheat Board
the Americans will be able to
seize more of the internation-
al market share as the U.S.
Federal government openly
subsidizes it grain industry to
the tune of $3.4 billion over
the next 5 years.

The result is more Canadi-
an farmers out of business.

In the poultry and dairy
products sector the U.S. is
turning up the heat to force
Canada to drop all tariffs to
allow for a flood of cheap
American imports.

Canada’s 36,000 plus dairy
farmers and their employees
should be very concerned
that the U.S. is trying to use
the NAFTA to force Canada
to eliminate tariffs in these
sectors.

Following a ruling last year
by the World Trade Organiza-
tion (formerly the GATT),
Canada agreed to drop import

INORID RICE FOR THE WMBERWORICER

©VRICE5|

Canada gets hammered by American “free traders”
as talks turns to a new Trans-Atlantic trade zone

quotas on poultry and dairy
products. Those tariffs, creat-
ed under the WTO are legal
and take precedence over the
NAFTA. Tariffs on some prod-
ucts are as high as 317%.

For decades Canada has
regulated imports of dairy

and poultry products in order
to support a domestic indus-
try which has created tens of
thousands of jobs. Now the
Americans want to flood
Canadian markets with ex-
cess production that would
easily put workers in Canada
on the unemployement line.

While they want to flood us
with milk and chicken, the
Americans are also taking our
salmon.

In Alaskan waters, overfish-
ing of Canadian salmon
stocks has forced the Canadi-
an government to cut our fish
harvest by 50%. At the same
time that the Alaskans are
overfishing salmon in the
north, their southern fisheries
in Wasington and Oregon are
closed.

Canada claims that over 6
million salmon ($70 million of
economic activity) will be lost
to the Alaskans this year
alone.

Canada has offered to re-
duce fish harvests in southern
waters if the Alaskans will
halt their overfishing of chi-
nook salmon which could
devastate the fishery on the
west coast of Vancouver Is-
land. The Department of Fish-
eries and Oceans says that the
Americans will ruin the
salmon runs that originate
from Canadian rivers.

They have ruined their own
fishery in the Pacific North-
west and now the Americans
are unwilling to negotiate a
new Pacific Salmon Treaty
with Canada.

Some free traders. Canadi-
an workers are losing jobs
and sovereignty to a belliger-
ent trading partner. And now
they are talking about trans-
Atlantic free trade?

LUMBERWORKER/AUGUST, 1995/5