UNION EXPRESSES
CONCERN OVER
FORESTRY JOBS

At a joint industry/union
conference on new work
opportunities, unionists
said forest industry jobs
are not being created
soon enough.

FEATURE PAGES 6 - 7

¢ CAMP JUBILEE was the site for recent jobs steward seminiars held by I.W.A. CANADA LOCAL 1-217. The seminars were a big success and other local unions are
encouraged to use the facilities. See story on page 12.

Federal government prepares for new
assault on Unemployment Insurance

by Phillip Legg

ver the last two months, a

series of announcements

and “leaks” from Ottawa

indicate that the federal

government is preparing a
Major assault on the Unemployment
Insurance (U.I.) system for the Fall.
Although every worker,employed or
unemployed, will feel the impact of
the proposed changes, the most vul-
nerable group will likely be those who
work in industries where a shrinking
work year and seasonal curtailments
are part and parcel of every job.

Using that yardstick, most I.W.A.
members could easily find themselves
subject to tougher ULI. eligibility rules
and substantially reduced benefits en-
titlements. For many woodworkers
the combination of a tightening tim-
ber supply, uneven markets for wood
products and the seasonal impact on
some aspects of their work means
that they fall back on the U.I. system
to fill in the gaps in a typical work
year.

However, this Fall the Federal Lib-
erals will introduce legislation to dras-
tically change those conditions. It will
take two or three times as long to
qualify for U.I. Benefits as a percent
of weekly wages will be cut to as low
as thirty percent for some claimants
and maximum weeks of benefits will
be reduced to forty weeks.

If these proposals become law, six-
ty percent of the unemployed will not
get U.I. because of tougher eligibility
and lower entitlements. In fact, even
under the existing rules, which have
moved consistently, under both Mul-
roney and Chretien, to decrease eligi-
bility, a large number of unemployed

do not qualify for U.I. benefits. In
British Columbia and Ontario, for ex-
ample, close to forty-five percent of
the unemployed in those provinces do
not receive U.I.

Under the new rules that will be put
in place this Fall, the most significant
change will be the substitution of
hours worked as opposed to weeks
worked as a basic unit for determin-
ing U.I. eligibility and benefits. Al-
though the idea of counting hours is
not necessarily bad, the conversion
that is being proposed will hide a mas-
sive increase in the entrance require-
ments for U.I. benefits.

Using the current system, a worker
is required to work 12 to 20 weeks
(depending on local unemployment
rates) for basic entitlement. A qualify-
ing week is considered to be one in
which the employee worked a mini-
mum of 15 hours and earned at least
$163.00.

Converting the current require-
ments to an hours worked format
would mean that an employee would
have to work between 180 and 300
hours to qualify for U.I. However, the
conversion being proposed by the
Federal Liberals will greatly increase
these minimum requirements.

Under the proposed system a quali-
fying week will be one in which the
employee works a minimum of thirty-
five hours. As a result, the “new” mini-
mum requirements will rise dramati-
cally. Depending on unemployment
rates in the local area, a person will
now have to work between 455 and
700 hours before they would qualify
for U.I. benefits - roughly two and a
half times more hours to achieve ba-
sic entitlement.

On the benefit side the Liberals are
also proposing a number of cuts that
will effectly reduce the amount of
benefits that a worker can receive un-
der U.I. For example, the proposed
changes will target those workers
who have received any U.I. in the pre-
vious year. Under these rules benefits
will be reduced by 1% for every 15
weeks of prior claim.

Part-time workers will be particu-
larly hard hit by the proposed
changes. With the revisions to qualify-
ing conditions raised, part-timers will
have a more difficult time getting the
necessary number of hours. Even
when they do reach that new qualify-
ing threshold, their benefit level will
likely suffer because of the change in
calculating average weekly earnings.
The proposed method will use an av-
erage from the last twenty-two weeks,
even if no earnings were recorded for
some of those weeks. By including
these “zero earnings” weeks in the cal-
culation, the government is effectively
reducing benefit levels to a prospec-
tive U.L claimant.

IWA members, in particular loggers
and millworkers who face downtime
for seasonal or market reasons, will
feel the most immediate impact of
these changes. Not only will eligibility
get tougher, but benefit levels will de-
crease because the system will now
mark these workers as “repeat” or
“frequent” U.I. claimants.

To try and minimize criticism lev-
elled against it by various groups, in-
cluding the trade union movement,
the Liberals have pointed out that the
proposed changes would make it eas-
er for those working forty hours per
week to qualify for U.I. However, if

the government’s track record is any-
thing to go by, it is likely that even
these changes will be re-vamped to
exclude more people from fair access
toUL

The administrative changes that
have been incorporated in the Liber-
als proposal point to a fundamental
gap in their whole approach to unem-
ployment. Their proposal assumes
that workers are to blame for unem-
ployment and that lower benefits and

Continued on page two

Canada faces
new duty threat
on lumber

By Doug Smyth
Research Director
I.W.A. CANADA

Between 1983 and 1994 the British
Columbia and Canadian softwood
lumber industries have been the tar-
gets of three separate countervailing
duty cases by the United States. The
goal of the U.S. industry was to con-
vince their federal government to im-
pose heavy tariffs on imports of Cana-
dian lumber. If they had been
successful those duties would have
crippled the B.C. and Canadian
sawmilling industries and caused
many permanent job losses. They also
would have limited the size of com-
pensation increases in collective
agreement negotiations.

Although the third countervailing
duty case was just completed late in
1994, the U.S. Coalition of companies
that has demanded restrictions on
Canadian lumber imports has already
become very active over the past few
months in putting together a cam-

Continued on page two