¢ Local 1-2995 President Norm Rivard (right) drops into Calstock operation for a visit with plant Job Steward Ron Martin. The plant has been in the union since the early 1970's. Lecours Calstock operation signs pattern sawmill agreement in Northern Ontario One of I.W.A. CANADA Local 1- 2995’s operations to reach the pattern agreement for northern Ontario sawmills is Lecours Lumber Ltd. in Calstock, which is is about 40 km. west of Hearst. On December 18 of last year a new three year contract was ratified by a vote of 74-10. The agreement, which will expire in August of 1998, calls for wage increases of 3% in each of the three years. A lump sum cash pay- ment of $1000.00 was also paid out in the first year. That pattern agreement was set ear- lier in 1995 by striking Local 1-2995 members at two sawmills owned by Malette. More than three months earli- er the local union struck both the Malette United sawmill in Hearst and the Malette Inc. mill in Timmins to es- tablish the pattern. On the union negotiating committee at the Calstock operation were local union President Norm Rivard, local union Financial Secretary Damien Roy, Job Steward Ron Martin and Committee Member Guy Ploudre. Also included in the agreeement is a provision that the company will pay a $300.00 per year tool allowance to all tradespersons upon proof of pur- chase. The company will pay shift differen- tial premiums of 53 cents per hour for the second shift worked and 56 cents an hour for the third shift. In other contract improvements, seniority recall protection has been increased to a maximum 36 months from 24 months. Life insurance cover- age and accidental death and dis- memberment insurance has been in- creased to $37,000.00. Disability benefits for weekly indemnity are now pegged at $500.00/week, increas- ing to $510.00/ week in September of 1996 and then up to $525.00/week a year later. The company will now pay a total educational leave of 15 working days for members in the bargaining unit and will pay five days bereavement pay for the loss of parents. In the resolution of local plant is- sues, the company agreed to pay pond and log deck sorters an extra $0.15 per hour and will now require a li- cence for log and sawdust truck dri- vers on company property. The company has now also agreed that all loading of the mill’s by-prod- ucts will be done by regular employ- ees and that the loader operator will finish loading the truck before lunch or coffee break. The truck drivers, it is further agreed, will not load them- selves during the weekend. “We think that it’s a very good over- all agreement,” says Brother Rivard, who acted as union spokesperson during negotiations. “We followed the pattern for sawmill bargaining and made some headway in resolving lo- cal issues.” Both I.W.A. CANADA Local 2693 and 1-2995 bargain under the auspices of the Northern Ontario District Coun- cil which is an am of the two lo- cals. The NODC coordinates bargain- ing in the sawmill, plywood and parti- cle board and logging sectors. The Lecours mill is built on a Native Indian reserve owned by an Ojibway Indian band. The company leases the land and, as part of the agreement, has committed to hiring a workforce of at least 50% Natives. “We, as a union, have no problem with the policy,” says Brother Rivard. “The Natives have proven to be good workers and good union members.” Since the company saves consider- able tax by having the mill on band land and it is closer to the timber sup- ply than it otherwise would be, the Native band is currently looking at renegotiating a better deal for itself. The mill, which is a two line opera- “§| tion, was built in the early 1970's and has been unionized for over 25 years. Only twice has the union had to take it out on strike. The first one was a 7 week strike in 1973 over wages. The second one was in 1984, for 16 weeks, when the company tried to take away transfer of seniority rights, bumping rights and job training rights out of the contract. The mill gets most of its wood from a Forest Management Agreement tim- ber licence with the Ontario govern- ment. It cuts exclusively jack pine and spruce and can take up to a 27” log at the butt. Anything over that can be re- duced by a mobark rotor head. The mill’s two kerf saw lines cut logs down to a 4” top. Wood less than the minumum goes straight to the chipper. On an 8 hour shift the mill can pump out 200,000 board feet of finish lumber. Almost everything is kiln- dried except 2 x 10’s which are air dried. The mill produces mostly 2 inch and one inch lumber. Anew edger optimizer has been in- stalled in the mill to cut down on problems of overload and increase the mill’s efficiency considerably. Plant Job Steward Ron Martin said that the company should look at adding value to the lumber in the plant to create more jobs and get a higher return. “The mills out here really haven’t looked seriously at value added and reman work,” he says. Brother Rivard says that, because there is a high demand for chips, northern Ontario sawmills have been trailing behind in doing such value- added work as finger-jointing. The black spruce and jack pine species are pre-sorted out in the woods. Then after they go through the mill, the chips are piled separately before shipment to purchasers. Union gets FRBC job coordinator The I.W.A. is working to get dis- placed forest workers back on the job doing forest renewal work and has successfully sought Forest Renewal B.C. funding to bring in a Port Alberni Local 1-85 member to work as an Em- ployment Coordinator for the union. Brother Ron Corbeil, an Executive Board member from the Vancouver Is- land local, started working at the union’s national office on February 5. Since then he has been contacting | cal unions and finding out about their. issues. Corbeil’s job is to link laid off I.W.A. members to work that is funded through Forest Renewal of British Co- lumbia. There are a lot of FRBC pro- Jects that are getting underway these days, but there has not much linking going on to tie displaced workers to those jobs. Brother Corbeil hopes to put an end to that. Right now there are about 630 union members in the province’s Low- er Mainland who have been displaced 12/LUMBERWORKER/MARCH, 1996 within the last year. On Vancouver Is- land, in the Clayoquot Region alone, there are some 200 workers who have been laid off due to land-use deci- sions. Various industrial adjustment com- mittees have been set up and some workers have been picked up with FRBC training seminars, but there have not yet been a lot of success sto- ries in getting workers back doing physical work yet. FRBC is something that the union Local 1-85 member Ron Corbeil wholeheartedly supports in principle but the I.W.A. has been critical of its implementation to date. Too many proposals are coming in that don’t benefit those who have been tradition- ally employed in the forest industry. “I feel that FRBC is a good idea that is not working now,” says Brother Corbeil. “Hopefully down the road, when it begins to work properly, our members will benefit more.” One major stumbling block that Corbeil has encountered has been the lack of industry proposals. It seems government ministries have been quicker to get a line on accessing FRBC funding. The various ministries are putting in proposals that are going out to bids without displaced forest workers in mind. In addition, strict funding guidlines specify that work has to be awarded to low bid contrac- tors which, in most cases, ignore the needs of displaced workers. These problems, says Corbeil, in part reflect the growing pains that FRBC is facing. He does point out to some exam- ples where solid proposals have been put forth with .W.A. involvement. In the Sunshine Coast area, Local 1-71 has been very involved with the local native band and International Forest Products in putting together a com- mercial thinning problem. Local Business Agent Murray Can- telon has played a key role in getting the program off the ground. Keith Uj- vary of the Sunshine Coast Communi- ty Industrial Adjustment Society and training coodinator Gord Esau have helped put together a real program employing real workers. Workers have been trained in vari- ous progressive forestry techniques like selective falling and directional falling in dense forest canopies. They have been schooled in everything from forestry law to plant biology to harvesting with techniques that en- sure less soil compaction. Brother Corbeil will be working hard to find out where the jobs are and keep track of the workers who have been displaced. “The government has an obligation to traditional forest workers and a major portion of them are I.W.A. members,” he says. “We think that people in the bureaucracy are begin- ning to recognize this and are will hopefully become more cooperative with our organization in the future.” Corbeil says that he has received some excellent cooperation from the many players already out there whom are trying their best to link displaced workers to FRBC funding. Local unions and union members wanting to discuss FRBC work can contact Corbeil at the union's nation- al office in Vancouver. Telephone (604) 683-1117 or fax (604) 688- 6416.