PF ieee

LW.A. in Quebec

Continued from page ten

testers, couplers, quality assurance,
shipping, and maintenance.

After the job reclassification, there
were a number of workers who has
their jobs rates blue circled for a high-
er rate of pay. There was also an up-
ward adjustment for wages for loom
operators.

The company’s owners are now
talking expansion.

“There’s still a long way to go be-
fore we really branch out but they
way they (management) are talking,

things are beginning to take off,” says
McCarter.

e Grading hardwood in the Produits Forestiers mill is Timothy Dempsey.

Speculation is that if three more
looms are added, at least another 9-10
operators may be hired.

As there has been a lot of turnover
in the plant, training workers to safely
do their jobs has become an impor-
tant issue. There has been no specific
training program for loom operators
other that on-the-job training. Work-
ers have be very alert when operating
the looms to avoid losing fingers and
possibly worse.

Brother Deveraux, who also sits on
the safety committee, says that air
quality is an area of concern. In addi-
tion to some workers wearing masks
when treating the hoses or sweeping
the floors, he says that air ventilation
is very important. Fortunately most of

the machines and work areas are well
vented.

PRODUITS FORESTIERES

The second and only other operation
in the province is the Produits For-
estiers mill in Ft. Coulonge, which is
about an hour and a half drive north of
Ottawa on the Quebec side of the river.

The population of Ft. Coulonge and
the County of Mansfield is about 5,000
in a largely bilingual community. Ft.
Coulonge used to be a central gather-
ing area for log drives in the old days
where logs were rafted up for drives
down the Ottawa River and then on to
overseas markets.

The sawmill is an old clunker by
modern industry standards and is be-
ing upgraded bit by bit. Brother Mc-
Carter says the union is encouraging
the company to plough some money
into modernizing the operation.

It has two saw lines: a double-cut
carriage line with a carriage that cuts
big slabs and a single-cut band saw
line. The wood is sent to a resaw from
both lines and then on to an edger and
a resaw. Not long ago the company
took out a bull edger and is now find-
ing out that it needs it back to handle
the hardwood centres.

The mill, once owned by the Fortier
family and now run by owner Gustav
Brunet, runs about 80% hardwoods. It
mills maple, oak, poplar, birch, and
basswood.

In the winter months it mostly runs
pine as frozen softwood logs are must
easier to mill. The pine usually is
around 20 inch in the butt and the mill
can handle logs of up to 40 inches in
diameter.

One thing that the workers have to
look out for is metal in the logs. In the
past there have been numerous inci-
dents of logs loaded with spike, nails,
maple syrup spigots and even bullets.

It does buy both crown and private
wood that contains metal which is a
danger to workers when hit by a saw.

Along.the production flow the
wood is carefully graded and tallied.
For maple alone there are 15 grades
which must be separated.

The finished production is stickered
and then shipped out to other mills
for drying and planing. The company
has no such facilities on the mill site.

Most of the wood comes from bush
operations full length and some of
that goes right into a drum debarker
and a chipper. Wood not good enough
for the mill is sent right into a chipper.
The chips are then hauled to a pulp
mill in Portage Du Four which is
owned by Stone Consolidated.

The operation works 2 shifts a day,
5 days a week, with about 35 people
on day shift, (including millwrights
and yard operators) and 15 people on
nights.

The plant chairman in Daniel Dage-
nais who serves on the plant.commit-
tee with secretary Laurent Lacroix
and Carole Dagenais.

Brother Dagenais says by joining
the I.W.A. “the workers have gained a
lot of respect.” Now the company re-
spects seniority and is trying to coop-
erate with the workers more.

“We are glad that the I.W.A. is with
us and we think that we can get a bet-
ter deal in the years ahead,” says Da-
genais.

The starting wage is $9.40/hour with
a top wage for filers, sawyers and me-
chanics. In the first year of a three
year contract the union got the work-
ers a $1.25/hour boost in pay. Workers
also are now getting life insurance, ac-
cidental death and dismemberment
coverage, and weekly indemnity bene-
fits. The collective agreement is now
in its third year and the contract will
expire later this year.

° Presenting their case to the provincial negotiation committee in March were (left to right) Nisga'a representatives Nel-
son Leeson, Chief Negotiator Joe Gosnell, and Harry Nyce.

|.W.A. makes cautious assesment of Nisg’a land deal

by Phillip Legg
Assistant Research Director

After more than a century of dis-
pute and twenty years of intensive ne-
gotiations, the British Columbia gov-
ernment, the federal government and
representatives of the Nisga’a Tribal
Council announced an agreement in
principle earlier this year. The an-
nouncement came as a result of a re-
newed negotiating effort by the

provincial government in 1992.

The agreement in principle marks
the first substantive settlement of a
lands claim in B.C. In many respects it
will be considered a “pace-setter” for
many of the other land claims in the
province.

It was for that reason that the
LW.A.’s B.C. Provincial Negotiating
Committee (P.N.C.) scheduled a brief-
ing session with representatives from

ren STS BREIL E

both the provincial government and
the Nisga’a Tribal Council to discuss
some of the details of the agreement
in principle. The meeting, which took
place in March, included Joe Gosnell,
chief negotiator for the Nisga’a, Nel-
son Lesson and Harry Nyce, from the
Nisga’a Tribal Council and Phillip
Halkett, Deputy Minister of Aboriginal
Affairs for the provincial government.

Chief Gosnell stressed the impor-
tance and historic significance of this
agreement for the Nisga’a. He talked
about the long history of negotiations
and legal challenges that the Nisga’a
had endured to achieve this agree-
ment. Although there had been on-go-
ing attempts by the Nisga’a over the
Jast fifty years to have the courts ad-
dress their concerns, it took a 1973
Supreme Court of Canada decision to
direct the federal government to begin

discussing the land claims issue with

. directly with the Nisga’a. In 1992, the

B.C. government was added to those
negotiations.

The process from Gosnell’s per-
spective also had a personal dimen-
sion because his father had played a
critical role in launching initial court
actions which led to the start of for-
mal negotiations.

Chief Gosnell also stressed the con-
text in which the Nisga’a community
views both the process of negotia-
tions and the agreement in principle.
In the Nass Valley community of New
Aiyansh, for example, where Nisga’a
account for upwards of 90% of the lo-
cal population, unemployment, espe-
cially amongst the young is at near
epidemic levels. Close to 65% of the
employable workforce in that commu-
nity is without work according to Gos-

nell and the Tribal Council believes
that only through the resolution of
their land claims can economic devel-
opment in that region begin to ad-
dress the unemployment problem.

A similar perspective was offered
by the provincial government repre-
sentative Phillip Halkett. When the
province committed itself to formal
negotiations of land claims, they pro-
ceeded first with the Nisga’a, in large
measure, because of the history, orga-
nization and stability of the Tribal
Council s effort to resolve the land
claims in their area. From a provincial
perspective, it was essential that the
provincial address and correct the
long-standing injustices, both eco-
nomic and social, that the native com-
munity in B.C. had ensured and treaty
negotiations provided the best mecha-
nism to achieve those objectives.

Although the agreement in principle
is not the final settlement, all three
representatives at the briefing ac-
knowledged that it formed a signifi-
cant framework from which the final
settlement would be drafted. The 150
page agreement covers a variety mea-
sures and the representatives high-
lighted what they felt were some of
the more important elements.

The cost sharing of the agreement
was split between the federal and
provincial governments with the fed-
eral government providing most of the
cash in the settlement while the
province provided land and forest
rights.

The contentious issue of native
fisheries would not be constitutionally
protected. Instead the Nisga’a and fed-
eral government have agreed to a le-
gal contract to grant Nisga’a native
commercial fishing rights. This provi-
sion means that Nisga’a fishing rights
would be subject to the same conser-
vation control measures that all other
fisheries are subject to.

e The current exemption that the
Nisga’a have from federal and provin-
cial taxes will be eliminated as a re-
sult of this agreement.

e Part of the settlement provides

Continued on page sixteen

LUMBERWORKER/JUNE 1996/11