Reasons to support NDP

are numerous to find

by Gerry Stoney

hen we look at what is happening to

working people across Canada it is

easy to find reasons to continue to

support the New Democratic Party.

We must look at what is happening

to the labour movement in Ontario
and remember the ongoing attacks that are taking
place in Alberta and Manitoba to to understand why
the NDP alternative is the only one for us.

Then contrast all of that with what has happened
in B.C. over the past decade with a switch from
right-wing governments to progressive NDP leader-
ship which is now just over 4 months into its his-
toric second consecutive term of government.

In Ontario the Harris government has declared
war on unions and has made some regressive
changes to labour laws. It is making it very tough to
organize unions and is gutting the public service
sector unions.

In a recent report to our National Executive
Board, Brother Fred Miron, Second National Vice
President of the I.W.A. said that our union would
have had at least another 500 members had it not
been for changes to the Labour Code in Ontario
which have made it all too easy for employers to in-

timidate and interfere in organizing drives.

The Harris government has even sponsored a
“right-to-work” conference following the lead of the

Ralph Klein Conserva-
tives. Both govern-
ments want their
provinces to become
low wage ghettos
where workers enjoy
few rights if any.

In Manitoba the
Conservative govern-
ment of Gary Filmon
has set out to intro-
duce some of most
draconian changes to
labour laws that Cana-
da has ever seen (see
story page one).

In British Columbia
it was nine years ago
that over 500,000 peo-
ple got together to
protest attacks on the
labour movement in-
troduced by then So-
cred Premier Bill Van-
derzalm who turned back the clock on labour by
introducing the infamous Bill 19.

During Vander Zalm’s five year reign the I.W.A.
could not organize even one logging operation. The
amount of unionized construction in B.C. fell by
80% in the province.

Then the labour movement rallied. In 1991, B.C.
Federation of Labour affiliates worked tirelessly to
elect an NDP government.

What followed were some progressive changes
for working people. A new Labour Code banned the
use of scabs during strikes or lockouts. An automat-
ie certification procedure was introduced and our
membership grew.

The NDP created the strongest economy in Cana-

da with the highest rate of
job creation. They also ad-
ministered the lowest
debt per capita of any
province and put in the
second lowest tax rate.

They also introduced
fair wage laws to the Van-
couver Island Highway
construction project. A
Crown corportation en-
sures that non-union com-
panies can't undercut
union wages and pocket
windfall profits.

Farm workers in B.C.
were given, for the first
time, protection under the
Labour Code and Work-
ers’ Compensation sys-
tem. Domestic workers
were given protection that
they never had before.

Now with a second
term we have an NDP Premier who was a union or-
ganizer. Who better to understand further changes
that we need to the Labour Code than Glen Clark?

We have I.W.A. Local 1-71 member Glenn Robert-
son sitting as an MLA for North Island and have for-
mer Victoria and District Labour Council Secretary-
Treasurer Steve Orcherton as another rookie MLA.

In the future we will have our disagreements with
the NDP. But at least we will have our say. They
will make some mistakes and we will do our best to
help them to correct them.

At the end of the day, however, we are on the in-
side and not on the outside as we would be with ei-
ther Liberal, Reform or Conservative parties in
power.

ISO standards should

help secure markets

by Kim Pollock

wo events this summer will help Canadian
forest products gain access to internation-
al markets.

First, the Canadian Standards Associa-
tion’s Technical Committee reached agree-
ment on standards for sustainable forest
practices. The committee’s final draft, by a broad
range of stakeholders, reflects a Canada-wide con-
sultation process and results of pilot audits con-
ducted earlier this year.

I.W.A. CANADA Third Vice-President Warren
Ulley was a member of the technical .committee’s
steering body.

“This is an important achievement,” he says. “It
will allow forest operators in Canada to show,
through an independent audit process, that their
practices are sustainable.”

The CSA sustainable forestry standard will be
available for publication in October.

Meanwhile, at a June meeting in Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil, the International Standards Association
agreed to establish a working group to prepare the
way for application of the ISO’s Environmental
Management Standards, ISO 1400, to forestry.

The CSA will be involved in this process.

“Again, this broadens the credibility of Canadian
forest practices internationally,” says Ulley, who
also took part in the Rio meetings.

Canada will now appoint a delegation to work
on an ISO “bridging document” which will likely
start taking shape at talks planned for Kyoto,
Japan, in April, 1997.

Meanwhile, troubles are beginning to emerge
over at the Forest Stewardship Council, which is
the “rival” international certifier of forest prac-
tices.

The green groups’ certification agency is finally
starting to run into the problems contained in their
“chain-of-custody” policy, for instance. Although
green ideology would like to ensure that products
are produced or altered in an environmentally
friendly way at every turn between harvesting and
final sale, this is not really practical. Products like
paper, waferboard or oriented strand board will
prove the unworkability of this policy.

At the FSC’s annual meeting at its headquarters
in Oaxaca, Mexico, these troubles reportedly
boiled to the surface. Buyers from the United
Kingdom, for instance, challenged FSC to get it’s
act together or risk failure.

Similar challenges are also emerging here in
Canada. About the only good news for FSC is that

international meddlers
extraordinaire, Green-
peace, failed to get onto
the group’s board of di-
rectors.

Greenpeace and other
United States greens also
failed recently in efforts
to get huge U.S. buyer of
paper products, Pacific
Bell, to boycott British
Columbia products for
| alleged bad forest prac-
tices.

The two international
certification approaches were placed in sharp con-
trast at a recent conference in Brisbane, Australia.
FSC’s emphasis on product labelling, did not fare
very well compared to the CSA-ISO approach,
which concentrates on actual forest practices.

According to the Canadian government’s draft
report on the Brisbane session, ‘A number of coun-
tries (eg Canada, USA, UK) as well as industry del-
egates felt that such an

and that safety “is considered” and there is “not a
higher than normal accident rate.”

Considering the Rainforest Alliance SmartWood
program currently covers operations in Brazil, In-
donesia, Honduras and other cradles of workers’
rights, those standards shouldn't be hard to meet -
and they won’t mean much for workers, either.

It’s not easy to find out much about SmartWood
operations, either.

According to Rainforest Alliance officials, infor-
mation about certified operations’ working condi-
tions are “confidential.” Even the audit reports are
not made available.

Certified companies are “protective about infor-
mation,” says SmartWood director John Jickling.
Sure, but is that really a good reason for extreme
secrecy?

Jickling’s colleague Richard Donovan is knowl-
edgeable and less doctrinaire than many of FSC’s
hard-line greens. He says that FSC’s “social and
community guidelines” including, pay, benefits
and safety standards are currently “under review.”
That’s good, because they have a long way to go.

Currently such issues

emphasis was mis-
placed.’

Industry and the tim-
ber traders “stated that
such an emphasis ‘puts
the cart before the
horse’ and that chain-
of-custody and product
labelling may not be
cost effective. Many
delegates felt that chain
of custody and product

As international consumers
become more demanding,
we will find certification

issues increasingly
important

as workers’ share of
forest wealth, training
standards, trade union
rights and workers’ civ-
il liberties are not in-
cluded in the audit of
FSC operations.

That leaves them a
long way from living up
to criteria set out re-
cently by the Interna-
tional Federation of

labelling may not be
acheivable in some sit-
uations and that certification without chain-of-cus-
tody and product labelling may be adequate to en-
sure sustainable forest management, Canada’s
report notes.

Ulley, a member of the Canadian delegation,
told the conference that Canadian forest workers
have pushed sustainable forestry for over 50 years,
that I.W.A. is committed to the CSA initiative and
will not support the FSC.

“Many groups on the FSC are the same ones
who organized or supported international boycotts
of our products,” he notes. “Yet our practices are
as good as or better than anyone’s.”

Over at FSC, it’s also becoming increasingly
clear that the concerns of workers do not rank all
that very high on the agenda.

It’s hard to get information from FSC’s four rec-
ognized certifying bodies. The small amount of in-
formation that has been provided shows that
FSC’s standards on what it calls “employee rela-
tions” are minimal at best.

To gain an FSC seal of approval from the Ver-
mont-based Rainforest Alliance, FSC’s biggest cer-
tifier, for instance, an operator need only show
that wages are not lower than the local standard

Building and Wood-
workers, the labour
body that represents the world’s forest, wood and
building workers, for instance.

I.W.A. Canada President Gerry Stoney, recently
elected to the IFBWW executive council, helped
shape that organization’s policy statement on cer-
tification.

“To a large extent the concerns of the labour
movement have not been incorporated into certifi-
cation schemes,” the policy notes. “This could mean
that forests are certified as well-managed even
though working conditions are unacceptable.”

So far, this is a clear possibility with FSC certifi-
cations. IFBWW should be pushing it to upgrade
its standards. In the meantime, the I.W.A. will stick
with the CSA process, in which labour has been
fully involved since the beginning.

_ As international markets become more competi-
tive and consumers more demanding about forest
standards, we will find international certification
issues increasingly important. As forest workers,

we have an important stake in the standards and
their application.

Kim Pollock is the Director of I.W.A. CANADA’s
Environment and Land-Use Department.

a

4/LUMBERWORKER/SEPTEMBER, 1996