Photo by Philip Legg,

e At a meeting in Brussels, Belgium the I.W.A. met with officials from the IFBWW and the ICFTU. Standing left to right
are Local 1-405 President Bob Matters, Local 1-3567 President Dave Tones, IFBWW Assistant General Secretary Robin
Whitehouse, and Local 1-80 President Bill Routley. Sitting left to right are Local 2693 President Wilf McIntyre, ICFTU
Assistant General Secretary Eddy Laurijssen and I.W.A. CANADA National President Gerry Stoney.

European visit
Continued from page one

panies have targeted various markets
and regions for specific response. Col-
lectively, through organizations like
the Forest Alliance of B.C. and the
Canadian Pulp and Paper Association,
forest companies have mounted
broader public campaigns to deal with
the issue.

Starting about two years ago, the
I.W.A. began to target its contribution
to the international debate and de-
fense of Canadian forest practices by
directing the union’s resources at two
critical points. The first was to lobby
for and participate in a national stan-
dard setting exercise that would pro-
vide a reliable, accurate and easily
transferable yardstick to measure a
forest company’s compliance and
achievements in sustainable forestry.
Often referred to as “certification,”
this national process is now well-posi-
tioned to become the model for devel-
oping a similar international yardstick
that would provide end-users of forest
products with a reliable way to assess
the sustainability of individual pro-
ducers.

The second area of effort by the
LW.A. has been to develop an interna-
tional network of trade union con-
tacts who share similar concerns
about sustainable forestry and under-
stand in greater detail Canada’s per-
formance and achievements in this
area. Working through the twelve mil-

lion member International Federation
of Building and Wood Workers (IFB-
WW), the I.W.A. has been targeting
key national affiliates of this Federa-
tion to build a base of support for our
position on sustainable forestry and
the role that trade unions should play
in the international certification of
that forestry.

European affiliates of the IFBWW.
were identified early on as some of
the most important groups for initial
contact. Although Europe has not
been a significant wood products mar-
ket for Canada, it continues to be a
very important market for Canadian
pulp and paper products. However, in
terms of the on-going environmental
debate, Europe plays a lead role and
has often been the staging ground for
various boycott campaigns initiated
by environmental groups.

It was for these reasons that an
I.W.A. delegation led by National Pres-
ident Gerry Stoney scheduled a series
of meetings with key European affili-
ates during the week of September 23-
27. The group included four local
union presidents drawn from various
regions; Bill Routley, President, Local
1-80, Dave Tones, President, Local 1-
3567, Bob Matters, President, Local 1-
405, and Wilf McIntyre, President, Lo-
cal 2693.

Over the five-day period, the group
met with national unions in Amster-
dam, Brussels, and London to discuss
how trade union priorities should be

~integrated into the on-going debate
over sustainable forestry.

FRBC review

Continued from page one

The Board of FRBC administers a
program continuity fund which is de-
signed to have $400 million in surplus
savings so that future projects can be
funded properly if there is a downturn
in stumpage revenue.

The I.W.A. puts a great deal of
blame for the surplus on the fact that
there are several major forest compa-
nies who are not submitting FRBC
proposals or are not submitting
enough proposals which include job
linking for displaced union members.

“Some forest companies have re-
fused to participate with the I.W.A. to
make significant applications to FRBC
to get funding for projects that would
employ our members,” says Brother
Stoney. “Instead some of these com-
panies have worked to deliberately
hire from outside the I.W.A. and from
outside the province to come in and
do contract work paid for by FRBC
funding.”

“We are very frustrated by this,”
added Stoney. “Employers must begin
to act more responsibly to put those
workers effected by land-use deci-

sions back to work. They have a

moral obligation to work with their
employees and the union.”

Criticisms of the surpluses that ex-
ist are mounting. I.W.A. members who
are displaced by land-use decisions
are becoming more frustrated.

Brother Stoney points out that the
Gordon Campbell Liberals are trying
to make political mileage points with
union members by lashing out at the
Board of FRBC and the NDP.

“Our members should remember
that it was Gordon Campbell and the
Liberals who voted against Forest Re-
newal in the first place,” says Stoney.
“So if the Liberals would have won
the provincial election this year, the
entire FRBC program would have
been put in jeopardy. The Liberals
would have not only looked to FRBC
for surplus accounts - they would
have tried to completely gut it.”

The FRBC concept was developed
by the multi-stakeholder Forest Sec-
tor Stratey Committee in 1993 and
adopted into legislation in April of
1994. Money began flowing into FRBC
coffers upon proclamation of the legi-
lation, before the crown corporation
had sufficient time to set up opera-
tions. The surplus in the first year
lone grew rapidly, in part, because of

The clear message from the I.W.A.
representatives was that Canada’s
record on issues such as protected ar-
eas, habitat and species conservation,
land-use planning, regulation of
forestry practices, and re-investment
in the forest sector has improved sub-
stantially over the last decade. More
importantly, the representatives noted
that I.W.A. involvement in all these
initiatives had been significant and
that our priority in sustainable
forestry is to advance the quality, se-
curity and number of union jobs with-
in our national forest sector.

In Amsterdam, the delegation met
with the Dutch forestry and construc-
tion union, Bouw-en Houtbond, which
represents approximately 165,000
workers in those two sectors. Holland
plays a critical role for Canadian forest.
products not only because of its use of
our products but also its strategic lo-
cation in terms of shipping and trans-
portation; a large percentage of Eu-
rope-bound Canadian forest products
move through the port at Rotterdam.

Holland is also a significant player
in the on-going environmental debate.

For example, several years ago a
large group of Dutch municipal gov-
ernments adopted building code re-
strictions that targeted the use of
hardwoods produced from tropical
rainforests.

The Bouw-en Houtbond is keen to
see a merging of the sustainable
forestry debate with an active and
progressive trade union agenda. The
union, for example, strongly supports
a variety of trade union rights cam-
paigns in various Asian and African
centres where the local forest indus-
try shows very little regard for worker
safety or a decent standard of living
for forest workers. Not surprisingly,
forestry practices in these same coun-
tries falls far short of any meaningful
measure of sustainability.

In Brussels, the schedule of meet-
ings covered a much wider audience
of trade union interests. The construc-
tion union in Belgium, De Algemene
Centrale ABVV, represents approxi-
mately 300,000 members and, like
their Dutch counterpart, are actively
involved in a variety of international
issues. Although their concerns about
sustainable forestry are less direct be-
cause the forest sector in Belgium is
relatively small, the union has main-
tained an active voice in the debate
that is on-going with the IFBWW.

Brussels is an important political
capital within Europe; it is the centre
for the European Parliament and the
headquarters for a number of major
international labour federations, The
most significant of these is the Inter-
national Confederation of Free Trade
Unions (ICFTU) to which national or-
ganizations such as the C.L.C. and the
A.F.of L.- C.1.0. are affiliated. The
LW.A. delegation met with the Gener-
al Secretary, Bill Jordan, and some of
his staff to reinforce the need for
broader international cooperation
amongst forest sector unions on is-
sues like trade, environment and sus-
tainability. The meeting was timely
because ICFTU staff are currently
looking at ways to certify sustainabili-
ty of various national initiatives, and
were very interested in the work that
the L.W.A. has done in this area.

Brussels is also the headquarters
for the European Federation of Build-
ing and Woodworkers (EFBWW), a 3
million member federation with affili-
ates in all E.U. countries. The EFB-
WW General Secretary, Jan Cremers,
met with the I.W.A. group and de-
tailed a recently drafted joint declara-
tion that the federation was develop-
ing with wood industry employers in
the E.U. Although a major focus in
this joint declaration deals with the
“de-forestation” concerns in tropical
rainforests, the potential for coopera-
tion on Canadian concerns and inter-
ests is very significant with this group.

In London, the significant labour
contacts were the affiliates of the
Trade Union Congress, which is the
national labour federation in the Unit-
ed Kingdom. The affiliate with the
largest concentration of forest sector
and constructions members is the
G.M.B.-C.F.T.A. With close to 100,000
members across the U.K., this affiliate
has been an important ally for the
I.W.A. as we have built contacts with-
in the E.U. The G.M.B.-C.F.T.A.’s sup-
port for our position on sustainable
forestry has also bolstered the debate
on this point within the IFBWW.

Although the scheduling of sessions
with each labour organization often
meant condensing the points and ma-
terial that the I.W.A. delegates wanted
to make, the contact has helped posi-
tion the I.W.A. to expand its effective-
ness in the international debate on
forestry. As well, it has provided our
union with ways of promoting not
only the interests of the Canadian for-
est sector, but also the value and im-
portance of trade unionism as an inte-
gral part of a sustainable economy.

¢ The I.W.A. has always been one of FRBC's original supporters. Here National
President Gerry Stoney (middle) spoke at FRBC launching in April of 1994 with
then Premier Mike Harcourt (left) and then Minister of Forests Andrew Petter.

2/LUMBERWORKER/NOVEMBER, 1996