isn

e In August Local 1-80 members (1. to r.) Doug Williams, Mike Ganter and Aaron Parrotta were among those union mem-
bers who took on Beaver Lumber prior to the Duncan closure.

Duncan I.W.A. Local 1-80 members experience
battle over closure of Beaver Lumber outlet

ne of Canada’s best

known lumber and hard-

ware retailers has

dropped a bomb on

union workers. In late

August, the Beaver Lum-
ber Company permanently closed an
operation in Duncan, B.C. after re-
peated threats to do so during negoti-
ations with I.W.A. CANADA Local 1-
80.

Local 1-80 says that the giant lum-
ber retailer never had sincere inten-
tions of reaching a second collective
agreement and has used the Duncan
closure to set an example for its
workers who want fair wages.

The Beaver Lumber chain, owned
by the giant Molson Breweries Ltd.,
has been on the auction block for a
few years. In that time the chain has
closed 24 retail outlets and held down
wages in an effort to make the sale of
Beaver Lumber more “attractive” to
investors, says Local 1-80 President
Bill Routley.

Voting on the company’s final offer
of a 6% wage increase over a three
year contract, fifteen union members
employed at the company’s Beverley
Street lumber yard voted not to ac-
cept it. The union dropped its de-
mands for more wage parity with oth-
er B.C. Beaver Lumber operations and
held out for a 6% wage increase over
two years.

Beaver Lumber’s move has in-
censed the local union which has
called for a boycott of retail outlets in
British Columbia.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that
in the end we (the I.W.A. and Beaver
Lumber) were not that far apart as far
as dollars and cents go,” says Brother
Routley. z

Saying that the company was using
the Duncan operation as a testing
ground against its workers, Routley
says “they (Beaver Lumber) will no
doubt be trotting around the country,
Jetting their non-union employees
know that if they decide to join a
union and fight for fairness, the end
result will be that the company will
close the operation down like they did
in Duncan.”

“Jt’s a fear tactic,” adds Routley.
“Unless we in the labour movement

stand up against Beaver Lumber, they
will continue with their unscrupulous
ways. Out here in B.C. we’ve had a
bad experience and I think that trade
unionists in the province should sup-
Bott us and not do business with
them.”

The union was negotiating for 15 of
the company’s 54 workers, the re-
mainder of whom were employed in
the non-union retail store. All of the
LW.A. lumber yard workers were or-
ganized in 1994 by local union orga-
nizer Brian Butler.

In March of 1995 the union negotiat-
ed a 14 month contract which expired
on May 15, 1996. In that first contract
the union achieved considerable wage
adjustments for most of the yard
workers. The wage hikes, negotiated
by the L.W.A., ranged from $0.50 cents
per hour to as high as $3.00 per hour.

Beaver was paying
ats workers poverty
level wages while
treating them
without respect

In the second contract the union
opened with demands of wage in-
creases between 24-29% on wages
ranging from $7.50 to $12.31 per hour.

“Beaver was basically paying pover-
ty level wages to its people and was
treating its lumber yard employees
very unfairly,” adds Routley.

In addition to low wages, the union
members experienced an aggressive
management team that routinely at-
tempted to do the work of bargaining
unit employees.

In the first twelve months of the
first collective agreement the 15
workers filed 44 grievances against
the company. And that’s just the ones
that were referred to the local union!

“It was just incredible,” says Local
1-80 Third Vice President and Busi-

ness Agent Rod Thomson, who ser-
viced the operation and served as
chairman of the union negotiating
committee along with chairman Mike
Ganter and committee member Aaron
Parrotta.

“If we ever have management at
some of our mills or logging opera-
tions act like the management at
Beaver Lumber, then we would have
thousands of grievances,” says Thom-
son.

Management repeatedly jumped in
to do work that I.W.A. members were
to do - everything from hopping on
the forklifts to ripping lumber to fill-
ing orders.

When grievances reached the step
four stage where the union would try
to solve problems with management,
Beaver Lumber’s head office in
Markham, Ontario would call the
shots for the Duncan operation.

“We often had to get on the phone
and try to settle these grievances with
labour relations representatives from
Beaver’s headquarters and this made
it very difficult to process them,” says
Thomson.

In February of 1996 Beaver Lumber
Co. took over the franchise from Dun-
can businessmen Steve and Mike
Gergel and began to call the shots
from Ontario, as the union was gear-
ing up for negotiations.

Negotiations began on April 10, af-
ter the union and company had formu-
lated their bargaining positions.

“The negotiating committee did its
homework on its demands and zeroed
in on areas in the agreement that they
saw were weak and needed reinforc-
ing,” adds Thomson.

It noted that Beaver Lumber yard
employees in Nanaimo, under a col-
lective agreement with the Teamsters,
were already getting paid between
$18-20 per hour for work in compara-
ble categories.

“Even if we had gotten everything
we asked for, we would have come up
short of what the company was pay-
ing in some of its other B.C. opera-
tions,” says Thomson.

Right from the start, Beaver in-
formed the union about how many op-
erations it had shut down as a fear
tactic for negotiations. It made a point

Photo courtesy of Victoria Times-Colonist

of saying that it was about to close
down a major distribution centre in
Toronto.

The company’s first wage offering,
given in late June, was 0%, 0% and 1%
over a three year agreement. During
negotiations, which usually happened
two or three days at a time, the union
and the employer were able to resolve
some issues, especially those involv-
ing contract language and seniority
rights.

In mid-July, after getting nowhere
with the company, the union issued
strike notice through the Labour Rela-
tions Board. All 15 I.W.A. members
voted to strike if necessary in order to
back up their demands.

The union agreed to mediation
without delay. After only one meeting

Beaver Lumber
management
continually
threatened to close
the operation
throughout
negotiations

the mediator booked out, as he saw
there would be no movement by the
company.

Then on August 2, the union struck.
Within 15 minutes of going out on the
picket line, a Beaver Lumber repre-
sentative from Ontario told Brother
Thomson that the company would
shut down the operation if the strike
lasted over two weeks.

Towards the end of the second
week of the strike, the union and the
crew got together to discuss the seri-
ousness of the threat to close the op-
eration. About ten days after that the
crew amended its position to propose
a considerably watered down wage
demand of 4% and 2% over a two year
contract.

“The crew felt they had gone far
enough amending their positions from
only a week before,” adds Thomson.
“They said enough was enough.”

In local press releases Beaver Lum-
ber said that it closed the retail outlet
as well because it was concerned over
the issue of safety for its employees.
Later it said the closure was also out
of concern for the safety of its cus-
tomers.

Brother Thomson said that the
picketing union members gave out in-
formation about their strike and at no
time threatened any customer or re-
tail employee. The strikers did en-
courage people not to shop there.

Several times during the dispute the
I.W.A. requested a breakdown of the
operation’s financial status but that
information was refused by the com-
pany.

Thomson says that although it is
not unusual for employers to cry
poverty during negotiations, Beaver
Lumber went way beyond what could
be expected. It kept threatening to
shut the Duncan operation down for
good.

“It’s a tribute to workers, most of
whom are under 30 years of age and
were in a unionized worksite for the
first time,” he says. “They bit the bul-
let. They deserved a helluva lot better
treatment out of Beaver Lumber than
they got.”

“People in the (Cowichan) Valley
understand that it was a pretty ruth-
less employer from Eastern Canada
that was not willing to look at local
circumstances and the situations that
their employees had here,” says
Thomson. “The employer had an agen-
da. If we didn’t break here and bend
to their wishes, we were just going to
be used as an example for other

Beaver Lumber operations across
Canada.”

LUMBERWORKER/DECEMBER 1996/7