ae

in Clayoquot Sound.

© Loggers at Kennedy Lake say that timber cutting permits need to be freed up as a cornerstone for sustainable activity

Union points finger at MacBlo and
government over Clayoquot delay

ime is running out for dis-

placed and unemployed for-

est workers at MacMillan

Bloedel’s Kennedy Lake di-

vision. Ninety union mem-
bers thrown out of work due to hang-
ups over logging in the Clayoquot
Sound have had just about all they
can stand while MB and the provincial
government look at each other over
what to do.

In 1994 then Premier Mike Harcourt
said that there would not be even one
job lost due to any land-use decision
made in the Sound. Then Forests Min-
ister Andrew Petter, praising a Scien-
tific Panel Report in 1995, said that
logging in the Sound would become a
“global showcase,” and that “the Clay-
oquot would become the model of
world-class forestry.”

After Glen Clark became Premier of
the province, those earlier promises
were repeated. There would be more
jobs created and the displaced work-
ers would be taken care of.

However not only have new jobs
not been created, but old jobs that ex-
isted when Clark made his promise
are disappearing.

Even MB's Chief Executive Officer
and President Bob Finlay wrote then
Minister Petter in 1995, saying that the
company was “committed to main-
taining an employment maintenance
program for our employees and con-
tractors in Clayoquot Sound during
the implementation of the Scientfic
Panel recommendations.”

Finlay said that MB would indentify
and pursue enhanced silviculture and
other forestry projects including spac-
ing, pruning and win a

The company would provide, with
Forest Renewal B.C.’s assistance,
training for new job opportunites - do-
ing jobs like survey work, inventory
work and feasible tasks like road and
watershed rehabilitation.

Wrote Finlay: “You have my assur-
ance that MB will bring urgency and
innovation to the challenge of creat-
ing new employment options in the
Clayoquot area that will offer genuine

of job stability for our peo-
ple and their families.” 3

In 1996, after dragging its feet in
submitting logging proposals, MB har-
vested only about 52,000 cubic meters
in the Sound. By December of that
year it announced that it would pore

operations in 1
ter Mg Prillon during 1996 in the

Clayoquot Sound area.

Today the I.W.A. accuses MB of not
living up to its promises and abandon-
ing the workers at Kennedy Lake.

“I believe that MB has done every-
thing in its power to not to make the
Scienfic Panel’s recommendations
work,” say Local 1-85 President Larry
Rewakowsky. “I don’t think that the
government has does everything it
can either.”

“Glen Clark said that FRBC would
create jobs for loggers not involved in
logging in the Sound,” adds Brother
Rewakowsky. “The problem is that we
sure as hell aren’t seeing any of them
yet.”

Rewakowsky says the local union
had a couple of meetings with both
the government and with FRBC to dis-
cuss the Clayoquot issue.

In the end of January there was a
stakeholders meeting held in Port Al-
berni which included the I.W.A., MB,
the Forest Service, the Central Re-
gional Board (consisting of 5 commu-
nity and 5 Native representatives),
FRBC, and local NDP MLA Gerard
Janssen, who read a prepared state-
ment from Forests Minister Dave Zim-
helt. MB basically sat back at the
meeting and no resolve was made.

“We've had meeting after meeting,”
says Rewakowsky. There have been at
least four meetings with MB.

“The bottom line is that the govern-
ment has got to force MB to take ac-
tion or they have to do something
themselves.”

To bridge themselves through most.
of 1996, the Kennedy Lake crew
fought for FRBC funding of a skills
centre in the west coast community of
Uclulet. The money for that is now
running out as FRBC said that it will
only knuckle up more wage supple-
ment money for land-base projects
submitted to it by MB.

At the end of February, Re-
wakowsky met with FRBC’s Chair-
man Roger Stanyer and Colin Smith
along with MB’s Stan Coleman and
Linda Coady. Time went on and noth-
ing was done.

Then in a mid-March letter to
Kennedy Lake sub-local chairman Bill
Weber, Claire Dansereau, FRBC’s Vice
President of Communities, Workforce
and Value Added, informed Brother
Weber that FRBC is waiting for some
concrete proposals to come in from
MB before the crown corporation will
fork out any more money for training

or employment in such phases as silvi-
cultural, watershed restoration, road
deactivation, the creating of recre-
ational infrastructure on TFL 44 and
other land-based work. FRBC said it
is willing to fund short term wage sup-
plement for training.

“FRBC has created excuses why
they can’t create jobs, and excuses
why it’s not their responsibility,” says
Weber é

As of late, MB has put its top
forester, Stan Coleman, to work so it
can live up to its committments.

Brother Weber says that the pa-
tience of the displaced forest workers
has worn threadbare and that the
LW.A. is pushing the government to
force MB to log in the Clayoquot
Sound watershed, even though getting
cutting permits is a difficult task.

“We think that MB is backing down
due to pressure from environmental-
ists and pressure from the internation-
al community,” says Weber. “We have
told (current) Forests Minister (Dave)
Zirnhelt that this government will be
showing the world a ‘showcase of fail-
ure’ until both it and MB get them-
selves into gear and live up to their
commitments to workers and their
communities.”

In January of last year Weber wrote
then Minister Petter to help identify
new forestry jobs to pick up displaced
workers. He had to wait for over four
months to receive only a letter from
Assistant Deputy Minister Don Wright
who referred Weber to an FRBC of-
fice for more information.

“That's the kind of run-around we
have felt all along the way,” says We-
ber. “The government and the compa-
ny make great public and private

Weber

Bill

hhoto courtesy

=

statements about how they will strive -

to help the workers and their commu-
nities and then they do little if noth-
ing.”

In September of 1996 Minister Zirn-
helt wrote B.C.’s Chief Forest Larry
Pederson, stating the goverment’s so-
cial and economic objectives confirm-
ing “that it is the government's inten-
tion that timber harvesting will
continue to be one of the forest man-
agement objectives for the Clayoquot
Sound area. Second, it is the govern-
ment’s intention that management of
the area be carried out in accordance
with both the Forest Practices Code

Continued on page twelve

Union joins fight
against endangered
species legislation

Quit guessing, start listening!

That's the message I.W.A. CANADA
delivered to the federal Liberal gov-
emment in response to recently-pro-
posed amendments to the draft feder-
al endangered species law.

The changes to Bill C-65 would re-
quire that the framers of species re-"
covery plans would need to consider
the social and economic costs of any
plan to recovery endangered or
threatened species. They also reduce
the scope of the bill as it affects
species habitat.

“Obviously the pressure being ap-
plied by I.W.A. CANADA and others
opposed to the bill is working,” notes
National President Dave Haggard.

“But they are still just guessing
what workers and resource-based
communities want, not actually going
out to hear first-hand the views of the
people who would have to carry the
cost of species recovery plans.”

Haggard called on the federal gov-
emment to scrap Bill C-65.

“The government should work co-
operatively with provincial govern-
ments, industry and resource-sector
workers to come up with ways that
protect species without compromis-
ing our ability to earn a living or con-
tribute to the Canadian economy,” he
noted.

“If they still want an endangered
species law, they should first hold
public hearings in every part of the
country, particularly the rural, re-
source-based communities that would
likely be most directly affected.”

A House of Commons committee
studying Bill C-65 traveled only to
Vancouver, Edmonton and Toronto.

“This allowed them to hear primari-
ly the voices of middle-class, urban
environmental groups, who obviously
support this bill. There was little op-
portunity for residents of forest-based
and other resource-producing com-
munities to be heard. That’s unaccept-
able,” Haggard said.

As a result, the Commons commit-
tee submitted amendments that would
have widened the ability of preserya-
tion groups to launch court actions
and that did nothing to defend work-
ers, industry or communities from po-
tential impacts of species protection
measures.

In a brief to the committee, I.W.A.
CANADA condemned the proposed
law as “unfair and unbalanced”: unbal-
anced because designed to protect
species, but not “endangered faces
and endangered places,” resource in-
dustry workers and their communi-
ties; unfair because measures the
bills’ supporters say will benefit all
Canadians come with costs that are
almost exclusively borne by small
numbers of workers, their families
and their communities. Pointing to the
damage done by similar legislation in
the United States’ Pacific Northwest,
the union called on the government to
withdraw the bill.

I.W.A. CANADA has joined a
broadly-based coalition of groups op-
posing the proposed Endangered
Species Protection Act. The coalition
recently ran advertisements in major
newspapers and has been in close
contact with environment minister
Sergio Marchi and other federal offi-
cials, warning them that the Liberals,
contemplating a June election, could
face serious opposition as a result of
the species bill. Non-coalition organi-
zations, such as the B.C. Federation
of Labour and the formerly-support-
ive United Fishermen and Allied
Workers Union, have also advised the
federal government of their opposi-
tion.

As well, I.W.A. CANADA sent let-
ters to municipal leaders in over 300
forest-based communities across

Continued on page fourteen

LUMBERWORKER/APRIL 1997/9