park site near Nanaimo, B.C. Photo courtesy Local 1-80 struction. The program covered trail classification, power saw operation, hazard and safety awareness, WHMIS, small hand tools, and a number of oth- er topics. Lead-hands received an ex- tra week of training which’ included more on occupational hazards. The course work comes in manuals put together by BCIT for B.C. Parks. Brother Kaila, who along with Local 1-80 members Kim Stillman, Jaspal Si- hota and Dean Leblond, have now worked on various trail building crews on Vancouver Island, say that the workers are proud of the job they are doing. “People come up to us and we tell them we're displaced forest workers who are working on B.C. Parks pro- jects with FRBC funding,” he says. “We take a lot of pride in the work we A group of laid-off Sorest workers has been successfully working on trail building projects in B.C. Parks Kim Stillman, and Jaspal Sihota at the Newcastle Island Displaced I.W.A. crews get to work in B.C. parks with FRBC funding The occupation of building walking and hiking trails is being radically transformed in British Columbia; as displaced forest workers are now be- ing used to upgrade and build new trails in the province’s parks. Four years ago the B.C. government made a decision not to allow logging in the Carmanah Valley. That resulted in the layoff of I.W.A. members. Today union members are the ones who have actually built trails into the low- er Carmanah Valley, and have built platforms around the famous giant spruce on the valley floor. All of this has become possible due to the cooperative efforts of Forest Renewal B.C, B.C. Parks, the I.W.A., and the Cowichan Lake Community Forest Cooperative (CLCFC). During ~ the past 9 months, FRBC has been channeling revenue into the rehabili- tation and construction of park trails facilities in various areas of the province. In L.W.A. Local 1-80 a group of laid- off workers, mostly from the Mayo Forest Products sawmill in Duncan, has gotten together to seek work op- portunities. Last November, the Lum- berworker went to interview some of the workers who were working on trails on Newcastle Island, near Nanaimo. In early 1996 the Mayo crew started to go through a series of layoffs and eventually had their workforce pared down to one shift. For about an 8 month period the crew, led by Bill Routley and George Samson, worked on a meeting with the province's for- est jobs commissioner Don Cochrane and FRBC to see if there was some work. In January of 1996 a meeting took place between Mr. Cochrane, Brother Samson, Local 1-80 President Bill Routley, the 1.W.A.’s FRBC coordina- tor Ron Corbeil, and bureaucrats from the federal department of employ- ment and immigration and the provin- cial ministry of labour, skills, and and others, to see if i could be done to assist workers who would be laid off. Jag Kaila, a chargehand with a trail building crew, and a member of Local 1-80 was present at the meeting. He says that the workers realized that they had to get co-operation from management to form an industrial ad- justment committee in order to set some priorities for the short and long- term. The company agreed to participate and about 170 people at Mayo were surveyed on their needs for long-term career planning. During this process Brother Routley brought to the attention of the Mayo workers that FRBC was already giving money to B.C. Parks for the purposes of trail building. In the past, nearly all of the trail building work in provincial parks was done with non-union em- ployers. That would soon change. Brother Routley and Brother Cor- beil started the ball rolling to form a partnership between B.C. Parks, the CLCFC and displaced I.W.A. forest workers. The laid-off mill workers, mostly from Mayo, searched out a start-up company and found one with Local 1- 80’s assistance. The Cowichan Lake Community Forest Co-op (CLCFC) hired an administrator and, in June of last year, began a training program for some 40 displaced workers from Nanaimo and Chemainus. When they enrolled in the course the workers were paid $17.90/hr. and collected insurable weeks for their unemployment insurance. All of the course work trained the workers up to B.C. Parks standards. The four-week training program consisted of three weeks of classroom time and one week of hands-on in- 4 Bie e AMONG THE CARMANAH GIANTS, last year, was an I.W.A. trail building crew who improved access to the valley floor with an FRBC funded project. The crew con- sisted of displaced forest workers. Photo courtesy Local 1-80 do and there has been a very positive reaction from the public.” So far, I.W.A. crews have completed jobs on Galiano Island, the Carmanah, Newcastle Island, the Mount Work Re- gional Park and other areas. Kim Stillman, a former employee on the spare board at Paulcan Industries in Chemainus, and a lead hand on trail building crews, says that the crews feel good about what they accomplish and that BC Parks is very pleased with both the quality and quantity of work that the unionized crew is doing. One selling point of doing the job union is that BC Parks has found out that paying the I.W.A. crew $17.90 or $18.90 per hour will get the job done quicker and better, says Brother Still- man. “We don’t have anybody breathing down our backs and we can out pro- duce lower wage non-union contrac- tors,” he adds. Brother Routley says that FRBC should employ union crews and not award work to “fly-by-night” contrac- tors who pay their workers $12- $15.00/hr. and then pocket big profits for themselves. He says that the union crew works together well as a unit. Dean Leblond, who is 31 years old, says it is tough to support a family on Employment Insurance and that a trail building job is a good opportuni- ty. He worked on the green chain in the Mayo planer mills, starting in 1993. “Having something like this coming up is just excellent,” he says. “I’m pleased that the union has done this for us and just didn’t leave us out in the cold when we were laid off.” Brother Sihota says that he never thought he would be doing work for BC Parks. “I’m probably learning more here that I did pulling on a green chain,” he says. “The skills I am learning will be beneficial in the future.” Brother Kaila says that the crews must keep continuity in their work-* force. If a worker is laid off from a mill and gets a job building trails, but returns to the mill, they will drop to the bottom of the trail building senior- ity list. “When you make a lift of wood at a mill, you don’t see the end results of the products you have helped make,” says Kaila. “With trail building, a year or two down the road, we will be able to come back and travel down the trails and tell somebody we made them.” LUMBERWORKER/APRIL 1997/7