PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE
Displaced workers get -
preference in new jobs

by Dave Haggard

nJune 19, 1997, after months of

tough negotiations with the forest

industry, the B.C. government

announced the details of the Jobs

and Timber Accord. You will read

more about the details of it in this
issue of the Lumberworker.

I.W.A. CANADA members all over the
province should understand that the Accord
has been a giant undertaking by Premier
Glen Clark and his team of negotiators
whom are all to be congratulated.

What this all really means is that forest
companies in B.C. now have to create more
jobs with the wood they get from public
lands. There will also be real union jobs link-
ing displaced forest industry workers to For-
est Renewal B.C. silvicultural work so that
we can regrow the forests bigger, better and
faster.

Through the Jobs and Timber Accord we
now have the opportunity to begin to make
FRBC work, like it was intended to from day
one. That means picking up the workers,
from logging operations and mills, who have
lost their jobs due to land-use decisions and
industry downsizing in every part of the
province.

FRBC will establish a Forest Worker
Agency to help displaced workers get their
skills assessed and upgraded and then help
them find work in the forest sector. New,

good-paying, stable
jobs will be made avail-
able with long-term
funding agreements
so that people can plan
for their future in their
own communities
which depend on the
industry.

Our union will sit
down with employers
to negotiate, on a
regional basis, what
this new agency will
look like and how it
will function, so that
it can offer workers
living wages, good ben-
efits and decent work-
ing conditions.

Any worker that is
employed by the agency will become an
LW.A. member, no matter which union they
come from or where they come from. For far
too long, non-union silvicultural contractors
have had their way with a captive workforce
which it has been exploited to no end. The
Accord takes FRBC work and puts an end to
that.

I.W.A. members have been affected by
technological change and the creation of
more parks and wilderness areas. We’ve got
better forest practices and that has also
affected jobs as less timber is being cut in
certain areas of the province.

The Jobs and Timber Accord is a real
opportunity, not only for our union, but for
communities which depend on the forest
industry. The Accord puts good, steady jobs
back into the B.C. economy.

It calls for the creation of 24,400 direct
jobs in the areas of renewing our forests, pro-

ducing more value-
added products and
secondary industry,
reducing overtime
and rehabilitating
fish streams. Over
17,400 indirect jobs
can be spun-off as a
result of the direct
jobs.

If we do things
right - and that
means industry,
government and
unions - there will
be greater econom-
ic activity for every-
one to share, both
the existing work-
force an our
younger people.

The Accord will ensure that industry looks
for new and different opportunities in the
value-added sector. It’s time to stop export-
ing logs, cants and timbers into low paying
areas of the world, and start manufacturing
high-value products right in this province.

Our union has been consistent in pushing
for the type of things that are embodied in
the Accord. We think that the forest industry
is a sunrise industry and that it has a great
future. Through the actions of the NDP gov-
ernment, pushed by the I.W.A. and other
ee the Jobs and Timber Accord is finally

ere.

Now we've got to get out and defend it
from critics whose role in life is none other
that to undermine the NDP government and
offer nothing for working people other than
the status quo.

Thope that every I.W.A. member will work
together with us and stand by this Accord.

LANDS AND FORESTS

Union offers stability
to silviculture sector

by Kim Pollock

he British Columbia government’s for-
est jobs initiative is now a reality. Part
of that reality is a plan to create new
jobs in intensive silviculture. And most
of those jobs will be union jobs.

This has not been uncontroversial. In
fact, some people turn absolutely snakey at the
mere suggestion. For existing silviculture con-
tractors, that goes double.

Suddenly, the silviculture contractors’ minds
have turned to dark thoughts. These find outlet
in horrendous visions of I.W.A. CANADA mem-
bers on their crews.

According to John Betts of the Western Silvi-
culture Contractors Association, for instance, the
B.C. silviculture industry is world-class now, but
with “slower, unskilled workers” the standards
will rapidly slip.

“If you have spent your life running machin-
ery or in a sawmill and you’re asked to go and
jump like a gazelle from stump to stump it
would be difficult,” he told the Victoria Times-
Colonist.

Dirk Brinkman of Brinkman and Associates
Reforestation told the Colonist that “the reality
is, it may be the death knell of our industry.”

The contractors’ concerns can be chalked up
to defense of the status quo, of course: after all,
they have profited for years on the labour of
eaten mostly young workers, who average
only about 25 days of work a year, enjoy poor
health and safety protection, no benefits and
poor pay for all that leaping.

Recently, say silviculture workers, the con-
tractors have quietly sought relief from the
paowncels laws governing overtime pay. Leap

longer, gazelles.

All this would be highly mysterious, certainly,

to I.W.A. Canada members already doing silvi-
cultural work.

° In five of the eleven union locals in the province
there are already up to 270 I.W.A. members who
do silvicultural work part of the year.

¢ In the recent weeks
we ran ads in newspa-
pers around B.C. fea-
turing'a group of silvi-
cultural workers from
International Forest
Products’ Ltd. Hope
operation. These work-

ry i‘
~~ <2»
(a

ers do spacing, pruning
and other silvicultural
jobs.

° At Weldwood Cana
da’s Hinton, Alberta,
operation, tree planters

and other forestry workers have been I.W.A.
members for nearly 40 years. Workers there
have a choice between a standard rate or an
incentive that brings them up to $200 a day.

¢ At Spruce Falls Inc.’s operations near Kapuskas-
ing, Ontario, Local 1-2995 members get the first
shot at tree-planting work, which pays an hourly
rate of over $18.00 an hour. These workers plant
some 1600 seedlings dur-

This helps in turn to stabilize local communi-
ties, as workers’ wages circulate back through
the local economy. It’s a “win-win” situation that
has worked and stood the test of time.

So the silvicultural contractors should calm
down. Because after years of profiting from
those young gazelles, it’s about time they and
other forest companies put something back into
local communities.

If we want healthy communities and a future
for our kids, that has to happen. And that is
exactly what the New Democratic Party govern-
ment’s forest Job and Timber Accord is all about.

In the past five years, after all, land-use plan-
ning exercises have created over 2.4 million
hectares in new parks. The Forest Practices
Code has brought forest management in B.C. up
to world standards. Every year since 1987, the
area reforested has exceeded the area harvested.
The recently completed five-year Timber Supply
Review and annual allowable cut determina-
tions has reduced harvest levels on Crown
forests from 78 million

ing an eight-hour day.
The same goes for work-
ers at the Abitibi-Price
Camp #34, north of
Cochrane, Ontario.

e For nearly 25 years,
tree planters at Repap
Enterprises operations in
Manitoba have been
unionized. Those work-

It is about time that
silvicultural contractors
and other forest companies
put something back into
local communities.

cubic metres to 67 mil-
lion; Forest Renewal B.C.
will spend $400 million
on watershed rehabilita-
tion, unpaved forest prac-
tices and reforestation.
All this‘ has vastly
changed and improved
the province’s forest
industry. But that change

ers’ collective agreement :
provides them a standard piece rate for each
seedling they put in the ground. 4

¢ Until they were driven out of work by anti-log-
ging zealots, unionized loggers working for the
Greater Victoria Water District did a lot of the
reforestation and silvicultural work in the
Greater Victoria water supply area. They spent
much of the year harvesting timber to reduce
fire threats and prevent blowdown, erosion and
disease. But they also engaged in site prepara-
tion, stand tending and other silvicultural pro-
jects.

These jobs may not pay rates as high as log-
ging or sawmill work. But they ensure better
pay than is usually forthcoming to non-union
tree planters from silvicultural contractors. And
they also ensure benefits, grievance procedures,
health and safety protection and other benefits
of union membership. They also typically pro-
vide employers with a stable, skilled workforce
over the long haul.

has definitely put down-
ward pressure on employment levels.

Now hopefully the time for jobs has arrived.

Premier Glen Clark’s government will offer
companies incentives for job creation and will
ask FRBC to help finance job creation in new
areas of silviculture work — unionized silvicul-
ture work. There will also be new job opportuni-
ties in an expanded value-added and remanufac-
turing sector. All told, the province aims to cre-
ate some 40,000 jobs between now and the turn
of the century. 2

Time i tell, of course. But right now it
seems a far cry from the “death knell” that
Brinkman glumly predicts. Back in the 1980s,
the former Seal Credit provincial government
saw the forest sector as a “sunset industry” 7a
sector on its last legs. Today, as Clark says, it is

a “sunrise industry.”

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

4/LUMBERWORKERJULY 1997