RESIDENT'S MESSAGE

Union’s focus turns to
organizing, education

by Dave Haggard

ow that master agreement negoti-

ations with employers in the B.C.

forest industry are wrapped up

and the ratification votes have

gone through, various officers and.

staff at the union’s national office
are going to concentrate in other areas.

During contract negotiations we tried to
do the best job possible in keeping the ball
rolling with plans to build the organization
right across the country. We’re all looking
forward to getting to Thunder Bay for the
National Convention between September
29 and October 2 to talk more about this.

We'll all get a chance to hear and find
out more about the struggles that workers
in Ontario are facing. The Conservative
government of Mike Harris is doing its best
to kick the tar out of working people in that
province.

Harris is doing everything it conceivably
can to punish and destroy workers. It has
already changed labour laws to allow
employers to herd scabs during strikes and
interfere when unions try to organize.

They are trying to turn the Workers
Compensation system into an insurance
agency for employers who can get cheap
coverage and deny legitimate claims to
thousands of workers.

The Conservatives are forcing hospitals
to close as they cut funding for medicare.
They are forcing municipalities to merge
and plan to layoff thousands of workers.

They are attacking
the education sys-
tem in the province.

Guys like Harris
and Ralph Klein of
Alberta have no
respect for working
people and the
unions they join and
support. They want
to get rid of orga-
nized labour.

Those are just
some of the many
reasons why we, in
1.W.A. CANADA are
now going to start
focusing big on two
important areas:
organizing and edu-
cation.

We have to take concrete actions to
counter the right wing tide which the whole
country is facing. If we in the I.W.A. and
the labour movement don’t get our act
together fast we’re going to go down the
tubes. The labour movement is being
attacked like it never has before in modern
history by right wing governments and
multinational employers.

We have to do our part to build strength
in the trade union movement. Education
and organizing are two primary ways we
can do that. We have to bring new people
into our organization. To do that we have to
train more of our existing members to orga-
nize. We have to organize and educate new
members as well so that they will stand
side by side in defending the union against
attacks by the bosses and right wing gov-
ernments.

Back in April a National Organizing
Committee traveled across Canada to con-
sult with local unions on how to build the

I.W.A. into a
stronger and more
diverse union.
During that tour it
became pretty clear
that we cannot
remain static.

Many local unions
have done a fine job,
some on their own
and some with the
help of national
organizing staff, to
certify new mem-
bers. They have
organized in both
traditional and new
industries and in the
many service indus-
tries that have exist-
ed for years and the
new ones that are springing up.

We have to continue to reach out to
younger people, working women, visible
minorities and new Canadians.

At the 1996 convention in Vancouver the
membership demanded a plan to help the
I.W.A. grow in the future. At this year’s
convention in Thunder Bay we are going to
show the membership an Organizing and
Growth Strategy Paper. It is a two year
program that will be national in scope.

In it there will be some planning to put a
lot more resources into organizing and edu-
cation. We expect there will be a lot of good
debate and discussion.

At the end of day we all have to keep one
thing in mind. Whatever we decide to do, it
must be to the benefit of all types of work-
ers in every part of Canada.

When we build our union we are doing so
that workers have a voice and all people
enjoy the right to work in a safe workplace
with good pay, pride and dignity.

LANDS AND FORES

Greenpeace runs aground
with workers, communities

by Kim Pollock

or many of our members, this has been
the “Greenpeace” summer, the year
that the international green organiza-
tion was supposed to bring the forest
industry to its knees.

Instead, it turned into the year
that I.W.A. CANADA and others in forest-
based communities fought back.

Suddenly the green giant was sent running
with forest workers, First Nations, communi-
ties and B.C. government in hot pursuit.

What happened?

It all started out “normally,” with Greenpeace
announcing in May that it intended to cam-
paign against logging in the entire Central
Coast of B.C. This was followed up with a typi-
cally reasonable and modest demand that
British Columbia set aside 45 percent of its
total area, far beyond the province’s already
extensive 12 percent. In addition, Greenpeace
announced an international boycott of B.C. for-
est products.

Greenpeace backed up its demands with ille-
gal logging road blockades. And that’s where
the strategy began to unravel. Instead of being
welcomed with open arms, Greenpeace was
immediately denounced by local First Nations.

“Where were these people last winter?”
asked Percy Starr of the Kitasoo First Nation.
“I haven’t seen them on any planning commit-
tees. They should simply go back where they
came from.”

Port Hardy declared itself a “Greenpeace
Free Zone,” withdrawing the welcome mat and
making it clear that Greenpeace should avoid
the Vancouver Island town’s harbor.

And in Vancouver, things went from bad to
worse for the green crusaders. They got a spe-
cial welcome from I.W.A. CANADA members,
who put a picket line — backed up with boom

sticks — around two
Greenpeace ships. The
tables at last were
turned.

While Greenpeace
fumed, our members set
up a week-long, round-
the-clock picket line.
The pilots who guide
ships in and out of the
harbor honored our
lines. The media, know-
(J ing a “what goes around,
comes around” story
when they saw one were delighted.

In one telling moment, the big Greenpeace
ship’s captain reported that “it’s expensive
operating a big ship like this.” Thousands of

national, according to The Sun. Fund-raising
costs amount to at least 37 cents of every dol-
lar raised; some reports say its over 90 cents.

The bottom line here, Brothers and Sisters,
is this: Greenpeace might have started out life
as a highly disciplined, motivated and princi-
pled organization, deeply concerned about
what they saw as the declining state of the
world’s ecology, determined to stop the United
States’ testing of nuclear weapons in Alaska or
the hunting of whales to virtual extinction.
Many People agreed, undoubtedly including
many 1.W.A. members.

But all that has changed. Like so much of
the so-called environmental movement these
days, Greenpeace is big business. As I.W.A.
CANADA President Dave Haggard noted dur-
ing the ship seizure, Grecnpesey is just anoth-

dollars were going down
the drain daily.

Hence Greenpeace’s
ultimate hasty and ille-
gal exit. After a week in
captivity, Greenpeace
finally fled without a
pilot, in the process
apparently involving
the ship in a near miss
and bringing down the
wrath of the pilotage

Greenpeace is just another

multinational corporation

like the corporations that

the I.W.A. has fought over
the last 60 years.

er multinational corpora-
tion and we've been fight-
ing multinational corpo-
rations for 60 years.

And Greenpeace is a
particularly anti-union
multinational, having
ruthlessly shut down
staff unionization efforts
in the early nineties.
Unions are “ill-suited to

authority, which reports that the ship will face
charges if it returns. But the bad news for the
green phantoms did not end there.

The Seattle Times reported in August that,
in the face of huge funding drops, Greenpeace
would be reducing its U.S. staff from 400 to 65
employees, cutting its $29 million annual bud-
get to $21 million next year and closing its 10
regional offices outside Washington, D.C.

Membership “has tumbled from a high of
nearly 1.2 million in 1991 to just more than
400,000 today.”

And in spite of denials from the green
avengers, the red ink spreads to Canada. The
Vancouver Sun reported in September that
Greenpeace Canada, too, is facing a huge fund-
ing deficit and that its annoying and mislead-
ing door-to-door canvassing is also hugely inef-
ficient.

With a $518,138 deficit for last year and a
$733,125 deficit in 1995, Greenpeace Canada
actually got cash from Greenpeace Inter-

the reality of Green-
peace,” sniffed then-administrator David Kraft.

Increasingly, the shots are being called at
Greenpeace International’s headquarters in
Amsterdam. The head of the organization is a
former World Bank economist, who oversees
global environmental ruin from what one
report calls “a sparkling art nouveau building
a tetas one of Amsterdam’s picturesque
canals.”

Let’s be clear. Greenpeace offers no solutions
to problems, preferring to stand on logging
roads, wave banners and raise funds, to eaitee
up its sleeves, offering solutions and making
compromises.

You won’t catch Greenpeace at any multi-
stakeholder, land-use planning tables. You
won't catch Greenpeace sitting down and talk-
ing, unless TV cameras are near.

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

4/LUMBERWORKER/SEPTEMBER 1997