TECHNOLOGY AND LAND

JOBS
USE IN

¢ Canada has some of the most efficient bush and mill operations seen in any country in the world.

by Kim Pollock

The following is background paper which was
written by National Environment and Land-
use Department Director Kim Pollock in Novem-
ber of last year.

he I.W.A. has always worked hard for
job creation within the forest sector.
In the 1980s, for instance, our picket
lines on the Vancouver waterfront
backed up our demand for an end to
the export of raw logs. Today, we are fighting
for laws to limit the export of virtually
unprocessed wood, such as some forms of cants.

We know that without new jobs, we cannot
provide opportunities in the forest industry for
our children. Without new jobs, our communi-
ties will stagnate.

At the same time, however, we don’t advocate
the creation of any or all jobs in the forest sec-
tor. I'W.A. CANADA members aren’t interested
in low wage, unsafe “McJobs” in fly-by-night
logging shows or sawmills. Too often those
kinds of operations cut corners on safety, envi-
ronmental standards and workers’ pay and
benefits. Those are exactly the sort of abuses
our union aims to wipe out.

As well, we oppose plans to eliminate good-
paying forest sector jobs and substitute lower
paying work in the tourism or service sectors.

THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE

As historian Norman Clark wrote in his
excellent history of early Everett, Washington,
one of the main factors that kept wages low and
thwarted mill workers’ efforts to raise them
was the crude level of technology and resulting
low productivity in pre-First-World-War timber
mills. The unendurable tension that gave rise
to violent and unwinable strikes in the pre-war
era “did not end because of the war. Nor did it
end because industrialists learned benevolence
or because labour leaders learned moderation.
Tt began to recede when a new technology made
individual workmanship more efficient and pro-
ductive and when the capitalizations for these
new machines in money and intelligence forced
all but a few mills from the competition,” Clark
noted.

In other words, it was only with the coming
of efficient new mills powered by electricity
instead of steam that workers’ productivity was
raised enough to allow them to raise their
wages above meager subsistence. Surely no one
today hungers for a return to the “golden and
gruesome” days of capitalism.

Fortunately, today’s advanced technology
makes possible both high wages and decent
working conditions in a fully competitive,

highly efficient industry. Canadian sawmills,
logging operations and other woodworking
plants are among the most productive and com-
petitive in the world; this allows Canadian

workers to gain a steady and even growing

share of wealth generated in the industry with-
out undermining our ability to export our prod-
ucts into international markets.

Much has been written and said recently
about the role of new technology in the forest
sector. Many in the environmental movement
and many academics, for instance, have claimed
that technology is depleting the forest sector
labour force, that forest employment is steadily
shrinking and that the forest industry con-
tributes a negligible share of the country’s over-
all jobs or economic returns.

This view is largely untrue and is not borne
out by the available evidence.

It typically masks the green movement’s true
agenda, which is to make possible a steady ero-
sion of the working forest available to the forest
industry, with resulting heavy job loss. That’s
why it’s important to make clear how many
jobs the forest sector represents and what a
major contribution it makes to our economy.

Although there clearly were employment
reductions in the forest sector in the two reces-
sions of the early eighties and early nineties,
employment levels have remained steady or
even increased over the

THE FOREST INDUSTRY

than that paid by their Southern counters. _

The main reason for this was not differential
exchange rates, but rather the B.C. mills hu;
advantage in productivity per hour worked,
which ranged from 40 to 80 pera higher than
that for the most efficient Southern U.S. mill
and was over two and a half times as high as
employee output in all Southern operations. —

This could hareat because B.C. Interior mills
achieved a massive increase in productivity as
a result of investments between about 1978 and
1984, allowing them to outperform a low-wa
competitor such as the U.S. South and remain
competitive even though over the same period
hourly compensation jumped by 98 percent in
Canadian dollar terms and a massive 60 per-
cent in U.S. dollars.

The relation between tech change and ene
ment is therefore complex. As the I.W.A.
CANADA report points out, it is particularl
important to separate the effects of the capital-
ist economic cycle from the effects of technol-
ogy:
he British Columbia Interior provides a
striking example of the impact of productivity
on unit production costs. These costs were kept
at legals below depressed lumber prices by
operating at a high rate of output per hour
worked. As a result, while other regions suf-
fered major cutbacks in production between
1978 and 1984, output in the B.C. Interior
jumped by 18.5 percent during those years. And
employment fell by just 12 percent — well
below the 21 percent decline in the U.S. West.
However, if the large scale modernization pro-
grams...had not been carried out in the B.C.
Interior, the depressed markets of the 1980s
would have resulted in a much higher rate of
job loss. In this sense, technological change was
a prerequisite to survival.”

Much of the job loss that occurred in the
early eighties was thus the result of depressed
markets, not new technology. While many mar-
ginally efficient mills could survive in the boom
markets of the late seventies, the severe reces-
sion which set in during the early eighties
allowed only the most efficient operations to
survive, suffering the smallest relative declines
in production and employment, the I.W.A.
study notes.

This is in contrast to the situation of the ply-
wood industry during the same period. There
some 4000 unionized jobs were lost not due to
new technology, but rather industry’s refusal to
implement new technol-

past 10 years:

° According to Statis-
tics Canada’s Labour
Force Survey, for
instance, the number of
forest sector jobs
increased by an average
of over 2 percent per year
between 1985 and 1995.
Current forest sector
employment is over
369,000.

° The 10-year average
gain in both the wood and

Although much is made of
technological change as a
factor of job displacement,
little is said about the ways
in which it has saved jobs.

ogy or develop a new
marketing strategy in
the face of U.S. compe-
tition and protection-
ism. The I.W.A. actu-
ally urged the industr:

to adapt, a plea that feil
on deaf ears. We know
that real-life choice is
seldom between “no tech
change and no job loss”
and “tech change and
lose all the jobs;” often

logging sectors was even higher over the same
period, 3.1 and 3.2 percent per year, respec-
tively. This in spite of severe employment
declines in the recession of the early nineties.

° As the economy climbed out of the reces-
sion, Canadian forest sector employment
increased from 241,500 in 1992 to 246,800 in
1995, according to Price Waterhouse’s annual
forest-sector survey.

For British Columbia, as well, employment
lost in the recession of the early nineties has
almost all been recouped, according to figures
from Price Waterhouse. This is partly the result
of increased demand for lumber and other prod-
ucts, as well as the implementation of the For-
est Practices Code.

The role of new technology in forest sector
employment seems to be greatly misunder-
stood. Although much is made of technological
change as a factor of job displacement, little is
said about the ways in which tech change has
saved jobs. A 1986 study by I.W.A. CANADA’s
Research Department, for instance, shows that
by the mid-eighties, B.C. Interior sawmills
were dramatically out-competing Southern U.S.
mills, even though the B.C. mills were paying
total compensation over $7 U.S. an hour higher

it’s “some tech change
and some job loss” or “no tech change and no
jobs.

When I.W.A. CANADA surveyed its members
in 1986, therefore, most were concerned with
gaining protection from the effects of future
tech change rather than with halting its imple-
mentation. I.W.A. CANADA did in fact negoti-
ate a series of measures to help insulate union
members from the effects of new technology,
including advance notice, right to retrain and
relocation allowances. In fact, the tech change
provisions in I.W.A. collective agreements
stand among the best in Canada.

Technological change, then, can be seen to be
a complex force in the forest industry, as in oth-
ers. On one hand, it is true that tech change
can eliminate jobs and reduce overall employ-
ment levels, at least temporarily. On the other,
though, tech change often allows substantial
wage increases through productivity gains; tech
change also makes possible retention of jobs
that might be lost due to inefficiency and
uncompetitiveness.

Continued on next page

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14/LUMBERWORKER/DECEMBER, 1997