¢ In late October, over 1,500 CEP and PPWC members and supporters held a rally outside hotel where Fletcher

Pulp unions take on Fletcher Challenge
in prolonged strike against concessions

he “mother of all strikes”

is still going on in the B.C.

forest industry as 2,400

members of the Commu-

nication, Energy and
Paperworkers Union (CEP) and the
Pulp, Paper and Woodworkers of
Canada (PPWC) remain on the
picket line at Fletcher Challenge
Canada’s (FCC) pulp and paper
mills in Crofton, Elk Falls (Camp-
bell River) and the northern com-
munity of MacKenzie.

The unions’ members from CEP
Locals 1092, 132, 630 and 1123 and
PPWC Local 2 have been on strike
over 5 months, having walked out
on July 14. At issue are the com-
pany’s request for unlimited flexi-
bility in assigning work, a 365 day
work year, contracting out, job elim-
ination and a long-term contract.

In late October, FCC announced
that it was going back on its com-
mitment to a joint venture co-gener-
ation plant on its Elk Falls mill site
until it could achieve unlimited flex-
ibility with its striking workforce.

The cash rich multinational cor-
poration, which is owned and con-
trolled by Fletcher Challenge Ltd.
of New Zealand is one of the most
despised companies operating in
B.C. and no stranger to the I.W.A.

“When Fletcher Challenge had a
large presence in the solid wood sec-
tor in the latter half of the 1980’s
and first part of the 90’s we had no
end to problems with them,” said
I.W.A. CANADA President Dave
Haggard. “As a union, the I.W.A.
can fully appreciate the tough strug-
gle that our brothers and sisters are
faced with in the pulp unions.”

“Fletcher Chellenss is one of the
most aggressively ruthless employ-
ers on the planet, from New Zealand
to Chile to Canada,” added Hag-
gard. “Their only line is the bottom
line and corporate greed.”

Earlier this year FCC spun off its
52% interest in B.C. woodlands
operations for a cool $550 million. It
recently sold a giant paper mill in
Minnesota (Blandin Paper Co.) for
about $950 million. So it is sitting
on a mountain of cash as it pushes
the two pulp unions for concessions.

On October 29 about 1,500 union
and community supporters held a
rally in downtown Vancouver out-
side the Four Seasons Hotel where

FCC was holding its annual share-
holders meeting.

Speaking to the rally were CEP
Western Vice President Brian Payne,
PPPWC President Gary Worth, CEP
National President Fred Pomeroy,
and B.C. Federation of Labour Pres-
ident Ken Georgetti.

Brother Pomeroy brought greet-
ing and solidarity from the 140,000
member CEP.

“We're here to deliver a very impor-
tant message to Fletcher Challenge
and to investors inside and the rest
of the industry,” he said. “This union
is not backing up - we don’t make
concessions. We’re not going to be
intimidated by their...economic ter-
rorism.”

“It should be abundantly clear
that we’re united that we’re solid
that we will not be pushed around
and the only way they will be able
to get a deal with us in to sit down
at the bargaining table and negoti-
ate it.”

He said that the FCC contract
proposals would reduce employment
security, cut the number of jobs,
undermine standards of living and

destroy communities.

Gary Worth said that “this is a
strike over the employer’s
agenda...they want full flexibility,
they want contracting out and they
want a long term agreement. They
want 365 days of production opera-
tions. They want to take our Christ-
mas’ away from our families.”

“This strike is also about corpo-
rate restructuring and community
stability,” he added.”

“They’ve continually reduced lev-
els of employment in their opera-
tions while at the same time pres-
suring their employees to work
overtime,” said Brother Worth.

One issue that the unions are out
over is converting overtime into
banked time to create more jobs.

Worth said that this is in line
with the Jobs and Timber Accord
that FCC agreed to with the
province.

“On one hand Fletcher Challenge
goes to the table with the govern-
ment and agrees to a Jobs and Tim-
ber Accord. On the other hand they
come to the bargaining table to cut
jobs,” said Worth. “They don’t give a

e CEP Western Région Vice President Brian Payne said Fletcher Chal-
lenge has betrayed the good will of its employees.

damn about communities. They
don’t give a damn about the people
that work for them.”

Worth said that what FCC wants
on flexibility has nothing to do with
productivity and efficiency. He said
it has everything to do with union
busting.

“It has everything to do with de-
skilling our workforce and weaken-
ing our union’s power,” said Worth.
“It has everything to do with cut-
ting our regular workforce to a bare
minimum and contracting out work.

The CEP’s Brian Payne said that
the strike is costing the company $3
million a day in lost production at
the three mills,

He said that the last agreement
the unions negotiated with Fletcher
Challenge agreed, reluctantly to
work on Labour Day. The company
agreed to what Payne termed “com-
mon sense” limited flexibility. In
exchange the company agreed to
minimize contracting out and pro-
vide additional work for union mem-
bers.

After the agreement was negoti-
ated both the company, other
employers and the CEP established
a joint training program.

That program is funded by FRBC.

“Outside the workplace we put
our credibility on the line...with the
government and the forest industry
to work on a new deal for the forest
industry in this province,” he said,
adding that the company has “forced
us out on strike over the same
issues.”

He said that FCC has “betrayed
its employees’ good will and betrayed
their communities” and that the
position of the company is that the
agreements never happened.

Payne said the strike could turn
out to be the longest labour dispute
in the history of the industry.

“Fletcher Challenge listen up.
You will regret, mark my words,
you will regret forcing us into this
fight,” said Payne. “You had good
will and opportunity to improve effi-
ciency in a spirit of cooperation,
now you've got a strike that won’t

end...it will not end until you are
forced to come to your senses and do
the right thing.”

Brother Georgetti took a shot at
Fletcher Challenge’s cancellation of
participation in the Elk Falls co-
generation project which is a joint
venture between Westcoast Energy
and Fletcher Challenge Boe

“If Fletcher Challenge thinks that
this bright idea of their to hold the
workers to ransom and their com-
munities to ransom for a co-genera-
tion plant, they must have been
smoking leaves from some other
kind of plant,” he said.

“Shareholders might like to know
why a company that is as large as
Fletcher Challenge can waste their
shareholder money on a prolonged
strike instead of bargaining a new
contract and getting their mill back
into operation.”

Denying charges from union offi-
cials that FCC is ona “capital strike”
against the government, company
CEO Doug Whitehead was quoted
directly in the Vancouver Sun.

Whitehead said an analyst called
and said he thought “it was time
companies stood up and he thought
they only way they could send a
message to government and unions
in this province was to withhold
capital.”

Despite a letter that Whitehead
circulated to union, stating that
Fletcher Challenge would not invest
in “what has been a dismal business
for 10 years,” the company is actively
investigating a number of pulp and
paper acquisitions on coastal British
Columbia.

The unions put together a “soli-
darity kitchen” to feed the strikers
and their supporters who marched
from in front of the Vancouver Art
Gallery and around the financial
district of Vancouver to the rally
site.

32/LUMBERWORKER/DECEMBER, 1997