as 2

¢ Local 2693 Steward and welder Edmond Parise and his fellow workers at Kimberly-Clark Camp 64 can’t wait

Kimberley-Glark crew ready for negotiations

fthe crew at Kimberly-Clark’s

Camp 64 woodlands division,

based out of Geraldton,

Ontario, gets its way, they

would be the first I-W.A. crew
to set a pattern agreement in the
north this coming summer.

At a wage and contract confer-
ence (see page one) held in Thunder
Bay, Steward Edmond Parise got up
to the mike to say that his crew
wants to be the first up to the plate.
Of course, the decision as to which
is the first I.W.A. crew to negotiate
a pattern for bush operations will
be carefully made after meetings
are held with all 34 major and minor
companies that are involved in nego-
tiations with I.W.A. CANADA Locals
2693 and 1-2995.

“The crew at Kimberley Clark is
showing some good spirit, and, like
other I.W.A. loggers in the north,
they are eager to get at it this sum-
mer,” said Local 2963 President
Wilf McIntyre.

Contracts covering over 2,250
bush workers in the two local unions
will expire on August 31, 1998.

Union members at K-C’s Camp 64
are taking things in stride these
days, after the company’s attempts
to sell its assets in the northwest to
Harmac Pacific Inc. fell through.
Harmac was bought out by the U.S.
based Pope and Talbot in the fall of
1997, which later rejected purchas-
ing K-C’s assets.

“We’ve seen this time and time
again at K-C,” said Brother McIn-
tyre, who said that “Kimberley-
Clark has been up for sale for the
last 20 years.”

The local union represents 325
members on the seniority list at the
woodlands operation which works
most of the year. The company’s for-
est license stretches from west 15
miles from Geraldton, north to
Nakina, south to Terrace Bay, and
east to the Pagwa Bridge.

It takes about 480,000 cords
(approximately 1.2 million cubic
meters) of wood off those limits
every year. About 80,000 cords is
poplar and the remaining softwood
trees are, more or less, split evenly
between pulp grade and saw grade
timber.

The company operates a large
pulp mill at Terrace Bay, about 140
km. southwest of Geraldton, which

consumes about 1 million cubic
meters of wood annually. To get

pulp fibre the company swaps logs
and gets chips from various sawmills
in outlying forest communities.

K-C employs 60 off highway log-
ging trucks on a network of roads
that cover over 12,000 miles, not
including side spurs to logging sites.
It has 17 gravel trucks which work
to maintain the road system.

The union has kept the company
unionized as all of the owner/opera-
tor log truck drivers pay dues and
adhere to the collective agreement.

Logging crews work directly for
the company rather than owner/
operators. All bush workers, no mat-
ter who they work for, are covered
by the collective agreement.

Local union business agent and
executive board member Ken Paque-
tte said that the membership has
resisted being forced to purchase
equipment in the harvesting opera-
tions.

“What happens in most places is
that as soon as you get your own
equipment, the equipment goes
ahead of the worker in importance,”
he said in an interview with the
Lumberworker. “The worker will
take care of his equipment before he
will take care of himself and he can
get in debt to the banks, run down
and beat up by the employer.”

Paquette said that forest compa-
nies try to negotiate different con-
tracts with different owner/opera-
tors to drive rates down.

“In some parts of the province it’s
so bad that non-union owner-opera-
tors that we call ‘pack-sackers’ have
driven rates down so far that people
have to work seven days a week for
low wages,” he said. “We have been.
able to keep that out of our neck of
the woods and intend to keep things
that way.”

In 1997 the local union agreed to
let some contractors come into the
claim, under the collective agree-
ment, to harvest stands of trees
that were blown over by wind storms.

By doing so, the company is able
to maintain its sustainable cut level

year after year.
The blow-down was cleaned up by
the second week of April this year

and no annual allowable cut has
been lost.

In the summer of 1996 there were
huge lightning-sparked fires in the
northern and southern parts of the
forest license. To clean up the burnt
wood, loggers came in to take the
wood out to the Excel Forest Prod-
ucts mill in Oppasatika. The logs
could not be shipped to the K-C pulp
mill in Terrace Bay which has a

° On the Trans-Gesco forwarder at K-C Camp 64 is local union member

Maurice Waboose.

zero tolerance for burnt wood.
The company has been big on car-
rying out full reforestation after

harvesting and tree plant acceler-
ated following the 1996 fires.

Tree planting is carried out in the
Spring with the first jobs offered to
I.W.A. members. All the planters
are under a collective agreement
with I.W.A. Local 2693.

Some of the younger truck dri-
vers, laid off after the winter roads
thaw, take those tree planting jobs
for a 2-4 week period.

a Y

6/LUMBERWORKER/JUNE, 1998