° At Canwood’s furniture showroom in Penticton, B.C. are union committee members. Left to right are 1st Vice
Chairperson Ron Crampton, Plant Chairperson Ed Allies and Recording Secretary Lenette Terry.

Union makes progress
in furniture operation

n early November of last year

the Lumberworker had the

privilege of touring the Can-

wood Furniture Inc. plant in

Penticton, B.C. It was a little

more than a year after Local 1-423

was granted automatic certification

7 the B.C. Labour Relations Board.

‘ The plant was organized begin-
ning late September 1997, by local
union first vice president Ben Lan-
dis, local union executive board
member Don Koponyas (who is the
plant chairman at the nearby Green-
wood Forest Products), and a num-
ber of committed union supporters
on the inside of the plant.

A first collective agreement was
reached on March 20, 1998 by a vote
of 76 to 16. The union was in and
Was well on its way to making
improvements for the workers, who
had been non-union since the plant
first opened in March of 1986.

Plant Chairman Ed Allies, who
Started in the plant since December
ofthat year, told the Lumberworker
that the I.W.A. has brought a struc-
ture into the workplace, that both
Management and the union can live
with.

“Now we have a wage package
that workers can live with and we
have a format where we can respect
the seniority of workers and have
input to change management prac-
tices for the better,” he said. “Before
We joined the I.W.A. there was all
kinds of disciplinary problems. Dis-
cipline was given out based on who
you were and not what you did.”

Brother Landis notes that the
local union has not been called in to
solve one grievance — which is an
exception under any circumstances.

“They (Canwood management)
seem adamant that they want all
problems solved at the plant level,
said Landis. ;

Brother Allies said that so far
there has not been any grievance
that could not be resolved at the
plant level.

“By doing so we certainly have

been able to show the crew that the
ion can help them in addition to
peta wages and benefits and level-

ing the playing field for all people in
the plant.”

FROM IKEA SUPPLIER TO OWN
PRODUCT LINE

During the first 2-3 years of oper-
ation, the Penticton plant had up to
200 employees who produced ready-
to-assemble pine furniture for IKEA.
A new management team which
came into the plant in December of
1987, began to modernize the plant
and ultimately over $13 million was
spent on new equipment by late the
next year, including a $2 million
humidifying system to keep the
humidity at a certain percentage to
stop boards from curling.

By 1990 the IKEA lines were
hased out and the company intro-
luced its own product lines. Brother

Allies said that IKEA would accept
a lesser quality product that what is
now produced.

Today a tour through the sample
room at the plant reveals an exten-
sive products line ranging from beds
aad hedoam furniture, to home
entertainment centres and com-
puter desks, to dining room tables
and chairs. The company’s board
room has a huge pine meeting table
produced in the plant.

From 1990 onward the customer
base grew, and up to 60% of the
company’s production was shipped
to Asia, mostly Japan and Korea.
They even produced a home enter-
tainment centre and table that could
be reached from the floor level, to fit
the Asian lifestyles. At one time the
company had a marketing presence
in both countries, but the collapse
in Asian markets two years ago saw
an end to that.

Unfortunately the union had to
negotiate a first collective agree-
ment during the Asian collapse
when many workers where laid off.
The layoffs were made even worse
in May of 1998 when a fire in the
lacquer line resulted in a downsiz-
ing of the crew to only 18 workers in
the entire operation.

UTILIZATION AND FIBRE AGREEMENT
Brother Landis pointed to the
overall efficiency of the plant and

the high level of wood utilization.

“To my knowledge there’s no oper-
ation anywhere where you'll see the
utilization of wood pieces down to
pieces so small as in the Penticton
plant. “Their waste of fibre in unbe-
lievably low.”

The only thing that could improve
it would be a high volume finger-
jointing machine, said Allies, which
would produce longer pieces that
are hid away inside the furniture.

Canwood takes rough-cut pine
lumber from Weyerhaeuser’s Okana-
gan Falls sawmill, also certified to
Local 1-423, in wood swapping
arrangements for timber that it
bids for on small business sales.
The company brings in the wood on
an “as needs” basis.

“It gives us a guaranteed source
of material to allow the company to
have protracted schedules for pro-
duction lines,” said Allies. “Before
we suffered from fibre shortages
and production would be low as a
result.”

Because the Canwood takes plain
2x 4’s and 2x 5’s, there is no lack of
raw material. Ifit didn’t, it’s unlikely
that a major forest company would
supply it with raw material cut to
specification. The cost

He said that the Canwood and
Weyerhaeuser fibre agreement is
the “best agreement that I am aware
of in a relationship between a value-
added mill and a major.”

EFFICIENT MANUFACTURING PROCESS

As Canwood makes its own prod-
uct line, all of the pre-production
design work is done in house. The
designer takes the drawings toa
sample room where all of the com-
ponents are made and the tooling of
the plant is planned to get the most
efficient production from the most
appropriate machine.

All the work is done by certified
tradesmen who get paid in the
$19.00/hr. range.

The plant has two primary break-
down units which take rough cut
kiln-dried lumber with moisture
contents of between 10-12%. The
units, one a Schieder Moulder and
the other a Gramm Planer, plane
all sides into lamel pieces which are
then trimmed to specific lengths.
The knots, pockets and wane are
cut out of the pieces. Four 36” ceil-
ing fans whisk the air away from
the cutting areas which are fully
contained for wood dust and noise
reduction.

The pine then goes to a sorting
table where it is sorted into lengths
and graded further. The plant has
two laminators, one that works on
a radio microwave principal that
can put out laminated pieces that
can measure up to 5’ x 12.’

The plant equipment also includes
paseo sanders and a Homagq dou-

le antennenor which will take
panel stock and make an absolutely
square profile, and cut to lengths
that are dead-on. “This is an essen-
tial piece of machinery,” said Allies.
“Because if the panel or piece is out
of square one bit the drill holes
and components won’t fit together.”

The plant has molders, spindle
shapers, double-spindle shapers
and rotary shapers. ‘The latter pieces.

of equipment have a'series of jig
cutting edges to shape round cor-
ners like chair backs.

There is a Copp drilling centre
which drills and automatically
injects a wooden dowel for a joint
and a point-to-point drilling centre
which fandles eae curved pieces.

“Almost everything that we pro-
duce here is doweled and therefore
has to be drilled,” said Allies.

The company also has a 4 sided
Heesemann profile sander which
handles cate narrow pieces and
wide belt sander unit that does both
the top and bottom sides before
going into the lacquer line.

The new 80 foot lacquer line is
about five times faster than the old
one that went up in flames in May
of last year. The pieces are sprayed
and dried by the time they Rit the
end of the line.

All the furniture components are
packaued: checked and rechecked

efore storage and shipment. The
warehouse is about 25,000 square
feet and the production site is over
50,000 square feet.

of retooling a large
breakdown line for spe-
cial sizes would be too
high.

“One of the good
things that Canwood
has done is adopt its
mill to use the same
size of lumber that they
produce at O.K. Falls,”
said Landis. “It’s a win-
win situation.”

“One of the funda-
mental eoblems that
mills who make prod-
ucts for overseas mar-
kets go through is that
they can’t get the
pre er size of stock to

‘eed into their opera-
tions and most major
mills are not prepared
to retool to provide

them with proper tar- » Brother Allies and Local 1-423 First Vice Presi-
dent Ben Landis outside the plant.

get sizes,” he added.

LUMBERWORKER/MARCH, 1999/15

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