PRESIDE MESSAGE

Clear direction needed
for work partnerships

by Dave Haggard

hen MacMillan Bloedel intro-
duced co-design and co-man-
agement into its coastal oper-
ations in British Columbia
last year, the move was unex-
pected by our union. Our mem-
bership was simply told to take it or leave it.
Take it and the plant or logging operation will
remain open or leave it and MB would keep
the operation closed down indefinitely.

Given those two choices it isn’t hard to see
why our members did everything they could
to keep operating and participated in MB’s
new management scheme. When you have a
gun pointed at your head there is not much
choice to be had.

Go with it our members did, on a division
by division basis, and the results to date have
been largely positive. Our members have
made sure that their collective agreements
have stayed in place and that the new co-
design and co-management arrangements
would work for the mutual benefit of both
sides — both the I.W.A. and the company.

Although the results are positive to date, I
would argue that they won’t last because the
I,W.A. and MB are not yet real partners. But
we are moving in the right direction with one
operation, the Chemainus division sawmill,

where the crew is
proceeding with a
jointly developed
and negotiated 18-
month trail part-

nership.
In our view the
Chemainus ap-

proach — true part-
nership negotiated
between the union
and the company —
is the way to go.

In November of
last year our union
sent a contingent of
national and local
union officers down
to the United States
to study and learn
about the Interna-
tional Association
of Machinists’ “High
Performance Work
Organizations” which are a type of co-man-
agement partnership. We went to various
operations, including Weyerhaeuser and

arley Davidson motorcycles and saw
processes in place. é :

We learned the IAM only participates in
such programs if there is a commitment to
job security with a goal of growing the busi-
ness and that there must be true collabora-
tion in the planning and performance of pro-
duction processes. “

Earlier this month, we held a conference in
Vancouver, where we took what we learned
from the IAM and combined it with our expe-
riences. A group of some 50 I.W.A. officers
and staff debated and discussed what I.W.A.
partnerships would look like.

During the run-
to this year’s the I.W.

continue working with
local unions to come
up with a clear direc-
tion for our national
union on workplace
partnerships. We hope
to develop a clear pro-
gram, supported by a
national policy to be
presented and debated
at the convention to be
held in Sault Ste.
Marie in September.

With an I.W.A.-made
program we can be

roactive. We can chal-
lees the employers who
try to draw us into co-
management schemes
to ensure that partner-
sep arrangements
that we participate in are based on true part-
nership, not B.S. ones.

We can also take our program to employers
who are still in the dark ages and help them
change and grow.

No matter where I.W.A. members work, be
they in logging camps, mills, credit unions, or
warehouses, those union members in those
operations are the people who will ultimately
decide their own futures in an ever-changing
work world. But they need to have informa-
tion and they need to have choices.

It is our job to make sure that workers are
not just idle passengers on the boss’ co-man-
agement boat. We have to have the tools to
decide whether we Ren Be want to row the
boat or if we want to be the ones steering it.

national officers will |

LANDS AND FORES

Marketing plan is
crucial for Canada

f we’re going to produce forest products,
we also have to market them. Right now,
we face some serious challenges in all
our major markets. That’s why this union
is working very hard to involve industry,
provincial governments and the federal
government in better ways to market our for-
est products.

The stakes are huge, after all. Forest prod-
ucts are Canada’s largest single source of
export earnings, not to mention employment
or government revenues.

Forest product exports amounted to $39 bil-
lion in 1997, contributing $31.8 billion to
Canada’s balance of trade and $18.1 billion to
the gross national product.

The United States is Canada’s largest sin-
gle market, accounting for 74 percent of our
total exports in 1997, ranging from 91 percent
for Manitoba and 96 percent for Ontario,
down to 59 percent for British Columbia.

Canada’s access to that market is, of course,
restricted by the Canada-U.S. Softwood Lum-
ber Agreement. Producers in the four major
lumber producing provinces — B.C., Alberta,
Ontario and Quebec — are affected by the quo-
tas set by the agreement. Any market access
beyond a firm’s assigned quota is subject to
countervailing duty. At lower prices, such as
those prevailing during much of the past year,
many firms cannot afford to pay the “ticket”
price.

U.S. companies enjoy considerable political
clout in Washington and they give no indica-
tion they are in a less protectionist mood as
we move into the two years leading up to
renegotiation of the treaty in 2001. In fact, a
recent action by U.S. producers against pre-
drilled studs from B.C. shows quite the oppo-
site.

Moreover, in the U.S. there are growing
signs that green groups in the U.S. are also
doing their best to undermine Canadian
exports into the American market. In Decem-
ber a coalition of groups, including Green-
peace, ran an ad in The New York Times
attacking B.C. forest practices. It claimed the
support of nearly 30 U.S. corporations, includ-

ing some big ones: IBM,
Bristol Myers Squib,
3M and so on.

Our union singled our
Hallmark Cards Inc. of|
Kansas City, Mo., for

"| attention. We warned
Hallmark that Green-

peace and friends were
using their corporate
name to undermine our
» | communities and jobs
and that the claims
being made about our
forest products were untrue: they had 48
hours to recant or face pre-Christmas picket
lines — not-so-jolly I.W.A. members with a not
so cheery message for Hallmark customers
and retail outlets.

Following phone discussions with I.W.A.
and B.C. chief forester

The conference ended with a declaration
from the dele atcs to support each other
against unfounded forest campaigns.

In fact, certification is another trade area
where our union is working hard to protect
Canadian interests. We have, of course been
active since the beginning in Canada’s own
Canadian ‘Standards Association Sustainable
Forest Initiative.

Now, with so many companies looking into
or actually striving for Forest Stewardship
Council certification, our union really has no
choice but to also ensure that workers and
their communities are protected in that
process: Since the certification meeting in

onn, Germany, we have twice met FSC inter-
national executive director Tim Synnott to
discuss the upcoming FSC standard for British
Columbia and FSC’s other Canadian initia-
tives in New Brunswick and Ontario.

We have made clear

Larry Pedersen, Hall-
mark suddenly changed.
its position, saying that
B.C. forest practices are
OK and that our long-

communities deserve
Hallmark’s support,
after all.

Soon, many other
companies on the list
agreed: either Green-
peace and its allies mis-
used their names or

The I.W.A. is working on
standing ferestbaee, Several fronts to ensure that ducers, it
Canadian forest products

are marketed throughout
the world.

to Synnott our con-
cerns about FSC; that
it must offer similar
deals to Canadian pro-
gave
Swedish companies
recently; that it must
not act as a de facto
non-tariff trade bar-
rier etd that the
power of green groups
must be moderated
within FSC and its

misconstrued their positions. That doesn’t
mean that this new turn in the campaign is a
thing of the past: we can likely expect other
“boardroom blitz” tactics as corporations try to
win “brownie points” from consumers who
know little about the reality of the forest
industry and hear most of their information
from liars like Greenpeace.

In Europe, which buys about 10 percent of
Canada’s forest exports, planned green boy-
cotts are also a serious threat. That’s wh:
I.W.A. has worked hard to make links ane
unions in European Union countries. We know
that the unions are more likely to understand
our concerns than are other elements in soci-
ety. And we know they have strong links to
the socialist and social democratic parties that
govern much of Europe.

At the forest certification conference Dave
Haggard and I attended in Germany last fall,
an important part of our time there was spent
making links with German trade unionists, in
particular, as well as Green and Social Democ-
ratic members of Parliament who have strong

links to labour.

councils. So far it’s
clear that no dealings with FSC will be a pic-
nic; but progress is being made. The test will
come when FSC ae out its draft regional
piandard for B.C., likely some time next
month.

Finally, then, there is Japan. That market

also takes about 10 percent of what Canada
produces mainly from coastal British Colum-
ia. Those firms were hit, first when the
Japanese market collapsed in late 1997 and
again because U.S. producers were more able
— again, blame the softwood agreement — to
sell back into their own marekt lumber that
otherwise would have gone to Japan.
Meanwhile, Canadian companies struggle
to eee their share of the Japanese market,
which will likely rebound slightly this year.
Our union is currently working with compa-
nies and the B.C. government to persuade
Ottawa to support coastal producers trying to
improve markets for B.C. hemlock in Japan.

Kim Pollock is the Direct Envi sae
Public Policy for LWA. eta Gee ro

(A
4/LUMBERWORKER/MARCH, 1999