sas

a

Raat:

Babe,

e Laid off workers from Flavelle Cedar Mill in Port Moody took to a street near then-premier Glen Clark’s office
in East Vancouver to seek public support against log exports. The government has allowed Interfor the right to
export 330,000 cubic metres from its licences while announcing the closure of Flavelle.

(¢ e’re determined in
this battle,” said

Local 1-3567 Pres-

ident Sonny Ghag.

“The fight for the

Flavelle sawmill is what our local

union is all about.”
On Jt 21, without notice, Inter-

national Forest Products announced
the penmanent closure of the
Flavelle Cedar mill in Port Moody,
which would eliminate 169 bargain-
ing unit jobs employing 210 people.

At virtually the same time the
company has been given the green
light by the government to export up
to 330,000 cubic meters of logs from
its various tree farm and forest
licenses on the Coast of B.C. This
year it will harvest about 2.8 million
cubic meters of logs in Tree Farm
Licenses, Forest Licences and Tim-
ber Licences, spread from the U.S.
Border to Kingcome Inlet. Most of
those are I.W.A. operations.

The permanent closer of Flavelle
in Port Moody is scheduled for
December 31, 1999 if the company
can’t find another purchaser.

“We say that Interfor can’t close
Flavelle because they have a com-

mitment to provide employment and
economic activity for British
Columbians,” said Brother Ghag.
“The government must force the
company to use logs for jobs in this
province and not ship our jobs over-
seas.

In November of 1994 Interfor
announced the purchase of Weld-
wood Canada’s coastal sawmills and
forestry operations. In the purchase,
which was approved by then Forests
Minister Andrew Petter in February
of the following year, Interfor com-
mitted to the continued operation of
both the Flavelle Cedar operation
and the Weldwood Empire sawmill
in Squamish.

In the agreement with the Min-
istry of Forests there was a commit-
ment that Interfor would continue to
employ the existing employees from
Weldwood milling and woods opera-
tions.

In the event of layoffs Interfor
agreed to build value-added facili-
ties to ensure the fair treatment of
workers and to maximize employ-
ment.

With the transfer of the Squamish
sawmill and the Empire mill, came

|

Proposed merger
Continued from page two

He pointed to a one month strike
earlier this Spring between Weyer-
haeuser and the CEP following the
company’s takeover of a pulp mill
and sawmillin Dryden.

“J hope that’s not the indication of
the Weyerhaeuser that we will see,”

aid McIntyre.

: Local 2995 1 President Damien Roy
told the Lumberworker that the local
union met with Weyerhaeuser’s
transition team in early September
to discuss their takeover of two MB
operations, both in Chapleau,
Ontario. They are Chapleau Forest
Products and the A & L Lafreniere
sawmills in town, employing 165-
170 union members between them.

“We told the Weyerhaeuser transi-
tion leader that it is important for
them to maintain support for the
Employee and Family Assistance

and they seemed to be sup-
portive on this and issues of safety,”
said Brother Roy.

Roy is encouraged that Weyer-
haeuser left the impression that
they will battle against the softwood
lumber agreement with the United
States.

Local 500 President Bruce Weber
said that early signs are that MacB-
los’s Green Forest Lumber Ltd.
reman plant in Windsor will not be
affected by the takeover. But he is
concerned that the operation has
been downsized to about 42 workers
since it was first organized in 1995.

Toronto Local 700 President Ron
Diotte said the only MB certification
in his local, the giant state-of-the-art
MBBM warehousing facility in
Brampton should stay in operation if
a merger takes place. Weyerhaeuser
has an old, outdated distribution
yard in Vaughan, northwest of
Toronto.

“The Brampton warehouse
(240,000 square feet facility set on
29 acres) is build for expansion in
mind,” he said.

“We're hoping the current work-
force of 22 will expand if Weyer-
haeuer takes over.”

over 1.1 million cubic meters, more
than enough to run both mills.

Now Interfor wants to torpedo the
Flavelle mill, run its Squamish mill
on one shift indefinitely and export
logs for the rest of the year.

‘The I.W.A. has contacted the B.C.
government and has demanded that.
it force Interfor to operate or sell the
Flavelle mill. In an August 5 letter
to then Premier Glen Clark, I.W.A.
national president Dave Haggard
said that Interfor is not “good corpo-
rate citizen” and demanded that its
timber be made available to any
company willing to purchase and
operate the mill. He urged the
province’s Jobs and Timber Advo-
cate and officials to act along with
the leader of the province.

Haggard and Ghag met with For-
est Minister Dave Zirhelt on Sep-
tember 7 to discuss the mill closure.
Zirnhelt has agreed to investigate
the situation.

The local is also facing the issue of
log exports at Cattermole Timber,
Meeker Log and Timber Ltd. and the
J.S. Jones operation in Boston Bar
where workers have taken down-
time while logs have been exported,
cut by union loggers.

Crew members from Flavelle
began a protest near the then Pre-
mier’s office on July 26.

“Our union opposes the export of
raw logs even though we have been
forced to make tough decision
between some exports and some jobs
or no jobs at all,” said Haggard. “But
in those cases companies at least
used their export permits to start up
camps and mills in B.C. Interfor is
doing just the opposite and the gov-
ernment should make them start up
or take the wood away.”

“In the specific case of Flavelle,
where: the company is making an
unreal claim that there is not
enough timber to run the operation,
we think that the government must
take away an appropriate amount of
timber away from the company if it
sticks with its plans to not operate
even a small log mill,” he said. “The
government should compel Interfor

to run that plant or sweeten the pot
for a buyer by throwing in the tim-
ber Interfor received to run Flavelle.
It should also threaten to take away
Interfor’s log export licence as a way
to encourage it to run or sell the
plant.”

cedar mill

When Interfor bought Flavelle
from Weldwood, it acquired more
than enough timber to run Flavelle
and the Squamish mills.

The 330,000 cubic meters of wood
that Interfor may export by the end
of the year would be more than
equivalent to an amount needed to
run Flavelle for two shifts all year.

At the time of the takeover in Feb-
ruary of 1995, Flavelle had 340
union members. Five months later it
laid off 214 members and the union
fought back.

When the dust settled, Interfor
agreed to build a small log mill on
the Flavelle site and operate it with
169 union members. That mill was
put into operation in April of 1997
along with the commitment to build
a value-added mill on the same site.

Then the next year, Interfor
announced the permanent closure of
another eperatien) its McDonald
Cedar mill in Fort Langley. A deal
was struck between the company,
the government and the union to
ultimately build the value-added
plant on the mill site in Fort Lang-
ley, which would rely on cedar from
Flavelle and Interfor’s Hammond
Cedar operation in Pitt Meadows.

In 1997 Interfor only agreed to
build a portable mill in Fort Langley
which would run 2-5 years, starting
in June of 1998, and use low-grade
cedar. A second phase would happen
depending on whether or not it could
do something with white woods.

Now that Interfor is pulling the
rug on Flavelle, the Fort Langley
operation, which is a chop mill, may
face wood supply problems and
eventual closure. tenon it was
supposed to run two shifts and
employ 50 people, the mill has been

on one shift, four days a week for the
last several months.

NO BUSINESS PLAN

Without warning, the new
Flavelle small log mill in Port Moody
closed during the afternoon of Sep-
tember 30, 1998. Workers were sud-
denly informed that there was too
much inventory and the technical
problems with the new mill necessi-
tated a shutdown.

The company didn’t meet again
with the local until late November to
look for a solution to get the mill
back into operation.

Plant chairman Jim Kilty told the
Lumberworker that the crew
thought they had a deal to reopen
the mill on March 1 of this year and
was dealing in good faith with the
company. Interfor moved 11-12 mil-
lion board feet off the Port Moody
site in the interim.

A few days before the scheduled
March 1 opening company vice pres-
ident of logging Fred Lowenburger
would not start up. It had no busi-
ness plan in place.

The Jobs and Timber Advocate
asked Interfor for a business plan.
Even the company’s own board of
directors wanted a plan put
together.

‘How the hell can you claim to be
a world class company and not be
able to put a business plan together
for a 169 person sawmill?,” said
Brother Ghag. “How can you not
unless you’re only real plan is to
shut the mill down?”

In March and April the local
waited. Then it asked for job conces-
sions. The union said no — it had a
jobievetantes letter for 169 jobs.

e local laid a grievance on the

job letter and went in front of the

mployment Standard Branch,

arguing that there was a group ter-

mination in the works which needed
12 weeks advance warning.

When the company tried to sus-
pend bargaining unit work to get the
mill back operating and tried to

Continued on page twenty-eight

LUMBERWORKER/SEPTEMBER, 1999/3