per eltrrar

CONVENTION
HIGHLIGHTS9®9

NDP win greeted

Union delegates were happy to hear the big
news of the NDP election win in Manitoba during
convention week. On September 21, Gary Doer
knocked off Conservative incumbent Gary Filmon
when the NDP took 31 of 57 seats in Manitoba.
1.W.A. Local 324 President Jim Anderson, from
The Pas, said the win is a privilege for Manitoban
workers, because for eleven years they lived under

pigetice rernments.

— ‘or Blmiancenas we tried to beat the Conserv-
—, atives with the NDP,” he

said. In Anderson’s own

riding, the NDP held the

constituency it had for over

25 years.

“We're following along
the line of what it says (on
the convention banner),
“Moving into the Next Cen-
tury,” said Anderson. “The
next millennium we start
off with an NDP govern-
ment. ome on with us

s — let's go!”
SrWinninee: Local 830
President Jack Alexander
said the union membership in Manitoba has been
working for the NDP for years. Ironically, Alexan-
der’s wife’s cousin is the defeated Gary Film on.

“We work hard for the NDP in our province, in
our constituency,” he said. “And we had (1.W.A.
national education director) Lyle Pona working in
one, and we won that, and it’s about time.” i

National I.W.A. President Dave Haggard said
“with what’s been going on across this country, it’s
nice to have some good news.”

“With the split in Saskatchewan and the whop-
ping we took in Ontario, finally we elect an ND!

ernment and kick the Conservatives out, and
finink that’s great news for us and maybe it'll help
the other provinces across Canada to start doing
the same thing.”

° Jack Alexander

_ Actions needed

_ Continued from page twenty-two

_ the next day. ;
_ “So this is the Bad of pains shat we ue been
putting up with and it’s the laws that need to
Bbanged,” void Bayers. “These people should be
: ed immediately. They shouldn’t have to go
g injunction process.” 3
ink they’d (governments) allow it to
other business i Canada ober
use somebody has a notion in
t trees are more important than

they (preservationists) have a roblem

fy, they should be lobbying at the legis-

snot at our work sites...

e Darrel Wong

e Brenda Wagg

¢ Ron Colville

VAS

e Gary Kobayashi

Delegates call for maintaining
forest worker transition centres

In recent months and weeks the Forest
Renewal B.C. Forest Worker Transition Centres
have been under attack by the right wing and the
media that is out to slam anything to do with
FRBC. The union says the centres are an essen-
tial to meet the needs of laid-off workers, fund-
ing to them should be increased and that the
union should play a more integral role in how
they function.

Local 2171 Darrel Wong pointed out that one
of the local’s vice presidents, Gary Wong, has
been doing, by all accounts an outstanding job of
heading the forest worker transition centre in
Vancouver, which has processed over 2,300
workers.

He said that there is no money left for train-
ing and that many people do not yet have trans-
ferable skills that are going to get them a union
job with union benefits.

“What we really need to do is go back to gov-
ernment and tell them that this system that is
in place works well for our members, for retrain-
ing them and giving them other opportunities,
but it can’t work if we don’t have the funding
available...” he said.

“Going from working in the forest industry and
going to McDonald’s for seven bucks an hour is
not a transition, that is just a move into poverty,”
added Wong. bs

Ron Colville of Local 1-425 said the contract
for a transition centre was eventually given to a
community skills centre in Williams Lake.

“It was of no use to our guys, because it seemed
like the main job that those people were doing
was to find ways that our guys would not be able
to qualify,” said Colville. He added that FRBC
conser ly changed the goal posts of who could
x “We had a lay-off of 80 guys in our sawmill and
60 percent of them did not qualify by the time
they finished screwing arourid with the rules last
summer. So our guys ended up with nothing.”

He said that the union must get its hands on
the administration of transition monies to take
them away from bureaucrats that don’t under-
stand the forest industry.

Bob Matters of Local 1-405 said that itis essen-
tial to get the scraps of FRBC monies that are
left Seelast the programs, the training and skills

upgrading, wherever they can be delivered. He
said that FRBC has gutted transition centres
and not provided the employment opportunities
that the government said it would.

Brenda Wagg of Local 2171, who works at the
transition centre in Vancouver, said that the
union has to “take the bull by the horns and we
have to insist that the I.W.A. runs the transition
centres or else union members won’t be served
properly.”

“My experience has been that we have a lot of
tree planters that have gone through our pro-
gram and they’ve used a fot of money,” she said.
“They've taken money away from our members.
Two years experience, two years in forest indus-
try and there’s guys with 20 years, (and) that
Daye 30 years, and now there’s no money left for
them.”

Wade Fisher of Local 1-425, told delegates that
when his local used to run the transition pro-
gram, over 1,500 people were processed and
received skills upgrading, including high school
equivalency diplomas, university courses and
computer skills.

orkers who took the programs, went back to
work, and subsequently got laid off, then went
back to the program when it moved outside the
local union. The bureaucrats then started asking
for the workers to have new jobs set up before
they would offer training after they lost their
jobs.
s “J don’t know of one company today that will
say to you, ‘you get this training and we will give
you that job that’s going to be available six
months from now.’ It just doesn’t happen that
way,” said Fisher.

“On the Coast there’s been some good stuff
happen Some of locals have got things,” he
added. “But in the northern part of B.C., FRBC
has went back on commitment after commite-
ment to our membership, because once it’s done
on the Coast, FRBC just folds up and lets the
employers do whatever the hell they like. And
they do not want programs that educate our
members... and I think it’s a shame and we
should be pe no to the government.”

Local 2171’s Gary Kobayashi said that FRBC’s
big failure is that the union was not allowed to

Continued on page twenty-four

LUMBERWORKER/DECEMBER, 1999/23