© Upon their arrival at the CTF-I.W.A. Education centre the delegation met with CTF officers and staff. Left to
right are Local 1-3567 president Sonny Ghag, Local 1-424 member Alfredo Espinoza, CTF organizing director
Juan Rivera, CTF president Jorge Gonzalez, I.W.A. national third vice president David Tones, CTF secretary
Rosa Arias, I.W.A. national president Dave Haggard, and Local 1-207 president Mike Pisak.

|.W.A. delegation visits Chilean
forest workers’ confederation

An official delegation from I.W.A.
Canada, headed by national
president Dave Haggard was in
Chile from March 30 to April 9, as
guests of the National Confederation
of Forest Workers of Chile.

The purpose of the delegation’s
visit, which also included national
third vice president David Tones,
Local 1-207 president Mike Pisak,

Local 1-3567 president Sonny Ghag,
and Loca] 1-424 executive board
member and interpreter Alfredo
Bernoz, was to visit the joint CTF-
I.W.A. Education Centre set up in
the southern city of Concepcion, get
exposure to working conditions and
the forest industry in Chile and to
meet and discuss workplace and
labour issues with various
government officials in the country.

“Tt was a great experience for all of
us,” said Brother Haggard in an
interview with the the Lumberworker.
“To go to Chile and meet with working
people was a great honour for the
I.W.A. Everyone we met treated us
with a great deal of respect and
interest and we are th: 1 for the
experience.”

AT THE EDUCATION CENTRE

The delegation started the visit

by dropping into the education centre
where it met with CTF members
completing a two-day session of
Course 2 - Activist Training. The
course, developed by the CTF and
the I.W.A., has been successfully
presented to 60 CTF members
to date.

“We got to the centre and our
Chilean brothers and sisters had
the I.W.A. flag on display along

with the Chilean and Canadian
flags,” said Haggard. “It was very
emotional to see this and brought
closer the fact that here we were —
two distinct cultures thousands of
miles away from each other, working
together for the betterment of forest
industry workers and their
communities.”

“The highlight for me was meeting
with the workers and engaging with
them, even though most of us don’t
understand Spanish and they don’t
speak English,” said Brother Tones.
“The CTF members have really
taken strong ownership of the
education program and exhibited to
us a great deal of pride in making
our joint program a success,” said
Tones. “What the CTF and the IWA
have done is establish a residential
school in Concepcion where
education classes are provided along
with room and board.”

CTF members in attendence at
the first course came from locales
including Los Angeles, Lota, San
Pedro de la Paz, Los Alamos,
Talcahuano, Constitucion, Arauco
Province and Valdivia.

A barbecue reception was held for
the I.W.A. delegation and many
there engaged in dialogue.

“We learned a great deal about
the lives of workers in Chile and
they asked us about the labour
movement in Canada — how we do
things, how the labour laws work,
and how can we help them make
changes,” said Brother Pisak.

Brother Ghag was impressed by
the set-up of the education centre.

“It was a worthwhile trip to see
how things are going with our project
down there,” said Ghag. “I think the

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The delegation saw a small clean-up logging operation using oxeninan about that competitive advantage,”

environmentally-sensitive area.

education centre will eventually
need some upgrading in the future.
It’s a good first effort. I’m of the
view that we should do it and it
should be first class.”

“The CTF is trying to make ends
meet with what they have in terms
of financial resources and they are
doing a good job,” said Ghag. “Its
members have a real need for
education programs.”

The CTF is a confederation of
individual unions predominantly in
the southern region of Chile.
Founded in 1988, during the last
years of Chile’s military dictatorship,
the CTF has struggled to organize

Photo courtesy CTF

said Ghag. “But what we can dois
help Chilean woodworkers in their
struggle for better pay, job security
and the right to freely join unions.”

HEADING DOWN SOUTH

From Concepcion the delegation,
accompanied by CTF organizing
director Juan Rivera, education
director Sergio Gonzalez, and Silvia
Leiva, director of women’s programs,
visited union representatives at the
Araucana Company sawmill
(“Empresa Aserradero La
Araucana”) in Arauco province,
south of Concepcion.

There they met briefly outside
the plant gates with union
representatives including Adelmo
Fernandez, Carlos Valdebenito and
Gilberto Leal.

Some general discussions were
had on the state of the forest industry
and workers’ rights.

“As you drive through the eighth
and ninth regions of Chile, there’s
mills scattered all over the place,”
said Brother Haggard. “Every time
you turn around you see another
mill... some are a fair size and fairly
modern and some are smaller and
portable mills.”

Then it was off to see a logging
crew in action, using oxen to harvest
and clean up a setting near the
community of Curanilahue. The
oxen were being used in a delicate
ecosystem terrain.

The I.W.A. met with union
representative Luis Salas, from the
“Fundo Buena Esperanza” union
and got a great appreciation of the
concern over environmentally-
sensitive logging practices and
working conditions that CTF
members contend with.

The delegation had a close-up
look at a radiata pine plantation
forest.

“When you talk about how fast
they can grow and reharvest forests,
it’s a bit scary for us,” said Brother
Pisak. “It can become a major
competition for us in the future —a

Photo by David Tones

¢ During visit Local 1-424's Alfredo Espinoza translated questions to Dave

Haggard from local media.

workers against a background of
repressive labour laws and

intimidation from various
employers. It has been an uphill
struggle.

Wages are as low as $400 a month
for six-day work weeks. Although
overtime is supposed to be paid to
workers after 48 hours, overtime
pay provisions are rarely enforced.

“Tf we are going to succeed in our
project, which is what we are coping
with, we need to help bring them
(Chilean forest workers) up to
standards that are, if not the same
as ours, close to ours,” said Ghag.
“It’s a tough life for the folks there,
there’s no doubt about it.”

He said the I.W.A. should take a
long-term view to bringing up wages
in Chile and other parts of the world.

“If you look at Chile, they can

row merchantable saw timber
variate pine) in a 20-30 year period
and there’s nothing that we can do

competition based on fast growing
trees and cheap labour.”

Pisak noted that the Chilean
government, which hasawarded
vast tracts of public land to private
corporations since the mid-1970’s,
pays for about 80 per cent of the
costs of reforestation.

Brother Tones noted that the vast
majority of plantation forests, which
consist of radiata pine for sawlogs
and pulp and eucalyptus for wood
chips, stretch for hundreds of miles.

He draws a parallel between cheap
Chilean labour used for tree planting
and silviculture (thinning, pruning
and spacing) and the cheap labour
strategy in the southern United
States.

Tones and other I.W.A. members
visited Weyerhaeuser contract
logging operation in Arkansas in
the late 1990’s as part of a visit with
the International Association of
Machinists and witnessed the forest

continued on page eighteen

LUMBERWORKER/SEPTEMBER, 2001/17