Pictured here are I.W.A. Local 324 bush workers, employed by a Moose Lake Logging sub-contractor in northern Manitoba. Left is John Cooper and ae

right, servicing a log forwarder, is Anthony Ross.

Steady progress with Manitoba loggers

he I.W.A. is doing some
breakthrough work in
northern Manitoba as it
works together with a First
Nations logging crew ina
prolonged fight for better
wages and working
conditions. The Moose Lake
Logging crew, which harvests logs for Tolko
Industries, is the only Native logging crew in
the province that is fully unionized and has
rights under “Schedule A” of a collective
agreement between I.W.A. Local 324 and the
company.

Moose Lake Logging harvests about 10 per
cent of Tolko’s annual allowable cut and is the
closest bush operation to the company’s sawmill
and pulp and paper complex in The Pas, which
also serves as headquarters for the local union.

Local 324 represents about 300 members in
the sawmill.

National secretary-treasurer Harvey Arcand
has been in and out of the province for the past
couple of years to help workers get increased
roadside rates for harvesting and better hauling
rates for truckers.

“The rates are not yet where they have to be,
especially on the load and haul side,” said
Arcand. “We are going through arbitration and
the legal process to establish full union rates in
both areas.”

All through the province, and especially the
north, Tolko and its predecessor Repap, have
succeeded in pushing deunionization in the
bush. Today there are only about 37 fully-union
company crew, mostly from Cranberry, on up to
Wawbowden and northeast to Thompson.

Elsewhere there are a small number of union
contractors and an assortment of mixed union
and non-union crews, and non-union workers.
Most are not getting fair wages.

“We are working to reverse that trend and
our efforts with the Moose Lake Logging crew
and the Mosakahiken Cree Band (which owns
Moose Lake in partnership with the community
of Moose Lake itself) are starting to show some
early results,” said Arcand.

In September of 2000 national president
Dave Haggard visited Moose Lake and signed a
historic cooperation agreement with band chief
Phillip Buck to work for the betterment of
working people.

Moose Lake Logging agreed to do all its
logging as a union and deal only with unionized
companies on the wood haul to The Pas. The
union agreed that it would act in the best
interests of the Mosakahiken Cree and the
loggers and get a better deal with Tolko that
would live up to the “Schedule A” requirements.

“They have lived up to their part of the
bargain,” said Arcand. “They actually refused
to get their logs hauled until there was an
acceptable agreement for log haulers (the
Northern Wood Haulers Association), of which
we are looking at reorganizing into the union.”

In January of last year, the union achieved
an interim rate for haulers and in August of
2001 the Moose Lake crew went back to work
as a fully union entity.

Now the I.W.A. is working on retroactive
issues for the company.

SUBSTANDARD WORKING CONDITIONS

“There is no doubt that there are loggers
working for Tolko through contractors or sub-
contractors, who are not being properly paid,”
said Arcand. “In some cases we are finding
workers who are getting less than minimum
wage. That is a shame.”

Numerous times, the Moose Lake loggers
have gone without pay. Some times the sub-
contractors couldn’t pay their men.

There are some reasons for that.

Jody Ehman, who is the local union’s
contractor representative at Moose Lake, has
seen wages and working conditions collapse
and be rebuilt.

Under Repap (Tolko bought it out in 1997),
loggers made a full transition to mechanical
harvesting in 1994 when workers were still
being paid a normal union wage.

In 1995 Repap told the Moose Lake crew they
were no longer in the I.W.A. and had to start

new operations. The workers didn’t question
the company’s move at the time.

During the first year Brother Ehman got
paid a “training rate” wage of only $12 per hour
asa processon operator.

When workers grieved, the contractor he
worked for bumped wages back up to the $23
range. But soon the contract with Repap simply
couldn’t pay the union rate.

All workers agreed to keep working for $16
an hour without any benefits, to keep the
contractors in business.

“We agreed to stay working until the rates
bounced back,” said Ehman. But they didn’t
and things got worse.

In 1996 Ehman himself became a contractor
as he purchased one of the last pieces of
equipment that was contracted out. He thought
with his experience he could make a go of it.

“I figured that as a contractor I could run an
efficient machine and create jobs in the
community,” he said.

He ran machinery 24/7 for three years. Over
that time the crew dropped from five to three to
two men. The first year, Ehman himself took no
wages home and underpaid his crew. Later he
sunk deeper into debt, making payments on a
replacement machine.

After Tolko took over it went to Moose Lake
Logging and asked the contractors and sub-
contractors to change the configuration of their
equipment to boost production. There were
then three processors and three forwarders

- behind a feller buncher.

“Tolko paid us the same and were getting
another machine for free,” said Ehman. The
crew produced more for rates they couldn’t
survive on.

Ehman ran a feller buncher that had its cut
increased from 40,000 cubic meters to 120,000
cubic meter, with a roadside rate of only about
$4 a meter for his work. After complaining to
the company in 1999, contractors were paid a
little more but not nearly enough. By December
of that year, when the contractors went to the

continued on page thirty-three

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