IWACONVENTIONO1

Siena in front of the Canadian, American
and I.W.A. flags at the union’s Fifteenth
Constitutional Convention at the Chateau
Lacombe Hotel in Edmonton, only six days
after the tragic events of September 11, national
I.W.A. president Dave Haggard said the union
is facing troubled times.

“We're faced with the difficulties of softwood
lumber, the trade fight with the United States
— it’s all so ridiculous and it doesn’t need to
happ n.” said Brother Haggard. ~
said the U.S. and Canada should be
building a partnership to take on the rest of the
world and benefit workers in both countries.

He said that chief executive officers of
Canadian forest companies don’t understand
the idea of working with the Americans to build
a bigger trading block like the Europeans have.

“Can you imagine if the United States and
Canada build a similar one?” he said. “We
would kick the proverbial butts around this
world like nobody’s ever seen before, but instead
we're faced with the situation where they talk
about free eaterpnse and about competition
and about how they have to reach the bottom
line. Every time they have to reach the bottom
line, guess who suffers? The men and women
who work in our industry and our families as
they continue to pay that ultimate price, because
we have got a bunch of CEO’s who haven’t got
the ability to think outside the narrow little
world they live in.”

He said the industry is facing the current
recession the way it traditionally has, with
more layoffs, more mill closures and “more
communities going down the toilet.”

He said the union is going to work with its
counterparts in the United States (the
International Association of Machinists) to find
a solution.

“We're going to find a solution that benefits
our members, our members’ families and our
children, because we haven’t got any other
choice. The alternative is unemployment and
desolation.” said Haggard.

He said the union has faced tough times
before and that it will get through these times.

“Next year we celebrate 65 years of our
history. We must use that as a stepping stone
to the future, because I know and I believe that
whether you live in Duncan and have worked
in the Youbou (mill) or in a mill in northern
Ontario, that unemployment is not an
alternative that our union can accept — and
the boss taking advantage of our membership
cannot be accepted either.

Haggard said that governments in Ontario,
Alberta and now in B.C. are helping

tions.
In Gordon Campbell’s 90-day plan, he’s done
more than you would ever believe, and

bably (has) done more jobs in than Ralph
Klein has done in this province in the last 10

e National president Dave Haggard said the forest industry is facing the current recession by
laying off and closing operations and that other solutions can be found.

Lumber war leads crisis list

years,” said Haggard.

“As he (Campbell) cuts program after program
that benefitted working people, in particular
I.W.A. members, we continue to stand up to the
government of British Columbia and continue
to say that if you do something that makes
sense for working men and women in the forest
industry, we'll support you,” said Haggard.

“When you screw up, we want you to know
that we’re going to tell you. More importantly,
we're not only going to tell you, we’re going to
stand up and fight you every inch of the way,”
he said. “And when you try to implement
programs that are abusive to our membership
and our families, we will not accept it, we will
not stand for it, and we will not tolerate it,”
said the national president.

On the issue of negotiated partnerships,
Haggard said that some programs are having
problems. He said employers “can’t stand it”
when the union goes to the table to talk about
the future and growing the business instead of
cutting costs, raising production and cutting jobs.

“We're going to continue to struggle with our

partnership program and we're going to continue
to struggle with it on our terms, not the boss’s,”
he said. “To do anything else would be
unacceptable to the people we represent and I
think that would be an injustice to our
membership, and it would be unacceptable to
this union,” he said.

Brother Haggard noted that more workers
are joining the I.W.A. He said in northern B.C.
the union is aggressively organizing loggers
and truck drivers. Over 10,000 workers are
non-union in that part of the province. He
added that the “industry is screwing them just
as much as they’re screwing working men and
women in our union.”

He said that without the union’s tough
decision to pump money into organizing, “we
wouldn’t be where we are today.”

“Don’t matter what community you go into
across this country, the I.W.A.’s name is
becoming known and people are coming slowly
to our union. But they’re coming to our union,”
he said. 8

Delegates from Cranbrook Local 1-405 in southeastern B.C. were among unionists from 20 I.W.A.
locals across the country in attendance at this year’s convention.

LUMBERWORKER/DECEMBER 2001/7