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FOREST AND ENVIRONMENT

Move to value-added needed says WA

National president Dave Haggard addresses Truck Loggers’ annual

CUTTING COSTS AND BOOSTING
productivity won’t rebuild the B.C.
coastal industry, says the IWA.
There has to be a clear move into
developing, producing and market-
ing new products, if workers and
communities are to survive and
thrive in the years ahead.

At this year’s Truck Loggers
Association annual convention held in
Vancouver in early January, IWA
national president Dave Haggard
joined a panel to report on progress
within the past year. Other members
of the panel were Deputy Minister of
Forests Lee Doney, TimberWest CEO
Paul McElligot, Port McNeill mayor
Gerry Furey and TLA president Rob
Wood,

Brother Haggard said that
progress has been slow and that the
industry has to invest in new facilities

to new products and reduce its depen-
decy on dimension lumber markets.
With unemployment rising in com-
munities, all sides have to make
changes “if we believe in this country
and this province” added Haggard.
“The opportunities (to sell into China,
the U.S., Europe and elsewhere) are
endless if we can only grab them.”
Haggard said that more change is
inevidable and that, in some areas, the
union has worked creatively to turn
over three logging divisions to contrac-
tor crews, resulting in significant cost
savings and protection of the IWA bar-
gaining units. He said that change, if
done properly, isn’t always bad as long
as it is done working with the union
and its membership. He added that
“the challenge is to control change for
the betterment of all of us (license
holders, contractors and workers).”

PHOTO BY NORMAN GARCIA

= National IWA president Dave Haggard at Truck Loggers convention.

& Manitoba’s forests cover some 26.3 million hectares. The IWA is concerned about utilization standards in the bush.

PHOTOS BY NORMAN GARCIA

As far as the eye can see

Manitoba local concerned about maintaining timber supplies

MUCH OF THE PRAIRIE province
of Manitoba has forests and lakes for
as far as the eye can see. Overall, there
are about 26.3 million hectares of
forests in a province that covers a 54.8
million hectare base.

Even though, during many years,
some forest companies have harvested
less than their annual cut, there are con-
cerns over future timber supplies that
will employ IWA members. For Local
324 members employed at the Tolko
Industries sawmill and planer in The Pas
(the company also operates a large kraft
pulp and paper mill complex certified to
the CEP), wood supply issues are front
and centre.

“The wood fibre we have has provided
generations of workers with the ability to
earn a decent living,” says local union
business agent Chris T. Parlow. “Access
to viable timber stands is just important
today as it always has been.”

The province is broken down into

three giant Forest
Management
parc sein: cre:
Agreements, 185
Timber Sale
Agreements and
2,928 smaller tim-
ber penmits. The
FMLA’s are
renewable after 20
years as harvest
levels are monitored over a 5 year period.

“In recent years, Tolko has tried to
reduce its utilization standards to leave
behind smaller diameter wood,” says
Parlow. “That’s a concem for everyone —
from bushworkers to haulers, to mill-
workers.”

After purchasing the mill in The Pas
from RePap in 1997, Tolko has ploughed
nearly $90 million into the mill to make
it more efficient. That will necesitate
using much smaller diameter logs —
mostly white spruce which is the domi-

Chris T. Parlow

nant species in Manitoba, stretching from
the the south to the northern borders.

The mill in The Pas consumes some
800,000 cubic meters of wood, on two
shifts a day, on an annual basis, employ-
ing over 300 IWA members. Tolko has
company and contractor operations in
the Cranberry Flin-Flon region, the
Moose Lake region (where the IWA
works with First Nations bushworkers),
the Thompson-Wabowden region
(Nelson River) and the Swan River area
south of The Pas.

Local union president Judy Anderson
operates a log forwarder out of
Wawbowden for Tolko. “All of us are
concerned over what the future will
bring,” she says. “We have to work hard
to increase efficiencies and utlization
standards.” Most of the province’s forests
remain in remote, northern regions,
where roads have not yet been built.
“Those areas must be harvested sustain-

ably in the future,” she says.

North Thompson community
holds town hall on forestry
On February 7, angry citizens in the
North Thompson community of
Barriere expressed their frustrations
over the B.C. Liberals’ refusal to take
action to save forest industry jobs in
the community. Following the devas-
tating forest fires of last summer,
Tolko refused to rebuild its sawmill in
Louis Creek. Workers, their families
and community members, including
businesses, now watch truck after
truck of logs go by with no commit-
ment to create jobs in the community.
The town hall, coordinated by the
Barriere-based “Heartlands
Community Resource Alliance”
protested changes to forest policy
which allow companies like Tolko to
by-pass a community they were once
tied to and swap timber with
Weyerhaeuser, which shut down a
sawmill in
Vavenby last year.
“There's a lot of
support in this
community to put
more pressure on
the government
and companies to
. link timber to

Warren Oja jobs, " says IWA
Local 1-417 First Vice President
Warren Oja. “The effects of Liberal
forest policy are hitting us hard
already and it’s going to spread to
other communities in the Interior and
on the Coast.”

Brother Oja says that people are
asking simple questions like “is the
government going to give everything
away to the corporations to do as
they see fit?” A prime case in point is
Tolko, owned privately by the
Thorlekson family. “The goverment
says if they let the Tolkos of the world
operate as they please, there will be a
trickle down economic effects. But
we're not seeing benefits. We're see-
ing communities abandoned where
there were once legal commitments
to keep the companies in check.”

16 | THE ALLIED WORKER MARCH 2004