PHOTO BY NORMAN GARCIA

= Anindustrial strategy is needed.

CLC calls for industrial strategy
to combat unemployment
The Canadian Labour Congress’ top
labour leadership will get together
in the fall of 2004 to develop and
discuss a national industrial strategy
based on the jobs and quality of life
for Canadian workers. Despite a
December 2003 hike in job numbers,
with 53,000 new jobs (mostly full-
time employment) the CLC is still
concerned about what's not happen-
ing. “The overall job numbers hide
some serious and worrying weak-
nesses in our economy,” says Ken
Georgetti, CLC president. “A jobs
policy. That's what's missing in this
country. At first glance the job cre-
ation statistics for 2003 look good,
however the setbacks in the manu-
facturing and the overall increase in
youth unemployment, call for a
country-wide proactive commitment
to employment that we are not get-
ting from the federal government,
neither from most of the provincial

governments.”

Stats Canada numbers show the

December 2003 official unemploy-
ment numbers dropped to 7.4 per-

cent, down by 0.1 per cent from a
month earlier. There were, seasonal-
ly-adjusted, about 1,266,800 workers
looking for work during that month.
The IWA is concerned about the
effect of the rapidly rising dollar on
employment in the forest sector,
which has seen a decline in job lev-
els. In addition to U.S. softwood
lumber tariffs, in the past year, the
Canadian dollar has seen a 21 per
cent rise, making our lumber
exports more costly to export.

7 MIYIWSTWAYARAVANAVAVAVANAT "AVAYAVANA

PHOTO BY DEAN LOTT - IWA LOCAL 1-207

= The abandoned empty log yards outside the Weyerhaeuser sawmill in Grande Cache tells part of the story.

A big effort to save their jobs

Local 1-207 members at Grande Cache join with others

JUST AS SOON AS Weyerhaeuser
announced, last November 4, that it
would permanently close its Grande
Cache sawmill, IWA members started
looking for solutions to save jobs.
Local 1-207 president Mike Pisak
demanded the province take back
Weyerhaeuser’s timber and look for
potential operators to keep the mill
going. National IWA president Dave
Haggard, pointed out that governments
have obligations to communities to
ensure jobs are created from forests.

One hundred and thirty-three IWA
members were affected when the
company closed the mill in early
February. “This closure is devastating
for workers, their families and the
community,” says Brother Pisak.
“Our members and local have reached
out to all players, including govern-
ment, the company, the town of
Grande Cache, First Nations, logging
contractors, economic development
bodies and other stakeholders.

Kevin Gramm, the IWA’s plant
chair, says citizens of Grande Cache

are interested in purchasing the mill
from Weyco, or replacing it with a
multistakeholder business develop-
ment plan that is community-based.
“So far we have met with key provin-
cial officials (including Minister of
Economic Development Mark Norris,
Minister of Sustainable Resource
Development Mike Cardinal, Minister
of Municipal Affairs Guy Boutilier,
and Minister of Human Resources
and Employment Chris Dunford) and
other stakeholders to address issues
around the. Forest Management
Agreement and seek government
assistance in helping the parties save
jobs in Grande Cache.” The Canadian
Workers Cooperative Foundation,
which has an office in Calgary, has
also been contacted for advice.

Under its FMA with the province,
Weyco can stop harvesting for a 15
month period. In that time, as has
happened already, workers can leave
the community. To make things more
difficult, Brother Gramm points out
that, under Canadian Customs and

Revenue guidelines, workers are hav-
ing their severance pay, holiday pay,
and relocation/retraining allowance
used and taxed before they can get EI.
Gramm says the FMA’s 200,000
cubic meters could easily fuel two value-
added operations, but fears Weyco likely
intends to ship the wood to its Drayton
Valley or Grand Prairie operations in
search of “supermill” production.
Grande Cache Deputy Mayor
Louise Krewusik says there has been
continued support from the Ministry
of Sustainable Resources, which has
gathered information on the resource
and what kind of industry it could sup-
port, and Ministry of Economic
Development, which is putting up
funds for a feasibility study to present
to Weyco. Ms. Krewusik says that on
January 29 Weyco told a “Citizens
Action Committee” that the company
intends to have the timber supply sup-
port the community. The same com-
mittee visited community forest opera-
tions in Revelstoke, Lumby and
Golden, B.C. to study possible options.

BIGGER IS BETTER is the Canadian wood indus-
ty's response to intense global competition. Mergers
and bigger mills indicate that companies are consoli-
dating as competition intensifies. They believe the
Strategy that has so far allowed Canadian producers to
survive U.S. - imposed lumber tariff and duties and

ABOUT THE ECONOMY
BY KIM POLLOCK

offset the impact of a higher-priced dollar. :
In February, for instance, Canfor Corporation
‘opened its new supermill at Houston, B.C. It will
ce 600 million board feet a year — by far the
orld's largest sawmill, producing dimension lum-
mainly for retailers like Home Depot. .
At the same time, Canfor plans to merge with
ocan Forest Products Ltd., creating the world's

SPF lumber producer and North America's
largest lumber firm. Others are consolidat-

ing and planning bigger mills. Weyerhaeuser, the
largest North American producer, is not denying
rumours that it will build another supermill at
Kamloops. 2

Meanwhile, Riverside Forest Products has
announced that it will buy Lignum Ltd. A proposed
merger between Domtar and Tembec was later
rejected, although Tembec has purchased a former
Weyerhaeuser mill in Chapleau, Ontario and former
Nexfor mills in La Sarre and Senneterre, Quebec.

This series of events is no accident. We'll get more
giant mills and bigger companies as industry strug-
gles with monumental changes worldwide.

Russia and other former Soviet-bloc countries are
rapidly expanding, for instance. Thirty-four new
sawmills have been built or are planned in Russia
and the Baltic since 2002, adding a potential 4 bil-
lion board feet. Although much of this is likely to be
sold into the burgeoning Chinese market, lots is
already hitting the U.S. market.

From 1996 to 2002, European U.S. sales went
from virtually nil to 350 million board feet as
European producers took advantage of the tariff on

‘Bigger is better’ is industry’s response to competition

Canadian lumber, higher U.S. dollar and surging
home construction. That might slow down with U.S.
devaluation, a factor that also hurts Canada. But
from 1996 - 2002, U.S. imports from New Zealand,
Chile, Brazil and other southern producers went
from under 100 million board feet to over 900 mil-
lion and many of those currencies are not rising
against the U.S dollar.

So with Canadian firms facing serious competi-
tion in the U.S., which takes over three-quarters of
our forest products exports, their answer is to get
bigger — a double-edged sword for Canadian work-
ers. We retain our competitive edge but at the cost of
lost jobs in primary sawmills.

In this environment, it is essential that govern-
ments stand up for communities and workers by
ensuring that merging firms make it clear that they
will diversify, find new markets and retrain workers
to create new jobs. Otherwise, companies are pro-
tecting their own bottom lines at the expense of
working people.

Kim Pollock is the WA's Director of Public Policy and Environment

MARCH 2004 THE ALLIED WORKER L 15