Esai ORE

No help for IWA in Noranda boardroom

By SEAN GRIFFIN

Nearly onein three members of
the International Woodworkers
is without a job in B.C. this week
—ithat’s the finding of the latest
survey conducted by Region 1.

The new unemployment figure
of 31 percent shows a grim up-
ward trend from an earlier survey
conducted by the union in

which showed 27 per-
cent ot the IWA members were
out of wark.

Some of the increase over that
month can be attributed to winter
conditions and the resulting shut-
down of the logging, but plywood
layoffs still account for a major
part of the unemployment. Some
39 percent of plywood workers
are jobless and just this week
Weldwood announced a two-
week closure of its big Kent
operation in Vancouver and a
month-long shutdown at the
100-Mile House mill.

Certainly the worsening job
picture in the industry should pro-
mpt the [WA to question the
position it took a month ago
when unemployment was con-
sidered to be already at its worst.
“*As I look at the market, I am
looking at an uptick in the U.S.
housing market by March at the
latest,’ union researcher Doug
Smyth said Dec. 8.

But there is little more reason
to anticipate recovery now than
there was in the final days of 1981

— as long as the federal budget ~

remains and the U.S. contines to

be the key market.
Virtually every indicator across

the country has pointed to the

federal budget as a major source
of continuing — and worsening
— unemployment. And in the
U.S., Federal Reserve Board
chairman, Paul Volcker, the
main architect of the Reagan ad-
ministration’s high interest rate

policy, just told a home builders’
convention Monday that they
could expect no relief — that high
interest rates would continue,
thus depressing even further the
U.S. housing market.

So long as these policies con-
tinue, the message is clear: if the
IWA hopes to ‘‘wait out”’ the cur-
rent recession, woodworkers
could be waiting for a long time.

That economic background
makes even more ominous the re-
cent comments by Noranda vice-
president Adam Zimmerman —
and the response given them by
IWA regional president Jack
Munro.

Zimmerman, the executive
vice-president of Noranda, which
has the controlling interest in
MacMillan-Bloedel, told the
truck loggers convention Jan 13
that the current structure of
union-management relations was
wrong and that there would have
to be change if the health of the
industry were to improve.

But the main burden of Zim-
merman’s address was unloaded
on the trade union movement.

He contrasted the role of

shareholders and unionized
workers, suggesting that if
shareholders acted like workers,
“they could demand. ruinous
dividends, ridiculous withdrawals
of capital and capricious in-
vestments.””

ANALYSIS.

He added, pointedly, that it

would not be unreasonable to
make unions subject to the Com-
petition Act which would
preclude industry-wide or na-
tional bargaining and substitute
plant by plant bargaining instead.
- Zimmerman knews-as did, un-
doubtedly most of his audience,
that putting trade unions under
the Competition Act — as has
been sought by the big fish com-
panies and the federal govern-
ment against the UFAWU —
would effectively emasculate col-
lective bargaining. Every
regional, provincial and national
collective agreement could be
open to challenge for ‘‘restraint
of trade,” and unions would be
forced to sign contracts on an
enterprise-by-enterprise basis,
enabling employers to play one
plant off against another.

Major unions organized on an
industry-wide basis would all be
faced with a legal cbeleoee to
their existence.

The Zimmerman address
signalled an intensified attack on
the trade union movement at a
time when employers sense a cer-

tain “‘softening- -up’ ’ as aresult of
the economic crisis.

That the IWA’s Munro should
accept the.call by Zimmerman to
meet to seek anew basis for labor-
management relations must have
raised some question, among
IWA members, particularly those
looking for some answers to their
immediate problems of
unemployment.

However favorably one might
want to read the Zimmerman
speech, there was still an anti-
union message. The Noranda ex-
ecutive wants to diminish the
economic power of unions by
stripping them of their main
strength, their industry-wide
organization, and reducing them
to mere plant committees which
can then sit down with the
employer to work out problems.

Zimmerman even suggested
that the policy of high interest’
rates — which has been the major
villain in the current industry
crisis — should be considered a
signal that ‘‘we have been too ex-
travagant.””

Unionists can agree with
Munro that ‘‘if people like Zim-
merman who are heavyweights in
the economy of Canada can’t get
the government to do something
to put protection in for workers
or allow workers to have mor-
tgage rates they can afford, then
Zimmerman shouldn’t take it out
on the workers, he should take it
out on the banks.”’

But the fact is that Noranda is
not going to do anything to
reverse the government’s high in-

terest rate policy. On the con- .

trary, Zimmerman himself is a
director of the Continental Bank}
which is profiting from the)
policy. W
What could compel the |
government to alter its policy is
the kind of action taken by the
Canadian Labor Congress Nov
21. There has been little follow-up
action since, but if there were
pressure to continue and expand
the compaign from leaders liké
Munro, whois an executive coun-
cil member of the CLC, it could
bring results.
Closer to home, mobilization
of the membership of the IWA
across the province has been)
sought by many locals. There
have been local actions,. par-"
ticularly on ~Vancouver. | Island
where industry unemployment
has had a devastating impact on
the local economy, but little
leadership and initiative has come
from the regional level.
As one IWA delegate to the j
B.C. Federation of Labor con-
vention last December put it:
“‘There has to be leadership to do
something about unemployment.
If we don’t get leadership, then)
we'll have to do it ourselves. And
we will — but it won’ tbeas effecs
tive.’

Leadership from the region is
level to organize the IWA to d
mand action from both Victo
and Ottawa could force a chang
in government policies. That ~
change certainly isn’t going to
come from the boardroom of
Noranda. . F

i

‘Fishermen told to finance own bonkruptc

Alarmed by the recommenda-
tions of the Pearse report, fishing
industry organizations are coming
together to hammer out a common
- position. The opening move in
_ what is expected to be a coast-wide
campaign was to be made this Fri-
day, Jan. 29, with the holding of a
mass meeting of fishermen in

Called on the initiative of the
United Fishermen and Allied
Workers Union, the meeting
follows wide discussion of the
report within the union itself and
talks between the union and
representatives of other industry
organizations. Among those com-
mitted to participation in the meet-
ing at Tribune press time were the

PPWC backs off raid

Continued from page 1
__TheCPU has already stated that
other mills, in Crofton, Powell
River and elsewhere will be shut
down by the union if M-B
disciplines workers for refusing to
handle the pulp until an agreement

is reached.

The dispute over the pulp has
dramatized the high unemploy-
ment in the Alberni Valley which
ionists fear will only get worse if

_ M-B1s able, as it has insisted, ‘‘to
hav the freedom to purchase

materials without restrictions.”

-Theunity of the CPU has been seen
as critical in preventing M-B from
taking work away from union

operations. :
In a letter to the Alberni Valley
Times, Jan. 20, CPU Local 686
_ vice-president Jack Mitchell em-
phasized that hundreds of TWA
members were unemployed
“because M-B is importing chips
2% from sources other than the Alber-
ni Valley.”

A statement issued by CPU
Locals 592 and 686 also noted that
ina vee tee 8, M-B had
acknowledged the union’s demand
was reasonable and agreeable but’

= PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JAN. 29, 1982—Page 8

changed its position in a-subse-
quent meeting two days later. .

The union has also noted that ex-
pansion at the CPU-certified
Finlay Forest Industry mill at
Mackenzie, which formerly sup-
plied Alberni Pulp, would enable
the company to resume supplies of
pulp after the contract with
Quesnel River runs out in 1983.

Despite that, however, M-B
refuses to give assurances to the
CPU, arguing that “‘labor restric-
tions ... are viewed by our
customers as a threat to reliable ser-
vice and supply.””

Meanwhile, the independent
Pulp, Paper and Woodworkers of
Canada _ has withdrawn its raid
against the CPU in Alberni. The
raiding campaign, launched by the
PPWC last week, came under
heavy criticism because it would

_ have undermined the CPU

at a time when unity was urgent.

In withdrawing, PPWC vice-
president Ross McDonald said that
for the union to interfere ‘would
have been to the detriment of those
_in the mill and that was not our in-
tention.

Vessel Owners Association and the
Pacific Trollers Association.

‘Although other industry
organizations don’t share our
union’s full opposition to the
report’s recommendations, all are
agreed that they need more time to

"assess the implications before they

define their position,’’ Bruce
Logan, chairman of the union’s
special committee said this week.

“The danger is, that federal
fisheries minister Romeo LeBlanc
already has announced his inten-
tion to implement some of the
recommendations as interim
measures.

“The disastrous effect of the
Davis Plan on the fishing industry
— except for the B.C. Packers
fishing monopoly — is generally
recognized. But (former federal
fisheries minister and now Social
Credit MLA for North Vancouver-
Seymour) Jack Davis told
fishermen he intended to force that
plan on them even if 99 percent of
them were against him.”’

Major recommendations made
by Dr. Peter Pearse, sitting as a one
man commission, were for imposi-
tion of royalties on catches to be
paid by fishermen, reduction of the
fishing fleet through a buy-back
scheme to be financed in part by the
royalties, and imposition of in-
dividual catch quotas in the
halibut, food herring and abalone

" fisheries this year.

Unlike Davis, who insisted that
the fishing licence should be Placed
on the vessel over the union’s
strenuous contention that it should

x

be on the man, Pearse proposed to
place the licence on the man, but to
make it transferable — again over
the union’s objection that it should

be non-transferable because ‘‘a-

transferable licence can only
perpetuate the cycle of speculation
. . the root of the current (fleet)
over-capacity.”’
Union leaders, who have oppos-

ed the recommendations from the:

outset, say it is the first time a com-
mission’s report has been based on
a predetermined government pol-
icy rather than the government
drawing its policy from the com-
mission’s recommendations, how-
ever they may be applied.

pe Les royalty is to be im-
plemented, it should be levied on
that section which profits most, the

processors. Fishermen barely make
a living from this industry, yet the

Weston and Marubeni empires
continue to expand. . .” says a
UFAWU leaflet.

. The long-term effect of
the (Pearse) report will be a a

RISUNE

large percentage of fishermen!
beallowed to go brokeas a basis® ;
‘fleet rationalization.’ In e 5
the federal government wants
finance our way into bankrupt

UFAWU secretary Geo
Hewison sees the recommel
tions as opening the way to furl
destruction of the environment!
decimation of salmon runs as!
farming by corporations repla
preservation and enhancemen It
wild runs. | 3

‘‘What happens to ©
fishermen?’’ he asks. ‘‘The
dustry already is under monoP
control and the extent-of that ©
trol is reflected in the recommer
tions. If those recomme
are implemented, it means i i
ing privatization of the industt)
the exclusion of more and m
working fishermen as bays 4
lets pass under private contro!
and the way is open for :
Hydro, mining and other big
terests to carry through their P
jects.””

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