The following comprehensive brief on the Con-
tractor Clause in Tree Farm Licences was presented
to the B.C. Legislature’s Standing Committee on
Forestry by the IWA March 13.

Mr. Chairman and Honourable Members:

We wish to express our appreciation for the
opportunity to state our views on this matter. We
regret that, due to the pressure of negotiations,
our brief is not as comprehensive as we wanted.
We hope we will have an opportunity to supple-
ment it orally. 2

To our knowledge, all of the briefs that have
been presented to this committee have represented
the interests of forest industry companies, large
or small. This brief is on behalf of the 38,000 or so
IWA members who make their living at jobs in
the province’s forest industry.

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Ee ee ee” ee a ee

CONTRACTORS |

Our position on the matter of the “contractor’s
clause” has been poorly understood and misrepre-
sented to this committee. For example, the Truck
Logger’s Association has stated that our position
is “against independent business”. We want to
make it clear to this committee that the IWA is
not “against” either big or small business, inde-
pendent or dependent business. We represent men
and women who work in the forest industry. So
long as those people receive equal wages, working
conditions and job security, it does not matter to
us whether they receive them from big, small or
medium sized businesses.

We are concerned that the application of the

‘contractor’s clause in Tree Farm Licences has
operated to the detriment of our members and
that, should recommendations made to this com-
mittee be implemented, the detriment will greatly
increase.

We present only three instances of the great
many that have been brought to our attention:

(a) A long-time member of the IWA has been
working for a large B.C. forest industry company
for fifteen years. He is employed at logging in
shows that are within commuting distances of a
major interior centre.

The company has timber holdings in the area,
and on the strength of company predictions that
there was at least 15 years’ logging left (plus his
confidence in the seniority section of the agree-
ment between the employees and the company),
the man decided to buy a home for himself and
his family of six. He has now been advised by his
employer that the logging near his home is to be
done by a contractor, that if he wants to remain
employed by the company he will have to accept
a transfer to a very small interior town some dis-
tance away, and that the seniority clause in the
agreement which covers the. terms of his employ-
ment, a clause for which he and his fellows
struggled for years, is of no help to him.

& pares

We want to emphasize that in this process of
dislocation, the contractor — with assets of several
hundred thousand dollars — finds substantial sup-
port and protection from the tenure policy of the
B.C. government, but the man who depends upon
the forest industry for his daily wage finds no
protection whatever from that source.

(b) A major B.C. forest industry company sub-
contracted for many years a major portion of the
log haul from one of its largest logging shows.
Then suddenly (apparently with about one week’s
notice) the licencee decided to undertake the log
haul by itself, and to transfer the contractor to
an operation over a hundred miles away.

We want to emphasize two aspects of this case:
(1) The proposal made to this committee that con-

tracts be of a longer duration would only re-

duce the frequency of exposure to this kind
of sudden uprooting,

(2) Our concern here is for employees of the con-
tractor. Allegations made to this committee
that we have no interest in these employees,
or that we want to create “two classes of em-
ployees” are absurd, and this committee’s
time should not be wasted with them.

(c) We appreciate that events in the manufac-
turing sector do not lie within the terms of refer-
ence of this committee, but we want to point out
that similar problems arise in all sectors.

THE WESTERN CANADIAN LUMBER WORKER

__ IWA FORESTRY BRIEF

In one instance, a chip hauling contract was
taken over by a subsidiary of the CPR. Our efforts

to ensure that the employees of the original com-~

pany retained their seniority rights, against the
initial objection of the CPR, should not be con-
strued as evidence of “being against independent
business”,

To illustrate that these examples are neither
isolated or accidental, we quote from a Truck
Logger (January, 1969) article by Vern Wellburn,
then Woods Manager with Tahsis now with UBC’s
Forestry faculty:

“There is also a danger in such contracting that
labour unrest may develop because of rivalries or
problems of seniority between crews.”

We outlined our views on this matter to a sub-
committee appointed by the Minister to look into
this matter.

We stated at that time our understanding of the
purpose of the TFL type of tenure: the guaran-
teeing of a long-term supply of timber and, there-
by, permanency of employment for loggers and
wood-processing plant employees.

We agree with the premise of this argument —
that the generation of as much secure employment
as possible is a paramount consideration in devis-
ing forms of tenure and related public policies.

Insofar as the stated objective of the contrac-
tor’s clause (the guarantee of a place for inde-
pendent business men in B.C. forests) is consistent
with that prior and more important obligation, we
support it. .

We have supported it in the past, when some
positions were different. We quote from a sub-
mission of the “Independent Squamish Logging
Operators Limited” made to this committee in 1963
(p. 2):

“In the case of the contract in Tree-Farm Li-
cences we feel that when the 30% or 50% clause
was put in the contract and the words “stump to
dump” used, we feel that they mean exactly stump
to dump.”

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“Some Tree Farm Licencees contract their
logging out in the manner in which we claim it
should be, i.e., from the stump to the dump. We
commend these. Others, however, are contracting
the logging out piecemeal, i.e., falling or bucking,
road building, or yarding or hauling, or any one
or combination of these various stages of logging.
This latter interpretation of the 30-50% clause is
working to the serious detriment of the independ-
ent logging operator, reducing him from the cate-
gory of a skilled integrated unit to that of a mere
‘share-cropper’.

“While we recognize the practical necessity,
under certain circumstances, of minor adjustments
from time to time to certain phases of ‘stump to
dump’ logging, nevertheless it is our firm belief
that it is essential, not only to the healthy being
of the forest industry of British Columbia, but to
the economy of the Province as a whole, that log-
ging, i.e., ‘stump to dump logging’ should remain
a thriving and separate industry . . . not just a
minor adjunct to a pulp or plywood mill (Sloan
Report of 1956, Vol. 1, p. 463).”

In agreeing with the previous positions of these
organizations, we have the following considerations
in mind:

The purpose of the clause is to preserve a place
for independent business. But we do not believe
that a man whose total equipment is a chain saw,
or for that matter, a man with a normal equity in
a single piece of equipment, is, in any significant
sense of the word, independent. In fact, we be-
lieve that the relationship that exists between such
a man and the party that has let the work to him
is a more dependent one than that which exists
between the largest forest industry company and
a wage-earner.

MacMILLAN BLOEDEL

It is not at all self-evident to us that legislative
measures should be taken to preserve a place in
the forests for such “firms” as these. MacMillan
Bloedel has testified before this committee that
they can log more cheaply by doing it themselves
than by letting the work to such contractors. What
prompts them to use contractors in spite of that

we do not know, since willingness to spend mo:
money than necessary is an inclination which
have not yet encountered in this industry.
What we do know is that such companies
quently fail for lack of capitalization, to the g: 4
injury of their employees. For example, in one.
Local Union, in a two-month period, three com.
panies failed, leaving approximately 100 people
jobless. *
We know that the clause induces a EP ms
of contractors and sub-contractors which is a ee
In the Horne Lake area, a contractor is supposedly _
cutting timber owned by Scott Paper Company,
The contractor has employed up to 20 sub-contrac.
tors and there is usually around 60 men employed. —
Because no single ‘company’ employs 15 men, —
there is no First Aid man and no ambulance.

JORDAN MEADOW

In the Jordan Meadow area there is a bewilder-
ing array of sub-contractors cutting timber owned
by Pacific Logging, B.C. Forest Products, Domans,
etc. Once again, there is no First Aid man, and no
ambulance. The Compensation Board has affirmed
that in such a situation, no one has the responsi-
bility to provide these services in what is far and
away B.C.’s most dangerous industry. We add that
when we propose to a new contractor that he as-
sume the seniority list of the old contractor, we
are often told that, e.g. “my cost estimates did not
provide for three weeks’ vacation.” We can only
draw similar conclusions about such things as the
absence of ambulances. .

Representing wage-earners in this industry is
not a simple task: The reduction of labour costs is
the prime target of management efforts to maxi-
mize profits, since most other costs are beyond
their control. Providing a counterbalance to ensure
the protection of the interests of the wage-earners
involves certification and negotiating procedures,
among other things. The laws regulating these
procedures assume some stability. They assume,
for example, that after the many weeks of delay
and thousands of dollars of expenses involved in
getting a certification, the company will remain
for long enough to effect the negotiations of a con-
tract. This stability does not prevail among the con-
tractors and sub-contractors in the logging indus-
try, and protection of the wage-earner employed
by them is becoming virtually impossible.

We believe that the matter of ensuring stable
employment should be a vital consideration in
awarding the right to cut large tracts of public
timber. We believe that that provides the essential
justification for the very existence of TFL/’s.

GIANT FIRMS

The current policy provides security for giant
firms and for “independents”, but none for ordin-
ary working people. When we appeared before
the sub-committee previously mentioned, we urged
that the clause be restricted to “stump-to-dump”
contractors, and that, where the licencee normally
does work of the kind sub-let under a collective
agreement with a Trade Union, the contractor be
the inheritor of the collective agreement.

We repeat these recommendations now, and we
emphasize that we do so because we are convinced

that an imbalance exists in present legislation and —
practice. |

FULL SHARE

The Truck Logger of May-June 1970, p. 10, —
says it better than we can “. .. What we have got
(in the guidelines) is improved opportunity to har-
vest the full share of Crown timber allocated to
contractors by government policy and increased
responsibility to provide efficient, effective service
to our employers in the TFLs.” There is no men-
tion of employees in the clause, the guidelines, or —
the public commentary upon them. ”

All of which is respectfully submitted.

J. A. MOORE, President,
On behalf of
REGIONAL COUNCIL No. i

International Woodworkers of
America.