12 THE WESTERN CANADIAN LUMBER WORKER October, 1966 1st Issue 1-367 IWA The 1966 Annual meeting of Local 1-367 was held in the Legion auditorium at Mission on Sept. 24. A large membership turn- out paid special attention to * ORGANIZATION “Once again, considerable effort has been devoted to or- anizing the unorganized woodworkers within the jur- isdiction of this local union. Six more operations were or- ganized since the last annual meeting, bringing to 12 the number of newly organized operations over the past two years, with a total member- ship of approximately 300. The following operations were organized during the past year: Pretty’s Ltd., Bear Creek, on Harrison Lake, presently employing about 25 members, This company strenuously re- sisted our efforts to organize their operation, calling crew meetings where they tried to persuade the men to abandon the union idea, in exchange for company paternalism. However, all their pleadings fell on deaf ears. Pretty’s Ltd., 20-mile, on Harrison Lake, presently em- ploying about 45 members. We had very little trouble or- ganizing this camp. By this time, the company must have realized that there was no point in trying to resist it, so they let us use the cookhouse for our meeting. We explain- ed the advantages of belong- - River, ANNUAL MEETING the local union officers’ report and the addresses by guest speakers International Presi- dent A. Hartung, Regional President Jack Moore, and M. * ing to the IWA aod signed up inrity xi ft: *histieband Shingle on Pitt presently employing about 10 members. Several previous attempts had been made to organize this opera- tion, but without success. Fin- GLENN HADDRELL ally, when the crew had some difficulty with their employer, they knew where to come with their problems. ‘DME WESTERN CANADIAN LU BER ™ WORKER Published twice monthly as the official publication of the <=? INTERNATIONAL WOODWORKERS OF AMERICA, Western Canadian Regional Council No. 1. Affiliated with AFL-CIO-CLC 2859 Commercial Drive, Vancouver, B.C. Phone 874-5261 Seer sea Sa fata eteier anise cinDiemenssiteetnvcinse-—Wevévencer-nise-eras.--. Pat Kerr Mae < ...._ Fred Fieber epreeentiative oo GA, Spencer Forwarded to member of the IWA in Western Canada in accordance with decisions. Subscription rate for non-members Class Mail, Post Office Department, Ottawa, : as Second - and for payment of postage in 27,500 copies printed in this issue. Corbeil, regional third vice- president. Following is the text of the officers’ report as: delivered by local union President Glenn Haddrell: * Sauder Industries, Abbots- fard —nracantls:—amniayving about 50 members. This is one of the secondary wood- working industries, a field in which the IWA has not done very much organizing. The members in this factory man- ufacture the well-known Pier- son and Cedarline windows, and Dueck prefabricated homes. National Engineered Struc- tures, Abbotsford, presently employing about 10 members. This is a small company with a large name, also in the sec- ondary woodworking indus- try, manufacturing prefabri- cated homes. Bowman’s Logging, Chilli- wack, presently employing about 20 members. This is the logging division of the saw- mill which was organized about three years ago, after a three-month strike. Every man of the crew signed up and there was no danger of the company allowing a strike ‘this time. A great deal of time and effort was spent in trying to organize at least as many other operations, but without success so far. We will keep working on them, in the hope of eventually getting them in- to the ranks of the organized woodworkers. We are grateful to Brother Mike Sekora, one of the re- gional organizers, for his most valuable assistance to this lo- cal union in our organizing activities over the past year, ARBITRATION Grievances continue to come to our attention in a seemingly endless flow. Dur- ing the past year we took three of them to the concilia- tion officer stage, under the provisions of Section 22 (4) of the Labour Relations Act. Two of these were settled in our favor, with back-pay of $700 and $250. We fought two more arbi- tration cases, and again we were successful in both of them. However, they were both long, drawn-out battles, _and very expensive. These arbitration cases im- pose an extremely heavy drain on time, energy and money. On one of them the decision was originally against us; but the decision was so obviously fraudulent that we appealed it to the B.C. Supreme Court, and we won our argument there. The member was re-instated on his job, at a cost to this local union of more than $1,700. The other arbitration case resulted in the member get- ting $800 in back-pay, for be- ing fired without proper cause. The company and For- est Industrial Kelations used every tactic they could think of, in an effort to avoid pay- ment. We finally had to threaten to take them to court, to enforce the decision of the arbitration board. This case cost your local union much more than the $800 the member received in back-pay. The companies are well aware of the heavy financial burden they impose upon us, when they make us take a grievance to arbitration. Un- fortunately, our only other choice would be to abandon a member’s legitimate griev- ance, simply because it might cost us a lot of money to win it for him. NEGOTIATIONS — Of particular interest to this local union was the strike of the loggers at Canadian Forest Products, which re- sulted in the relocation of the marshalling point and sum- mer vacations for those who want them. These members had been tighting for those conditions for several years. The long and bitter nego- tiations this year, ending with the Nemetz report during a highly confused strike situa- tion, resulted in the best settlement in the history of the IWA, Your officers were the only ones to voice objection to the Nemetz report, and for this we make no apologies. We realized that it was the best settlement ever, that our re- gional negotiating committee did a fine job and that our membership would most like- ly accept it; but we certainly do not regret being the voice of dissent. Especially after the Finan- cial Post gloating about how “Money Grows on B.C. Trees’, in an article about how much lovely profit the forest industry was making, we thought our members should be entitled to pick off a little more of it than they ~ had been accustomed to. Especially also, since it is claimed that the cost of liv- ing has risen by five percent in the past year, we thought this would substantially di- minish the 20c increase, For example, if you were getting $2.50 per hour last year, you would now be earn- ing $2.70 per hour. In the meantime, a five percent in- crease in the cost of living has affected the $2.70, reduc. ing its purchasing power to $2.57. This gives you a net gain in purchasing power of 7c per hour, or 56c per day. If you think our estimates are incorrect, just ask your wives how much the cost of grocer- ies has risen in the past year. So we need make no apolo- gies whatever for reminding our members that everything was not going to turn out like honey and roses as a result of the Nemetz report. If our actions as the “dis- senting officers” only served to remind -our membership that their union functions 12 months of every year, and not just for two weeks every two years at contract-voting time, and that they should therefor participate in their union’s activities much more often than has been their custom; then we will have performed a very useful service indeed. ART COREY, long-time financial secretary of Local 1-367, was de- feated during nominations. 7S Ai NOMINATIONS The meeting elected the fol- lowing members to the ballot- ‘ing committee: J. Hagerty, T. Grant, M. Croply, B. Smith, A. Beyer and J. Terris. W. Buker was successful in his bid for local union safe- ty director while J. Allison was elected as the additional delegate to regional safety conferences. J. Mack; Recordin J. Theriault and and Dodd; Conductor: M. Condor and es ustee (six- year): C. Rowe Cormick and c. Mc- The meetin unani approved to om eae sea Ee “So Liz is sor e at band? I thought he oo eet fect. He always turned over ut she just found out h : hey fifteenth =. Paid on the