Fight over assessments goes to council

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— page 2

= |Companies' log
| causing forest layoffs,
declare woodworkers

TRIBUNE PHOTO — DAN KEETON

SS

Preceded by a drummer and a festively attired

fourth annual event held on Remembrance "
Against Nuclear Arms call for an end to nuclear weapons testing,

who were grabbed by police and arreste
Court on Thursday. Story on the rally, P

Fighting back

age 3; on the suit, People and Issues, page 4.

on welfare cuts

— page 2

marcher, some 400 Vancouver Island residents move along the four-

i . : s testing base on Nanoose Bay, near Nanaimo, on Saturday. The
Bepinetre toad teatling tothe terrae Oe pa pee el from the Nanoose Conversion Campaign and Veterans
atarally outside the base. Meanwhile, three local activists
data Conservative Party political rally two weeks ago filed a suit in B.C. Supreme

November 21, 1988
50°

Vol. 51, No. 43

waste

Faced with growing job losses and mill
shutdowns, woodworkers on Vancouver
Island are organizing to go after forest
companies on their wasteful logging practi-
ces and to press the provincial government
to halt-log exports and to change its forest
management policy.

“The kind of waste we’ve seen and the log
exports have got to stop — as long as they
continue, our people will be losing their jobs
and the forests will be gone,” said Bill Rou-
tley, IWA-Canada Local 1-80 first vice-
president and a spokesperson for the
Woodworkers Survival Task Force.

The Task Force was set up last month by
loggers and sawmill workers in the Duncan
local after 1'WA-Canada members reported
“hundreds of truckloads of logs” left to rot
in the woods — at the same time as New
Zealand-based forest multinational Fletcher
Challenge Canada was laying off wood-
workers, claiming a shortage of wood in the
region.

The new concern about the industry’s
wasteful and damaging forestry practices
was also reflected last month in a statement
adopted by IWA-Canada Local 1-363 in
Courtenay which declared: “Our executive
board believes that the main problem facing
B.C. woodworkers is the lack of proper
forest management, not the responsible
environmental groups.”

Fletcher-Challenge Canada’s vice-presi-
dent for coast wood, Tom Neighbour,
acknowledged in a Vancouver Sun inter-
view Nov. 12 that the company’s Renfrew
Logging Division had the highest waste lev-
els ever for the company’s Vancouver
Island operations, adding that the B.C.
Forest Service would likely impose fines for
the waste.

The forest service did indeed levy a fine of

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