’

February 27, 1989
50°

Vol. 52, No. 7

Fighting free trade: CSE forum

— page 3

Just
‘a Wie beds fe SS.

\N
STAKE Of cb Ast

Vedue Villaced

= atl.

; of Value Village maintain picket line outside store in a bid to win a first contract
ren prides ioe Saad Beer levels. Strikers, members of the General Workers Union of B.C., Local 1,
Say working conditions are dismal, and charge that management harasses employees and pays different wages for the
same work. The strikers also criticized a local TV news report that indicated the workers were striking against a charitable
Organization. They point out that Value Village is a U.S.-owned multinational that pays extremely low rates for clothing and

epee items gathered by charity groups. See Labour Notes page 12.

Cancel layoffs,
launch forests —
probe, says IWA

TWA-Canada president Jack Munro, ina
letter to Premier Bill Vander Zalm Monday,
called on the provincial government to
demand that Fletcher-Challenge Canada
retract its layoff of 425 workers and launch
an independent investigation into the oper-
ations of the company as they affect IWA
members.

Munro’s demand, the latest round in a
mounting protest against the forest multi-
national’s layoff plans announced Friday,
was given new urgency Tuesday by revela-
tions that the forest ministry knew of the

T impending cutbacks
three months ago
and had, in fact,
allowed the com-
pany to renege on its
earlier assurances.

And workers on
Vancouver Island,
{where most of the
cutbacks will take
place, were organiz-

fis ing this week to
MUNRO mount a campaign
to compel the company to maintain opera-
tions without reductions in the work force.

“We've taken the position right from the
beginning that there should be no layoffs at
all,” said Lyn Kistner, camp chair at
Fletcher Challenge Canada’s Renfrew log-
ging division where the crew of 214 is slated
to be cut by at least one-third.

FCC, created in September 1988 by a
merger of B.C. Forest Products and Crown
Forest Products, both of which were taken
over by New-Zealand-based Fletcher-
Challenge, announced its plans Feb. 17 to
cut 425 jobs from its payroll. It cited a
shortage of timber and claimed that the cuts
were necessary “to bring its manufacturing
capacity in line with its long term sustaina-
ble timber supply.”

The company intends to close the Victo-
ria Plywood plant on Gorge Road in Victo-
ria and cut back operations at its Tilbury
and Youbou mills as well as the Renfrew
and Caycuse logging divisions.

see ISLAND page 12