Local 324 gears up to take on Tolko in Manitoba negs

When I.W.A. Local 324 heads into contract talks with Tolko Industries in Manitoba in early October it will be out to get a new collective agreement at the company’s sawmill complex in The Pas and some renewed and revitalized contract language as ney apply to woodlands harvesting and hauling crews and contract truckers.

A three- year collective agreement expires at the end of August, covering at total of more than 330 workers.

Local 824 president Terry Derhousoff says that workers are determined to get a fair deal and not give in to any concessions that the employer may demand.

Union members at the sawmill went through a layoff which started on March 11 and lasted until April 27. Markets and mill performance were given as reasons by the company.

“Our members have made this company very competitive and we think it’s time to sit down and negotiate a new contract that is fair to all parties,” said Brother Derhousoff. “We think that we can do that as long as the company comes to the table with an open and honest attitude.”

The union completed a survey of worker demands and a negotiating team of national second vice . Ree Harvey Arcand, national ™ fifth vice president Wilf McIntyre and local financial secretary Doug Northcott, will be joining with workers — former local union president Jim Anderson, plant chairman Tom Kirkness and steward Rick Ford and Norman MacKenzie.

Brother Arcand will be heading the negotiating committee and intends to see that Tolko bargains in good faith. He has been on I.W.A. negotiating teams across the table

mm the same company in B.C.

“Although they are a hard-nosed company, in the I.W.A. we have negotiated with them and we have come to collective agreements,” said

Arcand. “We expect to see the company bargain upright and not move the goal posts once issues have been dealt with and agreed-upon at the table.”

The plant which employs 300 I.W.A. members, currently operates on a 24/7 basis with rotating swing- shifts of four 12 hour days. It

roduces 1” and 2” dimensional umber up to 6” in width from 15” diameter logs.

Although there remains some uncertainty over future lumber markets due to the U.S. - Canada lumber tariff dispute, plant chair Kirkness said “we don’t want to hold (negotiations) for too long.”

He noted that business prospects must be good for the company since it is in the process of hiring new workers.

In the mill, Kirkness said the company has been more aggressive than its predecessor Repap and has been testing the limits of the collective agreement.

In the bush the union is out to stop Tolko from continuing its “double-breasting” by putting union bush workers right along side non- union contractors at inferior rates.

These company practices have resulted in I.W.A. contractors working shorter years.

Tolko is the single largest employer in the Manitoba forest industry, having purchased the assets of Repap in 1997.

It operates the sawmill in The Pas in conjunction with a giant pulp and paper mill in town.

The company has switched to a more intensive rail-haul strategy to eliminate log and chip hauling costs. It has numerous transfer points from truck to rail, dotting the northern landscape along the Hudson Bay Railway line.

Northcott says that the mills in The Pas now receive about 60% of their fibre by rail, up from 20% a few years ago — a move which has

resulted in significantly less work for haulers.

Be Sipe SS

ORGANIZING TRUCKERS

Since the union adopted its “Organizing and Growth Strategy” at the 1997 national convention, the union has been increasing its efforts at organizing workers in bush operations.

Tolko has a virtual stranglehold on what goes on in the Manitoba forest industry, where it goes on and when it goes on, said Brother Arcand, who has had numerous stints in the province since the spring and fall of 1999, when the I.W.A. got back on the ground organizing.

Arcand said that when the union began to organize, it ran into a patchwork of non-union and part- union contracts.

“Keeping the log and chip haulers completely union has been a logistical nightmare for the union,” said eoanne underlying the fact that in 1998, the local, agreed to exempt some contract log haulers from “Schedule A” of the collective agreement, which required that they be union.

“There was a feeling at the time that the local could not help-a group, such as the Northern Wood Haulers Association, because that association wasn’t 100 percent union in its operations.”

As time progressed Tolko continued to negotiate with dependent and small independent contractors, creating its own patchwork of varying rates and working conditions.

The independent contractors soon realized their collective clout was nil and the union took the tactic of negotiating agency agreements, providing a service for a fee, while they negotiated with Tolko.

It was a form of negotiating that has been successful in local unions a Local 1-425 in Williams Lake,

In the spring of 1999 the I.W.A. attempted to get an agreement from Tolko to negotiate in good faith with a number of trucking contractors under an agency bargaining

° The L.W.A. is getting set to represent crews in bush operations as part of major contract talks.

arrangement. By the summer of that year it applied for application of

certification of the contractors.

But after speaking with Tolko, the union pulled its certification from the Manitoba Labour Relations Board as the company agreed to bargain in good faith,

“One or two weeks later it was evident that Tolko had no intention of bargaining in good faith,” said Brother Arcand. “In fact as soon as they (Local 324) pulled certification, Tolko mtanteds meeting with individual contractors to get contracts with some at the expense of others.”

Arcand said that Tolko awards some viable contracts to some contractors to guarantee its basic wood supply and “tightens the screws on everybody else.”

“That’s exactly what they were doing,” he said.

The union’s response was to apply for union certification of the entire Northern Wood Haulers Association (NWHA), a group of 25 truckers. It then took about two years to get certification through at the board for only two of 25 truckers.

Frustrating by slow wheels of justice at the board, the local applied to have a mediator brought in.

By the fall of 2000 the local got an interim agreement for haulin, under an hourly arrangement aa an agreement to haul from Moose Lake Logging, a dependent contractor in the Moose Lake area.

The union has worked with both the Moose Lake crew and the NWHA to allow both sides to survive.

“We have just reached a settle- ment with Moose Lake and the crew (five logging contractors covering 37 workers) is back working for union rates and now we have to work on retroactive issues,” said Arcand. “The Moose Lake crew has stuck together. There’s a lot of solidarity there and they have been very supportive.”

cand said the I.W.A. wants to

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