Unionized Forestry Workers Host Town Hall Meetings
Prince George, BC – No, the timing is no coincidence…
With three months until the provincial election, BC’s unionized forestry workers are banding together and inviting forest communities to join them in a series of town hall meetings to discuss, and address, the crisis in the BC forest industry.
"Absolutely (the timing is a factor)," says Steve Hunt, Western Director with the United Steelworkers. "We think the current government is really, really tired. We’re not making a political statement here though – I mean we make it just by showing up – but we’ve dealt with this government for 12 years and, again, their policies have not been very conducive to forest dependent communities."
Hunt points out the industry has lost 10-thousand workers in BC over the past decade – 100-thousand across the country – and 70 wood processing operations, while log exports have exploded. "Currently, this government doesn’t even know what stock it has in the forests of British Columbia," says the USW spokesperson. "So what we’re trying to do is suggest there is a better way to do forestry, there’s a better way to maintain our resources, and a better way to value add."
The USW, BC Government Employees Union, and Communication Energy and Paperworkers Union held the first of eight scheduled town hall meetings in Kelowna last night. There’s one in Kamloops this evening. The rest include:
- Feb 25 – 100 Mile House (100 Mile House Lodge and Conference Centre)
- Feb 26 – Williams Lake (Ramada Williams Lake, formerly Overlander)
- Feb 27 – Mackenzie (Mackenzie Recreation Centre)
- Feb 28 – Prince George (Coast Inn of the North)
- Mar 6 – Nanaimo (Coast Bastion Inn – tentative)
- Mar 7 – Courtenay/Comox (Westerly Hotel)
"What we’re doing here," says Hunt, "Is asking people to consider what’s gone on in the forest industry, connect the dots, and then come up with some really useful suggestions." He points to stumpage as a prime example, saying it should be paid at the ‘backdoor’ of the mill, instead of upfront – the more a log is processed here, the less you pay for the log. "If you ship a raw log, then maybe you should pay the current value of that log and the rest should go into a forestry fund to incent forestry."
Comments
What a joke, call it what it is, an NDP rally. “We are not making a political statement” BS this is all about politics. If you can’t be honest here how can you be during your political rally.
my thoughts exactly randy
Reality is that the forest industry has gone thru a transformation in the way it has to operate. Truth is that the forest workers in BC should be thanking the provincial government, the federal government AND the forest companies for the huge investments they have made to keep pace with all the challenges that have befallen the industry in the past 20 years. Were it not for these big investments, I doubt if half the companies we have now would be operating now and there would have been even MORE job losses. What we have now is an industry that has dramatically diversified its manufacturing, has become a world leader in technology, and expanded it’s markets to get out of the single (US) customer dependence. As far as the overseas log shipments, the unions know that those logs have to be put up for sale first here in BC. If there are no buyer, then they can ship offshore. So if the government stopped them from doing that…then guess what…they would be shutting down logging and trucking operations as well as the support businesses that serve that part of the forest industry. The forest industry is much bigger that the processing part and while no processing can be done to logs shipped offshore, that is no reason to shut down the logging and transport part of the industry. I continue to be amazed by the unions ongoing calls to shut down offshore shipments of the coast logging sector, when such a move would also shut down a few thousand high paying jobs in the logging and transport industry portion…not to speak of the equipment and allied companies who employ a few thousand people in the service sector…
So while the unions are blaming government, maybe they should start by calling out the NDP who caved to their environmentalist supporters and cancelled the proposed cut and burn program in Tweedsmuir park around 23 years ago when the Mountain Pine Beetle was discovered to be resisting historical ways of killing them. Latest anticipated damage total count….13 billion cubic metres….wonder if Harcourt, Clark & and anyone else who was responsible for that insane decision ever misses a nights sleep over the job losses they created for their union brothers and sisters…….
23 year old semantics.
“I continue to be amazed by the unions ongoing calls to shut down offshore shipments of the coast logging sector, when such a move would also shut down a few thousand high paying jobs in the logging and transport industry portion…”
Yes but logging and transportation are not generally union jobs so they dont care. They tried that a few years back and got run out of the bush ;)
“He points to stumpage as a prime example, saying it should be paid at the ‘backdoor’ of the mill, instead of upfront – the more a log is processed here, the less you pay for the log. “If you ship a raw log, then maybe you should pay the current value of that log and the rest should go into a forestry fund to incent forestry.”
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That would be unworkable, no matter whether it sounds attractive or not. Which, to me, it doesn’t,
Aside from that, the emphasis in regards to ‘value adding’ is still on the ‘job’, and not on the ‘income’. As if the two were one and the same. They are NOT.
We produce products, value added and otherwise, to serve a market for those products. A market that can return the costs of production, and, in the case of any ‘value added’, those ADDITIONAL costs and an ADDITIONAL profit.
Without that additional profit the money invested in any facilities needed to ‘value add’, money which will have to ultimately originate as bank loans, cannot be repaid.
The idea is not entirely without merit, however. In the case of raw log exports, a variable tax should be levied calculated on the difference between what processing that log into what it would likely be made into here would cost, IF there were a market for it as either some basic common lumber product or something more of a value-added specialty product (in regards to higher grade logs and species); and what it would cost to do the same thing in the country it’s being exported to.
And DISREGARDING any advantages gained by that country through differences in currency exchange rates, and furthermore, equating a comparable average COST of living THERE to the cost of OUR average standard of living here, were their workers there to live at the same average standard of living ours do here.
It is only then that we will get a truly level playing field in comparing ACTUAL processing costs between one country and another, and the ACTUAL rate of productivity per man-hour worked in each of them.
An hour’s labour is an hour’s labour, no matter whether it’s done by a British Columbian, an American, Japanese, Chinese, or any other nationality. And for anyone to say that it is somehow ‘cheaper’ to haul our resources half way around the world to be processed, and then haul the finished product, (most of it, at least, in many instances), that same distance or more back again to be sold, is no more than an example of an exercise in creative accounting.
Well boys,the present government has no concept of what the future brings to those in the Industry. if you dont look after the farm what happens? you go broke and shut down.Today everything is built on guess work, our forest and communitys are in big trouble, modern mills cant grow trees.Even Industry is looking for directon after the Libs gave them all the control in 2001, they screwed everything up layed off all their foresters and planners as did Government. Its a mess and anyone with one eye open can see it.
“the industry has lost 10-thousand workers in BC over the past decade – 100-thousand across the country”
Since BCâs forest products are worth several times more than 10% of the Canadian forest products, it seems we have done very well in retaining forest workers.
Of course, it could also be partly a sign that other areas of the country have become more productive than they were before.
No different then the proffessional organizations that we have today like the Chamber of Commerce aleast they are not living, off tax dollars.
Cheers
So, had another party been in power we would not have had a housing meltdown in the USA … nor a MPB epidemic ….
I think we have managed to come through the last few years much better than Ontario and Quebec who are our only real competitors when it comes to the shear volume of the forest based industries.
It states that “the industry has lost 10-thousand workers in BC over the past decade – 100-thousand across the country”
Since BCâs forest products are worth several times more than 10% of the Canadian forest products, it seems we have done very well in retaining forest workers.
Of course, it could also be partly a sign that other areas of the country have become more productive than they were before.
The following are layoff statistics as reported to Parliament in 2008
Canadian Forest Industry Layoffs by Province January 2003 to January 2008
Quebec 11,329
Ontario 8,582
British Columbia 6,297
New Brunswick 3,149
Saskatchewan 1,364
Alberta 1,247
Newfoundland and Labrador 482
Nova Scotia 380
PEI 35
Manitoba 15
Canada (Total) 32,880
Only 15 forestry workers laid off by Manitoba over a 5 year period.
Someone must have found out they have no forest industry in Manitoba and those guys were hiding under the bushes.
I call Bull shit,in Prince George we lost over 2400 full time jobs use the price water house numbers of 3 to 1 and the picture more to real life This does not inclued all the contractors and truckers that lost their shirts also.When talking about job creation governments like the 3×1 but not when the news is…
steph..your bang on!!
It must be real hard to be a laid off sawmill person and watch all those raw logs going past your shuttered mill everyday on their way to create jobs in?????
“I call Bull shit,in Prince George we lost over 2400 full time jobs use the price water house numbers of 3 to 1 and the picture more to real life This does not inclued all the contractors and truckers that lost their shirts also.When talking about job creation governments like the 3×1 but not when the news is…”
“Well boys,the present government has no concept of what the future brings to those in the Industry. if you dont look after the farm what happens? you go broke and shut down.Today everything is built on guess work, our forest and communitys are in big trouble, modern mills cant grow trees.Even Industry is looking for directon after the Libs gave them all the control in 2001, they screwed everything up layed off all their foresters and planners as did Government. Its a mess and anyone with one eye open can see it.”
Well said steph99.
Hey big business and the free enterprise system does not want government involvement and imposed regulations, yep, how’s that working for the rest of us?
Good idea….mess with the stumpage. Isn’t that the basis of the softwood lumber dispute?
Logs don’t have to be put up for sale here first if they’re native logs. Try 100 containers of logs every week from Coast Tsimpshian Resources.
Logs from private property don’t have to be put up for sale here first either…and there is no stumpage paid on them.
Here is one for Harper, I’m sure there must be some low priced chinamen that he could bring over and give his buddies tax free wood lots. Then tax the working Canadians on the stumpage and in about ten years He would have enough cash to retire from polikeaticks.
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