We feel your pain folks. Good luck with the transition.

I guess the companies will have a strong position from which to bargain. Fair is fair, the unions have benefitted in the past, when there were very strong markets for solid wood products. It's all about supply and demand.
metalman.

Supply and demand? What I find curious is that with all of these low prices per thousand board feet that the sawmill companies are trying to survive under..you sure don't see that price translating out at your local lumber yards? Have you priced out any lumber lately to rebuild a fence or build a shop?? Maybe if some of them re-opened the doors to local sales they could pick up a significant amount of business as it appears our local lumber dealers are reaping the profits while the local mills take it in the gonads.

It's a shame to see yet more mills go down.Good Luck with help/info sessions with Frank Everitt and the boys.... They haven't done a darn thing for their union brothers in Mackenzie..

wonder how many jobs frank cut in the steelworkers soon the union executive will outnumber forest workers

wasnt that mill non-union for sometime? probably the death of the mill was when the union came in. Good work Frank!!!

"fair is fair the unions have benefitted in the past when there were very strong markets...." Well metalman I don't think the unions benefitted that much. The last contract was 6 year contract with 2% increase in each year 2003 to 2007 and then 3% in the last one - almost no other concessions in benefits in those years either. That's less than most health care and public sector workers received over the last 6 years. Now just remains to be seen how many years backwards they want to go with rollbacks.
It's going to be a very tough year!

How the unions will kill Prince George

There are two huge mills with economies of scale and low log costs. They are both located to the west. These guys have at least decent bargaining positions. Then there are all the PG area mills. Smaller operations. No bargaining power.

Prince George workers, being reasonable, might accept a reasonable rollback to keep working. Probably not so to the west.

Problem is they all vote for the same contract. So senior workers and supermill workers might sign a deal thats good for them, but BAD for Prince George operations.

At the very least a non-union Rustads would have been able to discuss compromise. A unionized Rustad must hold the line even though that means they are shut. Wavos is right.

"What I find curious is that with all of these low prices per thousand board feet that the sawmill companies are trying to survive under..you sure don't see that price translating out at your local lumber yards?"

Same as with beef during the BSE scare days and low price of cattle.

we can piss and moan about the demise of a legacy industry all we want. The fact is that we have harvested all the economically viable timber and we have also reached market saturation. Translation: the wood industry is no longer THE primary industry for BC and PG. Now is the opportunity to keep our fair city I have called home for over thirty years.
This little income glitch will hurt, for a while. Then the cast off workers will find a new source of income. Hopefully at least some of these well compensated employees prepared for an uncertain future. Hopefully some of these soon to be unemployed will become entrepreneurs and business owners. In speaking with many through the years, it was these same mill employees that always had an answer for a better way of doing things. Now they can prove just how smart and capable they are. They can wallow in the misery inflicted upon them by their former employer, or they can rise to the challenge and not just survive this event and actually be successful.

I am not a union man, but, your crazy if your trying to pin this on the union. Hello, the companies have kept the doors open for as long as they can. Probab ly longer than they should have. If you can't make money in some of the most efficient mills in the world.... than why do it too loose money. The trees are not going to run away.

The sawmill industry has always gone up and down. talk to the grey hairs in the senior lodge. They know all about it. This is a severe condition, but we will come thru this also. We just have to have enough smarts to hang in there.

There is nothing wrong with getting top dollars working in a primary industry. The
hourly cost of the working man, does not play that big of a deal in relation to a board foot of lumber sold.

You got to remember Eaglet Lake Sawmills, was once the biggest sawmill in the area with 400 employees to produce 150,000 bf a day. Now with 40 people you produce 1.5 million bd ft a day.

There are three things happening with any product.
The first thing is how much does it cost to produce. This is all the employee salaries plus materials, plus fixed assets divided by the number of unit produced in an hour (or other determined period). The difference (sell-[cost plus operating expenses]) is the profit.

Then there is how much will a distributor or wholesaler pay which is influenced by how much a retailer will pay. The difference (sell-[cost plus operating expenses]) is the profit.

Finally, what the final distributor (retailer) is able to charge for the product. The difference (sell-[cost plus operating expenses]) is the profit.

With out a profit, there is no business.
To say that "The hourly cost of the working man, does not play that big of a deal in relation to a board foot of lumber sold," is at least foolish if not completely uninformed. There are many levels in the distribution systems and everyone gets a piece.

If you think it is OK to get top dollar working in any industry let alone a primary one, go ahead and start your own mill. It will not be long before the doors a shut for you by creditors.

I was on a plant committee in the 1-424 region. I was so disgusted with the union and how it was run. Like going to a convention and watching guys order one of everything off the menu cause the union was paying. Or going to the Union office and seeing top shelf liquor in the fridge in the head guys office.

I then got hired into management. We tried to implement a productivity bonus. We would give an extra paycheque to each union member each six months if they REMAINED in the top quartile for productivity per man hour. That's right, they were already doing it. That's right, 13 months pay for 12 months work.

They wanted it, but head honchos from 1-424 stopped it. I can only assume (and was told by plant comittee members but I didn't hear it myself so I will say assume) that it was because the union felt that would erode their bargaining position.

The best mill to work at is one that is right next door to another mill with a strong union. Basically you get all the union guys get without all the B.S. and deductions.

"We can piss and moan about the demise of a legacy industry all we want. The fact is that we have harvested all the economically viable timber and we have also reached market saturation. Translation: the wood industry is no longer THE primary industry for BC and PG. Now is the opportunity to keep our fair city I have called home for over thirty years. This little income glitch will hurt, for a while. Then the cast off workers will find a new source of income. Hopefully at least some of these well compensated employees prepared for an uncertain future. Hopefully some of these soon to be unemployed will become entrepreneurs and business owners. In speaking with many through the years, it was these same mill employees that always had an answer for a better way of doing things. Now they can prove just how smart and capable they are. They can wallow in the misery inflicted upon them by their former employer, or they can rise to the challenge and not just survive this event and actually be successful"

A rather blunt assessment, but pretty accurate Loki.

Nobody is bad mouthing the workers Action24/7 and for you to suggest that I think this situation is somehow funny, is quite frankly, ridiculous. It's a terrible situation plain and simple.

The point Loki was making was that we have to come to terms with the fact that the forestry industry is no longer what it was. We knew years ago that we were going to be in trouble, however, the meltdown of the US economy just forced us to have to deal with it quicker.

The employees bear little to no blame in this situation. I blame industry leaders for not working to develop new products and technologies and I also blame governments for not doing their part in that process as well. We've been stuck doing the same thing that we've basically done for decades, without any efforts to create new value from our resource base. We've relied on the same customer base, we've made basically the same products and we've done remarkaby little to change our ways in a world that is changing all around us.

We can look East to the auto industry for another prime example. Instead of taking billions and putting it into new ideas and technology (to create future jobs), we invest it in businesses that are failing.

I truly hope that the industry does turn around but my gut tells me that this time around it won't bouce back to what it was.

IMO we could triple the size of the existing forest industry in the PG region if we had good policy. At least triple it before we ran into true resource constraints.... Its only a sunset industry because we have a monopoly capitalist industry strategy that dictates the current situation.

NMG: exactly!

Action24/7: The first 15 years of my working life was in logging. I ran skidders, dozers, and loaders. I had camp jobs with long days. My father was a logger that brought me into the industry. It was indeed my bread and butter. I have also experienced extended periods of unemployment. So I know full well the position the you and your brethren are in. I have been there, harshly.
What I did was go after an education as an adult, on my dime and my time.
The major difference as I see it, is union members think they have the world by tail because they have a contract enforced by power of unity. Guess what, you are now unemployed in a more harsh economic environment than our generation has seen. Due to union members complacency with status quo, they have not expanded their skill sets and expected the union to look after them all the way through retirement.
Guess what, the union does not pay your wages and benefits. The business that employs you does. The union only negotiates an employment contract.

Now don't think for a second that I am anti-union. Unions are very needed to prevent abuse of employees and to ensure fair compensation. The problem is that when you are earning "top dollar", it is very hard to say that you would reduce your income just so the business can stay viable when you see the executives living large. Well those executives do not have job security, are on the job for longer days, and get way more heat than you could imagine.

If unions don't start working towards sustainability WITH the employers, those employers will outsource to offshore facilities. Don't believe me, most manufacturing is happening in China and India strictly due to much lower labour rates.

eagleone: triple nothing is still nothing. That's like saying that the earth can support 3 times the current population of 6 billion. WAKE UP! We are in crisis. We cannot continue exponential expansion indefinitely. We have reached critical mass in harvesting resources and in processing those resources. All this while we are still unable to adequately feed over 3/4 of the world's population.
What management strategy would you suggest instead of "monopoly capitalist industry strategy"? I personally would love to see a Utopian society where instead of going to work 5 or 6 days a week, we actually live and travel to see the natural wonders.

I would remove all tenures and make it so the resources are bid on each year for firms that would use and process those resources withing the cut area. Make it a free enterprise system where the highest bidder gets access to the fiber supply within the fiber zone.

These big companies like Rustad were once built on the free enterprise system... then they used their advantage to support the personal benefits of a monopoly capitalist model that saw big profits made by limiting out any competition for resource access. Our utilization of our fiber potential is limited by who controls the resource in the woods today and what they are prepared to finance in the way of operations.

Fantastic capital proposal.

How is sustainability managed? Who plants the trees for future harvesting?
Who is responsible for remediation?
Who is accountable for environmental impact mitigation and repair?

What happens to the employees of companies that are not successful bidders in succeeding years? Where do the successful bidders get the experienced production workers? How does a worker get years of experience in a single aspect of a production line or exposure to the complete process that would enable promotion?

What happens to production efficiency programs that take years to develop and implement?

What is the incentive to innovate a particular resource?

Good questions.

I would have a crown corporation that acts as a provincial log broker responsible for reforestation and forestry practices in the bush. Cut blocks would go out to tender to the lowest bidder that mets the regulation requirements. No mill would own its own forestry tenure. Mills would have access to the wood from those cut blocks by bidding on it as the highest bidder through the crown corp one or two years out for planning purposes. The Americans could never argue a tariff on us again and we could kill their market share with good old fair play.

Unsuccessful companies would have to find ways to retain their good employees or loose them to the successful companies. Any mill job is essentially a low skill job anyways easily replaced by numerous skilled workers in the general economy. If trades are hard to come by, then naturally companies would be created that would sell the needed services to all the mills who require the skills (ie mill wrights, electricians, PLC ect). Workers in production are easily trained and training would become key to retention... companies that don't train go out of business and the ones that do pick up the market share. The tax payer and society owes nothing to the the mill owner in a true free enterprise system, because others will easily fill the gaps left by companies that don't have a social responsibility. A good employee will ensure he gets the skills he needs for promotion even if that means hopping companies to get the required experience. No job is for life anymore.

Production efficiency programs should lead to success and a stable financial outlook, so those companies shouldn't have to worry about much because their efficiencies mean they can be the highest bidder for the resources.

The incentive to innovate a particular resource is the free market and the regulations tied to use of resources. In an open free enterprise system innovation is a natural bi-product of competition.

AIMHO