Thank you Canfor. For keeping the mothership healthy enough to keep it going. Hopefully, the US economy will pick up enough to open up a few more mills. I suspect we would need to get rid of the glut of lumber first, than we will see the lumber prices go back up. Lets be smart about it, and control the inventory, and make them Yanks, pay a good price for it. Lets not get below $400 a thousand. A healthy mill, means good paying jobs for Canadians, and a safer work site.

Yeah opening the mill on the backs of the employees Canfor is just a great employer what goes around comes Canfor just kick people when they are down and Pat Bell helped the big companies again but did nothing for the people that work and produce the products If Canfor want to help their company get rid of all the the top people that take money and don't do anything to help the company just suck money out of the Canfor

yeah close one mill with 205 employees. Then open one with 60 employees what a great company

I'm pretty sure middle and lower upper management people have been taking a bit of a beating as well. I have heard that they have taken a ten and more percent roll back, just to hang on to their cushy jobs. Which is that everybody is chipping in to keeping it alive.

Yeah shut down the Rustad operation in Pr Geo and start the one in MacKenzie, good on MacKenzie though not so good for Pr Geo

Hey the way I see it is if the middle and upper management people were hard working enough to become something other than a high school drop out who got luck landing a job in a mill where minimal education is required, they deserve the job security. Aside from the trades people in a sawmill there is no real educational requirements. Operations positions are often held by people who didn't like going school when they could work in a mill doing labor and have worked up the ladder to operator. Now they are resentful of the people who busted their asses in high school, college and university to become upper management, where the only job security is your ability to perform.

Good news for the people in MacKenzie for sure. I'm sure they needed a little bit of inspiration.

However, they are only pawns in a game of convincing the much larger Prince George operations to take large scale rollbacks, which will amount to far more dollars than it cost them to reopen the doors of the MacKenzie mill for the sake of appearances only.

It also has the spinoff benefit of being good for several bits of positive publicity.

Canfor does what is good for Canfor. They didn't get that big by being charitable.

I could not agree more thereasonableman!
I am happy for the workers in Mackenzie but, some things are not quite they way seems!
Now watch Pat Bell and the Liberals get some PR out of it.

"Hey the way I see it is if the middle and upper management people were hard working enough to become something other than a high school drop out who got luck landing a job in a mill where minimal education is required,"

Dont waste your breath Maverick. For some reason 95% of PG sides with the high school dropouts. Strange?!?! Not when consider who these 95% of people are.

"Canfor just kick people when they are down"

Would it have been kicking autoworkers when they are down if the "Big 3" had demanded concessions BEFORE the end had come or would it have been good business? Ask some of those out of work autoworkers if they had a chance to go back and choose a job where they make less or no job at all what would they choose.

"If Canfor want to help their company get rid of all the the top people that take money and don't do anything to help the company just suck money out of the Canfor"

Does this even qualify as a sentence? Maybe, but not if you are trying to speak english. This kinda ties in nicely with the "high school dropout" comment above.

I guess it took a Maverick to tell it like it is. That post is right on in many ways.

Way to go Maverick, you hit the nail on the head.

Sorry, but the mills give out good wages for the level of education. Sure lots have improved themselves, but as long as your working for someone else, guess what you are dispensible.

fifty years ago, sawmills were up and down all the time. Its just in the last twenty or thirty years did it stabilize a bit with mordernization of mills, but its still in a commodity market. There is no such thing as job security, the unions don't provide the jobs, its the companies.

Fifty years ago, everybody knew how to work and save for a rainy day. Now everybody wants everything now. Guess what, it works great if you have a steady income.

I wonder why Canfor was the only benificiery of tax breaks and undisclosed stumpage breaks in Mackenzie?

Why didn't Pat Bell offer the workers of this Canfor operation who made wage sacrificies for the good of Canfor any tax breaks provincially as he did for the company?

Why didn't Mayor Stephanie Killam offer any tax breaks to those Canfor employees on thier Mackenzie houses who agreed to work for less for Canfor as she offered Tax relief for Canfor for 3 years?

Not sure why the Canfor is the only one here who qualifies for the welfare.

Stop and think about it, the wood supply is slashed by 40%, guess what the production is going to be slashed by 40%. So wouldn't it make sense to weed out the weaker mills, and keep the most productive ones going.

it is very unfortunate for those people who thought the trees would never disappear. Guess what, mother nature said otherwise. Fortunate for us, the trees are coming back, we once again will be a forestry based province. It will look different, in another 60 years. There will be less mills, but more efficient. Quality of wood will not be there. The trees will be harvested earlier. The cost of lumber should be higher. I doubt there will be anything more than a 2 x10 available by then, likely see a lot of engineered products out there.

I must say the one upside to the crappy US housingmarket is the quality of wood available now to us here in BC. I was at Home Depot buying 2x4s on the weekend on got some of the nicest straightest boards I have seen in years! And for only $1.87 ea.

I also agree with Maverick's post. The middle and upper management in a company like Canfor is often comprised of peope who could get similar money in the job market if they had to leave, even if they had to work in a completely different industry. That's the benefit that flows from the years these people spent in school or making grunt wages before they worked their way up.

Canfor Management taking a 10% cut - can anybody give me one [1] name please?

Denaljo,

Talk to any non-union Canfor employee. If you need help that would generally be the people who don't work in the mill on the production line.

In any event, MacKenzie workers had no choice but to accept the deal. It's not like there is much there for alternatives.

Now, the domino effect is that Prince George operations will be left with no choice for the same reasons.

I think there are better days for bargaining and I think Canfor management would be laughing themselves insane if there was a strike right now.

And it doesn't so much matter what the white-shirts make, management will always give themselves generous helpings. It's like that everywhere in every sector.

Yeah Canfor did such good job saving for a rainy day Canfor has to steal money out of the pockets of the workers. Maybe they should have spent the money they received from the settlement with the US in BC instead of buying mills in the US.


Born in BC kinda is not a word you should use if you want to speak english

For those interested, google ppwc local 2 and see what Catatlyst Paper has given to workers for MOA (memorandun of agreement), June 2009!
You bet the pulp mills are not that safe either on their contracts whether they are signed or not!