LABOUR MARTYRS
HONOURED

Pioneer organizers
Viljo Rosvall and
John Voutilainen
admitted to CLC Hall

of Fame.
PAGE 7

PROTECT YOURSELF
FROM HAZARDOUS
CHEMICALS

In the second of a series
on the use of pesticides,
research scientist Shona
Kelley informs us on pro-
tective equipment and
exposure to chemicals.

PAGE 12

¢ Faller Mark Spence holds 10 inch spike he hit with chainsaw, nar-
rowly escaping injury.

Loggers’ and mill workers’ safety threatened.
See page 10, and editorial page 5.

Softwood lumber tax

based on false facts

Despite a May 15th decision
which downgrades the proposed
duty on Canadian lumber ship-
ments to the United States from
14.48% to 6.5%, there are still some
major concerns that the U.S.
Commerce Department is playing
politically motivated games with
the Canadian lumber industry that
do not hold up to scrutiny.

The most startling part of the
Commerce Department’s determi-
nation is their contention that log
export restrictions in British
Columbia constitute an indirect
subsidy for the provincial and
national sawmilling industry.
According to their most recent cal-
culation, 3.6 percentage points of
the 6.5% national total are the
result of log export restrictions.

Pulp
strike will
affect IWA

B.C.’s two pulp and paper unions
walked off the job on June 15th as
talks for a new collective agreement
broke down before a strike deadline
announced earlier. At press time
about 12,500 members of the
Canadian Paperworkers Union and
the Pulp, Paper and Woodworkers
Union of Canada, are on the picket
line in 19 mills across the province.
Prior to the June 15th strike
deadline, union members at 5 mills
walked off the job early as tensions
escalated.

The CPU and PPWC members
whose contract expired at the end of
June 1991, are refusing to give in to
concessions on statutory holiday
language in their collective agree-
ments and want more money than
the $1/hr. over two years the indus-
try has offered them.

In mid September of last year the
two unions ratified an agreement to
put a 10 month freeze on their con-
tract which ran out in April.

Many of IWA-CANADA’s mem-
bers will be affected if the strike
becomes a protracted one. Already,
some IWA sawmills have gone down
because they are unable to store or
move wood chips, which are the raw
materials of pulp mills.

On June 5th, the Weyerhaeuser
ulp mill in Kamloops went down,

‘ollowed by Celgar in Castlegar;

Crestbrook in Cranbrook; MacBlo in
Nanaimo, and CPFP in Gold River.
The Kamloops closure had a
direct effect on 2 IWA operations;
the Federated Co-operative Sawmill
in Salmon Arm where 130 IWA
members were laid off and the
Aspen Planer Sawmill in Merritt
where 35 members were sent home.

Continued on page two

The U.S. Coalition for Fair
Lumber Prices, the Washington
lobby group which was the driving
force behind the countervail duty,
asserts that the alleged log oversup-
ply from our log expert restrictions
prevents the U.S. lumber industry
from bidding up our B.C. timber
prices. They argue that if U.S. mills
had a shot at bidding for our tim-
ber, the alleged stumpage subsidy
in B.C. would be eliminated.

IWA-CANADA’s Research
Director, Doug Smyth says “the
U.S. arguments are hogwash.”

“Rather than enjoying an over-
supply of timber on the B.C. coast,
which would provide the lion’s
share of log exports, the coast has
experienced many sawmill and ply-
wood plant closures because of
severe log shortages,” says Mr.
Smyth.

In fact, because of further 1992
restrictions in the annual allowable
cuts, the B.C. sawmilling industry
faces a further downsizing in the
years ahead.

Smyth points out that the
Commerce Department relied heay-
ily on a study of the impact of B.C.
log export restrictions during the
early 1980’s when timber supply
was more plentiful.

The Coalition’s political lobby to
tear apart our log export restric-
tions appears to have undermined
U.S. law.,On February 21, the
Coalition, in a memorandum to the
Commerce Department, unilateral-
ly offered “bilateral free trade in
logs between the United States and
Canada,” in spite of U.S. federal law
which prohibits log exports from
federal and most state lands.

In addition the Coalition’s move
to countervail Canadian lumber
imports with the log export argu-
ment appears to have been made
without consulting with the vast
majority of sawmilling companies in
the U.S. Pacific Northwest. Both
the industry and the trade union
movement in the United States
have made great efforts to have
U.S. log export restrictions tight-
ened in recent years. Many
sawmills in Washington, Idaho and
Montana would be put at risk as
well, if large efficient B.C. mills
were able to bid on their timber.

Besides the argument that our
log export restrictions constitute a
subsidy, the U.S. Coalition plainly
says that provinces have low
stumpage fees. z

This is said in spite of the fact
that the Canadian government had
implemented a 15% export tax on
lumber shipments to the U.S. and
then replaced the tax in various
provinces where a new stumpage
system incorporated the export tax.
While the rates changed under
those new systems have not been
lowered since 1987, the Commerce
Department still contends that our
suumnese system contains a sub-
sidy.

Continued on page two