thewestern canadian

34,000 copies printed in this issue

lumber worker

Published once monthly as the official publication of the INTERNATIONAL WOODWORKERS OF AMERICA

Western Canadian Regional Council No. 1

Affiliated with AFL-C1O-CLC

2859 Commercial Drive, Vancouver, B.C. Phone 874-526)

Editor—Patrick S. Kerr

Business Manager—Wyman Trineer

Forwarded to every member of the IWA in Western Canada in accordance with convention decisions. Subscription rate for non-members $2.00 per year.

On May 15, following approval of the Regional Board President Jack Munro

issued a news release with the IWA’

utilization in B.C.

s call for a full public inquiry into timber

Forest Minister Waterland immediately rejected the request, saying that his “Ministry is monitoring utilization of sawlogs and there is no need for a public

inquiry.”

We carry on our front page photographs of beautiful, clean timber being chipped. The large cant is thirty feet long and twenty-five inches by thirty inches across,

without a knot bigger than a dime.

We know of one major company who sells such sawlogs to an independent ON THE CONDITION that they be put through the chipper, and pays for a “watch dog” to ENSURE that not one board foot of lumber is made from them.

We know of independents who have inquired about the possibility of purchasing booms of logs that were destined for export, and were told to “back off” if they

wanted to survive in the B.C. industry.

What does Forest Minister Waterland mean when he says the “Ministry is

monitoring use of sawlogs”?

Does he deny that these things are happening, or does he agree that they are happening, and thinks it’s all right for them to happen?

The Vancouver Province’s Forest Industry reporter, Eli Sopow, pointed out in his May 25th article that this is a very serious business for all British Columbians, and asks whether the Government is concerned enough to call a public inquiry into it.

Sopow is DEAD RIGHT.

AUDITOR-GENERAL SCORED BY UNION

The Public Service Alliance of Canada condemned the Auditor-General’s annual report which charged that the federal bureaucracy is working at little more than half efficiency as the “annual bashing of the public service.”

Bill Doherty, PSAC vice-president, said that the finger of blame should be pointed “where it belongs — at managers who are responsible for productivity in the public service, not hard-working rank and file public service employees.”

Auditor-General J. J. MacDonell’s annual report stated “if the government’s policy is to ensure that employees receive a fair day’s wage should it not be the policy ... to ensure

that... the taxpayers... receive a fair day’s work in exchange?”

MacDonell’s findings suggest that work now being done by 55,000 clerical workers could easily be done by 38,000.

Doherty challenged the auditor-general’s survey asking “how can you go into an office and determine someone’s efficiency down to a part of a percentage point?”

“Rank and file public service employees are victims of the system, not villains,” he says. “Empire-building has riddled the public service with over-management but it is totally unjust to heap blame on public service employees whose job itis to carry out directives. Criticizing members of the admi- nistrative support category who havenosay over what they are doing fails to make for better management. '

“Tt is impossible to compare efficiency in the public and private sector. How do you qualify the work of people who issue family allowance and pension cheques? You can’t

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4/Lumber Worker/May, 1980

reduce human services to cold statistical figures.

“When looking for inefficiency in the public service it would be much more effi- cient to investigate the large growth areas — the senior executive and top-management levels.

“The Auditor-General supports the Alliance criticism of management. In a radio program the Auditor-General was asked, ‘Where does the fault lie?’ He replied, ‘In simple words the fault lies in manage- ment.’”

The clerical and regulatory group recently applied for conciliation after negotiations with the Treasury Board broke down in March. The government is offering the CR’s a two year contract with a five per cent wage increase in each year. But the CRs, the lowest paid group in the public service, rejected the offer demanding a two year contract with a 138 per cent wage increase in the first year; a nine per cent increase in the second year plus a COLA to become effec- tive in the second year.

HIGHEST PROFITS IN HISTORY

It seems that everyone is suffering from the energy crisis; everyone except the multinational oil conglomerates, that is.

Exxon Corp., the world’s largest oil company, recently recorded that its first quarter profits soared by 101.6 per cent to $1.92 billion.

Exxon, during severe economic condi- tions, has managed to make history with its profit jump. It is to date the highest quar- terly profits earned by a corporation in U.S. history, nudging American Telephone and

Telegraph Co. out of first place in the “corporate book of profits.”

Exxon’s first quarter profits of $1.92 billion were almost $500 million more than ATT recorded in the August 1979 quarter. At the time setting the profit record, ATT recorded a $1.44 billion profit jump.

Although Exxon’s corporate buddies didn’t reach the heights set by the giant multinational, they didn’t, at the same time, do too badly.

Shell Oil Co. reported a 67 per cent profit increase while Standard Oil cashing in on rising Alaskan oil output at higher prices pushed its quarterly profits up by 169 per cent. Meanwhile Occidental Petroleum Corp., although energy helped to spur its profit margin on, its greatest gains came from the gold and silver trading increasing its profits by 236 per cent.

Petroleum analysts had predicted that Exxon would record high profit gains in the first quarter but their predictions were well below Exxon’s mark ranged between 75 per cent and 100 per cent.

40,000 HOMES NOT AS IMPORTANT AS 150 PLANES

By MICHAEL DECTER CPA Columnist

In the frantic media attention given the federal government’s choice of fighter aircraft the overall economic point has been missed. Attention turned to the question of whether McDonnell Douglas (F18A) or General Dynamics (F-16) would be selected while the overall economic impact was ignored.

No debate centred on the other options for spending $2.3 billion of taxpayers money. No debate raged over the inflationary impact of the project.

A Martian confronted with last year’s newspapers stories would conclude that earthlings had discovered an iron clad economic law. Social programs are infla- tionary, the law would read, health care is an unaffordable luxury and defence spend- ing is nothing but beneficial.

Certainly the “benefits” from the fighter contract have been loudly proclaimed. Indeed the fight over which province would receive the larger share of employment benefits obscured most other factors. Of course, the contention that defence spend- ing is one shred more or less inflationary than health or social service spending is complete and total nonsense. But you would never know that given the headlines and stories carried by the Canadian media.

The most important aspect of the fighter decision is that the public was once again excluded from any real role in the invest- ment decision. No consideration of the alternative uses of $2.3 billion dollars was evident, at least in the reported debate.

What are the alternative uses of such a vast sum? Well, the money could have built 40,000 homes for Canadians or it could be used to develop another Tar Sands plant to help secure our energy future. There are, I suspect, many possible uses for the money that were never even considered.

The rationale for spending money on munitions is always routed in an appeal to fear and to shallow nationalism.

In a world armed to the teeth with nuclear and conventional weapons Canada’s deci- sion to buy 150 jet fighters is nothing more than a futile gesture. Retreating from a proud role of peace-maker we have becomea nation only too ready to join an arms race

whose founding principles are competitive and profit-making folly.