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Softwood battle fuels hike in mill workers
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by GORDON HOEKSTRA Citizen staff
The union representing sawmill workers in the Northern Interior has seen a slight increase in its membership in the past three years, despite sawmill closures and big losses in the secondary manufacturing sector.
"The number are not significantly higher, but there's been a shift (to more sawmill workers)," United Steelworkers-IWA local 1-424 president Frank Everitt said Tuesday. "A significant part of the value-added business, or secondary manufacturing sector, has been lost."
According to figures from the United Steelworkers-IWA local 1-424, membership levels have climbed two per cent since 2002 to more than 6,000 workers today. About 4,500 of those are sawmill workers, where most of the increase has been.
The slight increase is a result of sawmills adding third shifts to drive down costs to fight the punishing 27-per-cent tariffs on lumber exports to the U.S., as well as to handle the glut of mountain pine-beetle attacked timber, said Everitt.
The big question is how long those third shifts will be able to be maintained as the beetle epidemic is going to decrease the amount of timber available, he said.
The timber decline -- estimated at between 20 to 40 per cent by the province's chief forester -- could come in the next seven years, perhaps longer, noted Everitt. "Whenever that timeframe is ended, and we haven't done something to look after communities and people, we could have a major problem," warned Everitt.
Since the late '90s, forest companies have shut down sawmills and trimmed their workforce, although more than 200 job losses have also come in the management and non-unionized support staff ranks.
A review of Citizen news stories show those unionized job cuts topped 500 in the Prince George area since 1998.
But Everitt said despite the closures and downsizing, the union's forestry membership is greater than it was in the late '90s, due to third shifts added to more than a dozen mills, which has increased the workforce by hundreds.
Canfor has added third weekday and weekend shifts at at least nine of its sawmills in northern B.C., and is examining others, noted Everitt. Three or four other sawmills, including West Fraser, are operating on three shifts. Other companies like Abitibi Consolidated are also examining a third shift.
The secondary manufacturing sector has been a different story.
Pacific Precision Wood Products went down in 2000 with a loss of 75 jobs. The Woodland Group, which employed more than 200 workers at its height, went bankrupt a couple of years later. It re-emerged but with a much-reduced workforce of 50 to 60.
Other secondary operators in the North -- including in Fort St. James, Vanderhoof and Burns Lake -- have also gone under or are operating at reduced production levels.
The exception is Brink Forest Products in Prince George, which has expanded. Its owner, John Brink, is advocating the government insist that primary sawmills make 20 per cent of their lumber -- the amount he contends is low-grade -- available for remanufacturing in the region.
Brink says it could create thousands of jobs in the North.
Prince George North Liberal MLA Pat Bell told The Citizen last week the province is examining Brink's idea.
The idea is similar to one floated by the then-NDP government in 1997 as part of the unsuccessful Jobs and Timber Accord, in which Interior forest companies were supposed to provide independent remanufacturers with 16 per cent of their lumber.
Everitt said as long as companies can sell their commodity products, they aren't going to look at the value-added or secondary industry. "If the government wants to be proactive, they have to do what they talked about doing before, making the majors look at value-added," he said.
©Copyright 2005 Prince George Citizen
©Copyright 2005 Prince George Citizen
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