Canadian Paperworkers Vote to Enter Eastern Talks Early

With majority support, Eastern Canadian pulp and paper union officers voted to enter talks a full year early in efforts to preserve job security and find solutions to the forestry crisis in Canada. Meeting in Montréal, Quebec, last week, 250 local union leaders of ICEM affiliate Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers (CEP) Union, from both the East and the West of Canada, drew up common strategies on bargaining agendas.

CEP and the lead company chosen in the East, Canadian-based AbitibiBowater, will begin talks on 2 March, 13 months before the expiry of labour agreements in the East. CEP will be seeking a contract extension in these talks.

CEP represents 5,500 AbitibiBowater workers in about 15 eastern Canadian pulp and paper mills. The bargaining pattern set there will then be used for contract extensions at other pulp and paper companies in the East, which employ another 20,000 paperworkers.

In the West, contracts at CEP-represented mills expire on 1 April 2008. CEP President Dave Coles said key issues in both East and West negotiations will be job security, probing operational processes in order to achieve productivity gains, and contract term lengths.

Coles said the challenges in these talks will be to find modern ways to enhance productivity, without wage and benefit cuts. “This will not be done by making economic cuts in our collective agreements,” he said. “We think it is better to optimize productivity than to cut wages.”

Pulp and paper local unions in both parts of Canada are currently under five-year labour accords, with the ones in the East due to expire on 1 April 2009.