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11 December, 2006
The paper sector caucus for eastern Canada of the Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers (CEP) Union has resolved to hold intact the pattern sector labour agreement without granting concessions to employers. Meeting in Montreal on 4-5 December, local branch leaders of the CEP’s paper industry sector adopted a strong anti-concession stand to preserve the current agreement.
“Our local union leaders are telling us to draw a line in the sand,” said CEP President Dave Coles. “And that is exactly what we intend to do. I will be in touch with the major players in the (paper) sector, including Abitibi Consolidated and Bowater, to let them know we have no intention of negotiating concessions to our existing wages and benefits.”
The CEP will instead call on forestry companies to join it in its pronounced campaign before the federal government, calling for real and meaningful answers to Canada’s forest products crisis, a crisis that finds the government short on ideas, and lacking in economic initiatives to stem both the mass job losses and resulting rural destruction.
Some 7,000 CEP members have lost their jobs over the past two years, with some 40 full or partial mill closures occurring in that period.
Coles said that the wage and benefit portion of operation costs in any given mill is among the lowest of cost items faced by employers. “We have had more than one employer tell us we could work for nothing and he would still close his mill because the union contract was not the problem,” said the CEP’s president.
CEP has engaged a national campaign inside Canada, calling on the federal government to adopt a national forest strategy. Stated goals are money for research and development, creation of alternate end uses for fibre resources, investment in initiatives to ensure sustainability of resources, and accelerated adjustment programmes for workers, their families, and the communities at-large, which have been the hardest hit by this national crisis.
The CEP is currently in the middle of a five-year labour accord with pulp and paper manufacturers operating in the eastern half of Canada, covering some 25,000 paperworkers.