Forest Sector Jobs Continue to Drop in Wake of Eastern Canada Mills Closings

The jobs crisis in the paper and wood sectors of Canada has taken further hard blows. Early this month, Finnish pulp and paper company UPM Kymmene announced a temporary 9-to-12 month closure of its paper and groundwood mills in Miramichi, New Brunswick, thus idling 600 workers.

That came just a week after US-based Weyerhaeuser Co. officially announced, on 31 May, the permanent closure of a wood mill in the same town. The closing will cost 150 jobs. Workers at both mills are represented by ICEM affiliate Communications, Energy, Paperworkers (CEP) Union of Canada.

While meeting with company officials of UPM Kymmene in Miramichi on 8 June, CEP local union leaders left the meeting not very hopeful. They were told that the odds of re-starting the mill next year stand at only 20% unless investments are made.

Speaking at the New Brunswick Federation of Labour’s convention in Edmunston on the day that UPM broke the news, 5 June, CEP President Dave Coles said, “These communities are a microcosm of what is going on in more than four dozen communities (across Canada).” He said that over the past three years, more than 12,000 pulp, paper, and sawmill workers have lost their jobs in Canada.

What makes matters worst for mill workers, particularly at UPM, is that the Finnish company continues to cut and export raw logs off government forestlands through three leases it holds in the province of New Brunswick. CEP local leaders were told at the 5 June meeting that the company was going to do trial shipments of wood to Finland, something CEP and community leaders oppose while the paper mill is idle.

“Employers, especially in the forestry sector, have deliberately taken the money they have earned from our publicly-owned natural resources and invested it elsewhere in the world,” stated Coles at the provincial labour convention.

The recent bad news hasn’t been limited to New Brunswick. On 15 June, forestry company Tembec Inc. announced it was temporarily shutting three wood mills in Quebec and one in Ontario, affecting nearly 900 workers.

That came a day after Commonwealth Plywood announced the closure of 18 mills in Quebec, six of which find workers represented by the CEP. The Commonwealth closures will mean the loss of 1,200 jobs.

The CEP has pressed the federal government of Canada for intervention in the jobs crisis of the nation’s forestry sector.