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Union pressures Weyerhaeuser with billboards
by Campbell River Mirror •
Thursday January 20, 2005 at 04:21 PM
Sign of the times: The Steelworkers' union is trying to use billboards to pressure Weyerhaeuser to make things better for workers on the B.C. coast.
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Campbell River Mirror
January 2005 Union pressures Weyerhaeuser with billboards Billboards have gone up this week in the Lower Mainland and on Vancouver Island as part of a campaign by the United Steelworkers against Weyerhaeuser Company. Steelworker local unions representing Weyerhaeuser employees in coastal B.C. have put up the billboards as part of the union's broader strategic corporate campaign against the global forestry giant. They depict raw logs being loaded for export with the caption "Exporting your community's future: It's the Weyerhaeuser way." The company exported over 1.2 million cubic metres of logs from the province in 2003, roughly enough to run three coastal sawmills, employing 600 workers. "Weyerhaeuser is one of the two biggest exporters of logs out of the province, many of them coming from southern Vancouver Island," said Brian Butler, coastal co-ordinator for the Steelworkers' campaign. "The billboards are symbolic of the general feeling among our members and in many communities here - that this company is not committed to B.C." Weyerhaeuser was one of three major forest companies that promised investment in their coastal BC operations if the government made forest policy changes and they achieved a more flexible collective agreement. The union says both those demands are in place and now the company is making record profits, yet little or no investment is flowing into coastal mills or logging operations. "On the coast, our membership has been under attack by this company and at the same time Weyerhaeuser has been feeding the public a line about how the future will be better," said Steelworkers' western Canadian director Steve Hunt. "The reality is that our members are being contracted out, laid off and communities are struggling. This company needs to make some changes in the way they do business, so that they provide long-term benefits to workers and communities and are not just taking logs and profits out of BC." The union says it is not calling for a boycott of Weyerhaeuser but is putting pressure on the company to follow through on its investment commitments and change the way it treats its workers. "We want to see changes that benefit our members and our communities," adds Butler. The United Steelworkers represent over 3,500 Weyerhaeuser employees in 25 operations in four provinces. In B.C., the union represents workers at seven sawmills, two remanufacturing facilities, one hardwood plant and a number of logging operations. The Steelworkers represent approximately 40,000 members in British Columbia.
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