A2 - Wednesday, Sept. 23, 1981 - North Shore News

‘orest

Asa newspaperman, I naturally kept a wary eye
on this summer’s province-wide forestry shut-
down. Only now can I breathe a sigh of relief.

It wouldn't have taken
much longer before some
newspaper people started
being laid off, like hundreds
of unfortunate tugboat
workers and railwaymen.—

I'm told by sources at the
B.C. Central Credit Union
that the strike came close to
costing $f billion and that it
took more than one per-
centage point out of the
Gross Provincial Product.

The actual: cost in lost
sales for 8B.C.’s_ forest
companies was something in
the order of $18 million a
day, which added up — if
you take the strike as lasting
35 days — to $650 million.

MacMillan  Bloedel
spokesman Eric Green says
his. company lost $250
million. IWA boss Jack
Munro says his men lost
“probably a hundred bucks a
day” for five to six weeks.

Outfits like RivTow Straits
and Seaspan International
had as many as 400 men laid
off during the worst of the
strike.

Poor old B.C. Rail, which
turned its best half-year ever
in the first six months of

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1981, saw $12 million in
operating profits start to
disappear before its eyes.
More than 1,000: workers
were laid off.

During that strike, the
provincial treasury was
losing $600,000 a day.

soe

Okay, those are the
figures. I’m told they add up
to roughly $700 million,
depending on whether you
include $60 million in
stumpage fees and if you
allow for such items as
normal loss due to forest
fires, and if you accept a
total wage-loss figure of $301
million.

This was the first
province-wide forestry
shutdown in over 20 years,
which tells us that there are
some sober influences at
work in the woods. Or at
least there were until this
year.

What happened? Why this
appalling economic damage,

with the bodies of innocent

victims piled up all over the
landscape? Both the unions
and Forest Industrial

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screw-up

Relations pride themselves
on their mutual levels of
professionalism when it

comes to the. bargaining ~

table.

Yet somehow, between
them, they blew it this year.

Any moron can negotiate
a strike. That doesn’t take
any talent at all.

Why id the men
responsible for maintaining
the main engine of the
province’s economy fail to
avoid such a_ devastating
confrontation?

IWA
Mingay admits that “things
got screwed up.” He blames
the strike on a bad guess on
the part of the industry,
which offered more to the
pulp sector than to the
woodworkers and which

spokesman Rob

work,

It would be quite a sur-

prise if large inventories and
weak markets hadn't in fact
played a definite role in the
attitude of the forest
companies.

In the face of 8 worldwide
lumber glut, how excited
could they be about getting
the mills and manufacturing
plants’ back to normal
operating levels?

Yet surely no one wanted
to lose $18 million a day.

Question: Was it worth it
to anybody?

Answer: Apparently not.

I must admit I find that
quite amazing.

tried to settle with the three
rival forestry unions at once.- -

It is difficult
anyone in the forest industry
who will admit how bad
things really are. But with
the prime interest rate in the
U.S. rising and the housing
starts plunging, it was no

surprise at the end of the ©

strike that the IWA found
itself with half its members

to find

still off the job for lack of |

on the abt of the car, after tes taken by ambalance to
Lions Gate Hospital. (Eric Eggertson photo)

rary and woman lying

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