BY TONY DI FELICE
CAMPBELL RIVER, British Columbia - Some 2,400 workers at three British Columbia pulp and paper mills owned by Fletcher Challenge Canada set up picket lines July 14. Two- thirds of these workers are organized by the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union (CEP), and around 800 are in the Pulp, Paper and Woodworkers of Canada (PPWC). This is one of several important recent strikes across Canada.

New Zealand-based Fletcher Challenge is demanding 365- day continuous production. Currently, the only time the mills shut down is December 24 - 26. The company also wants mill-wide "flexibility" on job classification and contracting out, and a six-year contract. It claims the CEP has already conceded these demands to pulp and paper mills in Eastern Canada.

The unionists are primarily fighting to limit overtime so that more jobs can be created. According to Brian Payne, western vice president of the CEP, 500 jobs could be created if the overtime hours were cut in half. The union is also calling for a three-year contract and a wage increase. The union officials count on the support of British Columbia premiere Glen Clark, of the union-based New Democratic Party (NDP). In the past, Clark has spoken against the increased overtime in the pulp and paper industry while many workers can't find a job.

This strike will directly determine contracts at 25 mills employing 14,000 workers organized by the CEP and PPWC, who are part of a "Joint Caucus" where the settlement reached with Fletcher Challenge will be used as a "target contract" with the owners of the other mills.

Workers on the picket line at the Elk Falls Mill near here say they expect a long hard strike, and are preparing for it. They say that the company was stockpiling paper and has been encouraging its customers to build up their inventories.

Part of broader labor resistance
This fight is part of a growing labor resistance across Canada that coincides with an upturn in the economy. This resistance was among other things signaled by the surprise Canada's capitalist rulers got in last June's federal elections, when the ruling Liberal Party almost lost the majority they had taken for granted.

The resistance also came with a shift in support to the NDP, especially in the maritime provinces, one of the poorest area of the country that had witnessed significant resistance to major cuts to social services by workers, fishermen, and oppressed French-speaking Acadians.

The day after the federal elections, the almost 4,800 members the United Steelworkers of America at INCO in Sudbury, Ontario, waged a 26-day strike against one of the largest nickel mines in Canada. The miners scored a few gains, earning slight wage and pension increases and a pledge of modest new hiring by the company.

Since July 11, some 1,600 members of the United Food and Commercial Workers union have struck the Cargill meat packing plant in High River, Alberta. With several hundred strikers staffing the picket lines 24 hours a day, the company is having trouble trying to get any production going with management and office staff. According to the Calgary Herald of July 16, "members of the Ironworkers Local 725 union from Lafarge Canada Inc. who were building a pre- fabricated water treatment plant at the Cargill facility have left their worksite, refusing to cross the picket line."

In the meantime Alberta teachers and other provincial and municipal public sector workers in Quebec and Ontario are taking strike votes to defend their wages, working conditions, and union rights.

The Ontario Federation of Labour has called a special convention for July 28 in Toronto to discuss collective actions against bill 136, introduced by the Conservative provincial government of Michael Harris. This bill threatens to tear up union contracts, eliminate job security, reduce wages, and suspend the right to strike of tens of thousands of health, education and municipal workers across the province.

Finally, the 45,000 members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers are preparing for a fight with their employer. Canada Post wants to eliminate thousands of jobs and CUPW members voted 89.5 percent to mandate their national leadership to call a strike if no agreement is reached before the end of their contract on July 31. Meanwhile, postal workers held a series of actions across the country.

Tony Di Felice is a member of CEP Local 1129 in Vancouver.  
 
 
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