PWAC Victoria: Carole Pearson, Writing Sample

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A Raw Deal

by Carole Pearson © 2004

Youbou sawmill workers fight back after the mill shuts down. Published in Our Times, Aug./Sept. 2004.

When I was young, you talked of getting married, raising a family and getting your kids into the woods or the mill," says former mill worker Darreld Rayner. "That was our attitude back then. Now it's 'Get an education and get the hell out of here.'"

Rayner is one of 214 employees at TimberWest's Youbou Sawmill at Cowichan Lake on Vancouver Island who lost their jobs when the mill shut down permanently in January 2001. Ken James is another. "I come from a large family and if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be eating," he says. One of eight children, James grew up in B.C.'s Cowichan Valley. At 53, he's out of work and in debt, but filled with determination. Unfortunately, you can't pay the rent with that.

A survey conducted by University of Victoria sociology students one year after the closure found that "a substantial portion" of the workers still felt confused over why the mill was shut down. It had been turning a profit, the workers argued. It didn't make sense. Still, the workers received their layoff notices, and it appears the owners may have shut down the mill simply because they could.

Back in 1998, the B.C. Ministry of Forests issued a replacement document that allowed for the transfer of Tree Farm Licence 46 from Fletcher Challenge Canada to TimberWest Forest Corporation. During this transaction, a crucial section of the licence was left out. It was Clause 7, which states: "The licensee will not cause its timber processing facility at Youbou to reduce production or to close for a sustained period of time."

Tree farm licences are a part of B.C.'s Forest Act, which was enacted in 1947. These licences grant companies exclusive timber harvesting rights on publicly owned provincial land. In return for these long-term area-based, renewable leases, the government sets social, economic and ecological conditions, creating a social contract between companies and communities. Forest companies must provide capital investment, infrastructure and job creation. The Act, through attached clauses such as Clause 7 in the original Youbou agreement, requires companies to operate at least one mill in the areas licensed to them, to process the harvested timber.

"I was the eternal optimist," says James. "I was shocked when the announcement came that the mill would be closed. We thought they couldn't do it because they'd lose their tree farm licence. We didn't know they no longer had that clause in their agreement."

Today, the underlying reason the mill was closed has become evident, and the knowledge has made the workers angry and bitter at being set adrift after, in some cases, decades of working at the mill.

Rayner spent more than half his life working at the Youbou mill. He speaks of his 29 years there with pride. "I did pretty well everything, right from the front end right down to the end stackers. I touched every piece of machinery you'd find in a mill." He had been following in the footsteps of his father, Murray, who had put in 38 years at the same mill before he retired.

Rayner was 18 when he quit school in Grade 10 to work in the mill. "Back in '72, you were crazy to be going to school," he recalls. "There was so much work around then, it was never-ending--logging, milling. There were three mills and 4,000 union loggers in this area. Now, there's a hundred."

"The first contract I remember, I think we got a dollar-an-hour increase and a cost-of-living allowance," says Rayner. "We were getting big, big increases every contract." He started out making $3.50 an hour, which was a good wage then. "A case of beer was four bucks. That's what we remember, eh?" he chuckles. "Cigarettes were 40 cents a pack. It was unreal."

Rayner married and supported his wife and their four children on one income. They would go camping in the summer, the kids were in hockey--life was pretty good. His daughter Melissa, 28, worked at the mill during the summer when she was going to school. Today, his eldest son Rick, 30, works in a camp cutting cedar blocks to length with a power saw, but doesn't have the same guarantee of a steady, long-term job ahead of him like his father and grandfather did.

"Economically, it was the worst thing that ever happened to me," says Rayner of the mill closure, describing it as "having the rug pulled out from under you." Getting another job wasn't easy and, in the meantime, he used up his severance pay and unemployment insurance benefits. He even took Math and English 11 courses as a step towards completing his Grade 12. "You get doing different things to try and keep the wolves away."

The omission of Clause 7 from the Youbou transfer documents occurred under the watch of then-NDP Forest Minister David Zirnhelt, who later said he didn't realize the clause was missing when he signed the papers. The B.C. Liberals, in opposition at the time, told the workers they would put the clause back in when they got into power, but it didn't happen.

Today, the Youbou workers are taking the Province to court. Ken James is the representative plaintiff in a class action suit against the B.C. government, claiming "the actions of the provincial government were grossly negligent in allowing the removal of Clause 7 from the new licence." He's acting on behalf of all former employees of the Youbou Sawmill. Besides seeking compensation, the workers want "to see justice done and the truth served."

"What we wanted was our jobs back," James says, "but the mill is long gone now. But, there are other forms of compensation, like loss of wages and special damages." They are currently waiting for a response from the B.C. government. "The government has 60 days to appeal," James explains, "but we probably won't hear anything until Day 59."

James is one of five board members of the Youbou TimberLess Society, the group coordinating the launch of the class action suit. The 250-member society was formed in late 2000 by some of the Youbou mill workers. It hosts social activities like summer picnics and Christmas parties, but there's serious stuff, too. The YTS has an extended medical and dental plan for the former mill workers, and board members speak at rallies and take part in panel discussions to present proposals that address problems in the province's ailing forest industry. Says James: "One of the biggest things we learned real quick is you need to have a strategy. Going boo-hoo-hoo wears old real fast. You need to offer solutions."

The Youbou TimberLess Society isn't the first group of mill workers to take the B.C. government to court. The Sierra Legal Defence Fund, representing Woodworkers for Fair Forest Policy Society, the Pulp and Paper Workers of Canada, the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada, and the David Suzuki Foundation, filed a petition in B.C.'s Supreme Court in 2003. In the petition, Premier Gordon Campbell, Forest Minister Mike de Jong and the B.C. Cabinet were accused of failing to enforce the Forest Act.

In February 2002, an order-in-council was passed by the B.C. Liberal Cabinet that permitted the raw-log export of 35 percent of the harvest from the Kispiox, Kalum and North Coast Forest Districts over three years. Section 127 of the B.C. Forest Act specifically bans the export of raw logs. Section 128 gives the Forestry Minister authority to grant exemptions only if the timber is surplus to the needs of B.C. mills or can't be processed economically at local mills.

By issuing special permits through an order-in-council, the decision was made without debate in the legislature. The Cabinet okayed the export of up to 325,000 cubic metres of raw logs, the equivalent of about 8,000 logging-truck loads. As each permit allowed only 15,000 cubic metres, the government had to issue 22 exemption permits.

In 1998, the Eburne Sawmill in Vancouver, owned by Canfor (Canadian Forest Products), was closed. At the time, workers were told it was due to a shortage of timber. This mill was the last of six mills that once operated under Canfor's Tree Farm Licence 37. Without mills to process the timber, the timber virtually all became surplus, which cleared the way for expanded raw-log exports.

When the mill closed, the angry workers set up blockades outside the mill, demanding that the government cancel Canfor's licence. They called it "a betrayal of public trust" by the company for failing to operate even one mill to process the wood it harvested on Crown land. The Woodworkers for Fair Forest Policy Society sprung from these protests and is composed of former Eburne mill workers who maintain Canfor "has reneged on its social contract."

Critics say the amount of raw logs exported through the order-in-council could have kept the Eburne mill running full out for one year. Tim Howard, a lawyer for the Sierra Legal Defence Fund, remarked at the time: "Mills are closing across the province due to a lack of timber at the same time as the government permits raw-log exports at unprecedented levels."

In May of this year, the legal proceedings launched by the organizations came to a halt when the B.C. Supreme Court rejected the lawsuit, ruling the B.C. Cabinet has "complete, unfettered and subjective discretion to make decisions."

"We didn't like the ruling," says Jim King, the PPWC's first vice-president. "Basically, the judge made the ruling that they [the provincial government] have unfettered rights to do whatever the government wants to do, no matter what the law is."

In March 2003, as part of its "Forest Revitalization Plan," the B.C. Liberals brought in further changes to the Forest Act under Bills 28 and 29. According to a statement issued by IWA Canada Local 2171 (Industrial, Wood and Allied Workers), "These two pieces of legislation really put the boots to IWA members, their families and their communities.

Besides other changes to the Forest Act, eliminating the requirement that licence holders manufacture logs in B.C. "paves the way for a rash of plant closures." It makes value-added products uneconomical and "facilitates the export of raw logs and cants" (partially trimmed logs).

"The export of raw logs is one of the things that shouldn't happen in any country, let alone Canada," says Wilf McIntyre, IWA Canada's national first vice-president. "My understanding is, even before the NDP left office, we were exporting about 100,000 cubic metres of raw logs a year. Today, we're over 4 million. When you ship your raw logs out, it means there's no manufacturing done with that log in your country, so there's a loss of jobs because of that."

Jessica Clogg works for the West Coast Environmental Law Association, one of 60 groups comprising the B.C. Coalition for Sustainable Forest Solutions. She says, "The forestry changes made by the province are an assault on communities and the environment. You have policies that break a historic social contract, whereby companies got access to public and indigenous land in exchange for responsibility to communities. When you see that being broken and very little being given back to communities, that affects everybody."

Mills are closing around the province, but B.C.'s coast is particularly hard hit. Of the 12,000 coastal forest workers, 5,000 are not working and almost one-third of the 33 coastal mills are shut down. There has been less investment in modernization on the coast, so the mills there are older, smaller and more expensive to maintain. Some logging communities are accessible only by water and air, making transport difficult. It's more costly to harvest timber on the coast, so companies are choosing to invest money into forest operations in B.C.'s interior instead, creating large, centralized mills at the expense of smaller ones. For example, Canfor plans to open the world's largest sawmill in Houston, B.C., which will produce 600 million board feet per year.

There are a lot of factors affecting B.C.'s forest industry. The downturn in the Asian economy saw sales of B.C. lumber to Japan drop by over one third. There's the softwood lumber dispute with the U.S. over stumpage rates, and competition in the global economy from other wood-producing countries whose costs or prices are lower. Some American regions and countries of the South have climates that produce trees ready for harvest in 12-year rotations. B.C. trees take between 40 and 120 years to be ready for cutting. According to the PPWC, B.C. also has one of the lowest rates of value-added processing in the world.

The forest industry has been hard hit by this combination of punches, and one community after another has seen their mills--their main source of employment and the communities' economic foundation--shut down. B.C.'s coastal area is becoming like a roll call of ghost towns: Youbou, Port Alice, Gold River, Tahsis.

Port Alice is the community most recently affected by closures. Its pulp mill, formerly owned by Doman Industries, was put under the control of Brascan, a multi-national asset management company, as a way to stave off bankruptcy. When the mill was closed last April, Mayor Larry Pepper told a CBC interviewer, ". . . within 18 months, it would be my guess we'll lose our hospital, police and most of our school. The whole thing is devastating."

Port Alice was founded by the opening of a pulp mill in 1917. When the village moved a few kilometres up the Neroutsos Inlet to its present location on northern Vancouver Island in 1965, it was touted as the province's first "instant municipality." Gold River shares a similar history. Built in 1965, it was the first "all electric community in B.C." But, its pulp mill closed in 1998 and property values plummeted as houses were put up for sale and people left. Tahsis officials have bravely tried to put a positive spin on this, the community website bragging how these former family homes "are being snapped up as fishing and recreation vacation retreats."

More than 30 years ago, Keith Dickens, another YTS board member, visited the Cowichan Valley while on holidays from England. Enchanted by the natural beauty of the area, he decided to emigrate here with his family. In 1975, Dickens was hired as an electrician at the Youbou mill. When the mill closed in 2001, he was 60 and opted to take early retirement, although his pension was reduced. "I knew retirement was in the cards anyway," he says, "but it's made a big hole in my RRSP." His family has had to make some big changes in their way of life. "One of our hobbies was travel, and we planned to do a lot of that when I retired," says Dickens. "We've had to curtail that. And not going to work everyday with a bunch of guys you enjoy is a change of lifestyle." The YTS meetings, he says, "fill a big hole."

YTS board members agree that since the mill closed, there have been more social problems, including marriage breakdowns, and drug and alcohol abuse among workers and their families. Says Dickens, "The mill was a very unique place to work. It was like family. It wasn't just a place where you put in your eight hours and went home. When the mill closed, that social loss was huge."

Board member Roger Wiles says, "There's people on medication for depression. On the last day the mill was running, there were grown men breaking down in tears." Born in Victoria, Wiles worked at Youbou since 1979 as a stationary engineer, working with the steam boilers and carbines. The Youbou mill was self-sufficient, using wood waste to generate its own power. Wiles is 50 now, and is living off his savings. He says defiantly, "I moved here by choice and I'm not going to be forced out by corporate giants and the government."

Deputy Forest Minister Don Wright said, in March 2002: "I understand that an industrial adjustment committee has found alternative employment for 150 of the original 200 displaced Youbou workers." But the survey conducted by students for the Vancouver Island Public Interest Research Group found that only 23 percent of the workers had found full-time work, 15 percent had part-time, 31 percent had no employment income, and 30 percent had chosen to take early retirement. Seventy-three percent said they did not receive any assistance with job retraining, or finding new employment, from the employer's "industrial adjustment" office. "People who were contacted for the survey later said how moved they were to be contacted," says James. "This was 100 people, and this was a year after the mill closed."

Richard Weir was a young boy when his family moved out to B.C. from the Prairies. He worked at the Youbou mill for 33 years, 25 of them as a forklift operator. After the mill closed, it was tough to find another job. At one point, he says, he thought of going back to Saskatchewan. "Then I said to myself, 'What would you do in Saskatchewan?' No, I want to stay right here."

Weir planned to buy a truck and camper and do some travelling with his wife after he retired. "I won't be getting a truck and camper now," he says, ruefully. Instead, he's working at a small sawmill with half a dozen other workers who take turns running the machines and processing lumber. "Now, at my age," says Weir, "I find this job hard." He knows the younger workers with children to support have it worse, but this isn't how he envisioned the end of his working days. "When I look at what's happened," he says, "I feel bitter."

Rayner worked in construction for a while last year, but had to quit because of health problems. Like Weir, he found a job at a small mill, and also found it pretty strenuous at his age. "They work hard," he says. "I start to thinking, 'Do I want to be there when I'm 55?' I said, 'No way. I'm going to kill myself [if I do].' That's another problem--my age. I'm 50 and some people don't want to hire me."

Things seem to be finally turning around for Rayner, however, and he's found work as a farmhand. "I love it," he says. "You're working outside and every day is different." Sometimes two different farm owners vie for his services at the same time. "There's times I'm actually finding work for others because I get so busy," Rayner says, proudly. "Of course, it's always someone from Youbou first. This one guy, he hadn't had a job for a year and I found him some work. We gotta take care of each other."

"In its heyday," says IWA Local 1-80 president Bill Routley, "our local had about 4,000 members. Now, we're down to around 3,000, and about one-third of those are outside the forest industry." Routley has an old photograph in his office showing the large numbers of workers in a typical logging crew in 1937. He says fewer workers are needed to do the same jobs today because of technological changes that have included "everything from hand-falling to power saw to, now, feller-bunchers--high-tech machines that go through like a lawn mower."

Routley says because there's a lot of company-owned forested land on southern Vancouver Island, as opposed to government-regulated Crown land, his local probably sees more raw-log exports than others. "You've got major companies with private land, like TimberWest and Weyerhauser, who are exporting some of the best fibre in B.C. The problem is, you're losing all the value-added, and even manufacturing and sawmill jobs, that are attached to that fibre."

Over one-half of all trees that have been cut down in B.C. were cut in the last two decades, but one-third of the forestry jobs have disappeared. The industry now employs fewer people per cubic metre of wood than in the past. In 1961, there were two jobs per 1,000 cubic metres of wood produced. By 1991, the number had dropped to 0.88 jobs, despite a 57-percent increase in volume.

In a report for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, analyst Dale Marshall says, "The province should be moving in the opposite direction by giving forest companies incentives to produce more value-added products in exchange for access to our public forests. It should also be diversifying forest tenures to include communities and First Nations, who are often more willing than transnationals to operate in an environmentally sensitive way and make the most of a renewable, but finite, resource."

The Youbou TimberLess Society is hoping to get a community forest licence through the B.C. government's Forest Revitalization Plan and not only get some of their own members back to work, but create jobs for others as well. Meanwhile, they are waiting to tangle with the same government in court over the missing clause that allowed their mill to be closed. They live with the impact of the error every day.

Rayner was among the workers who set up blockades after the mill closed to prevent it from being dismantled, but TimberWest won an injunction to clear the road. A crane was later brought in to demolish what was left of their old worksite. "I personally think that old mill sites like Youbou are sacred ground," says Rayner, wistfully. "Anybody touches that, people get upset. There were a lot of lives brought up in there. Generation after generation, just gone."

When YTS board members hold their monthly breakfast meetings at Cowichan Bay's Riverside Hotel, they can look out the restaurant windows and see truckload after truckload of logs rumble past on their way to Crofton or Ladysmith. From there, the logs will be shipped in large "booms" to mills in Washington and Oregon. All that remains of the nearby Youbou Sawmill, after 75 years in operation, is an empty lot.

The town of Youbou was named after the sawmill's original owners, Yount and Bouton. For more information about the Youbou TimberLess Society, visit their website: www.savebcjobs.com.

To read the complete report by Dale Marshall, called Down the Value Chain: The Politics and Economics of Raw Log Exports, check out the publications catalogue at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives website: www.policyalternatives.ca.

Carole Pearson
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Last updated: November 16, 2005 http://www.islandnet.com/pwacvic/pearsn05.html