By Crawdad Nelson - Anderson Valley Advertiser, July 26, 1989
Members of the Fort Bragg local of the International Woodworkers of America-US voted in favor of a strike when they were presented with the latest contract proposal by Georgia-Pacific Corporation, the town’s main industrial concern. The vote, by a significant 400 to 55 margin, is being used in bargaining this week as the local negotiates, before a federal mediator, with company officials at Fort Bragg.
A job steward I spoke with indicated that the membership is “fed up” with the evident unfairness of the submitted contract, as G-P and other Northwest timber interests continue to gain record profits while workers struggle to survive on incomes below 1985 levels. In 1985, G-P demanded and won wage and benefit concessions from Fort Bragg workers after threatening to pull out of the town unless they could realize profits 25% higher than they had been. Similar concessions were imposed throughout the Northwest. A complicated repayment schedule was written into the contract at that time, and some payments have been made on a semi-annual basis, tied to company profits.
Workers have been disgusted to find their lump-sum checks trimmed by as much as two-thirds by state and federal taxes, so that while the company continues to record massive gains, the workers’ financial position erodes in the face of inflation. Meanwhile, the resource base evaporates as the company demands continued high production rates.
“People are pissed,” said the job steward, noting that the position of workers in Fort Bragg seems to be spiraling downward at a frightening pace. With fifteen years seniority, he would be asked to give up one week’s vacation per year under the new agreement, which “didn’t settle good” with himself or the majority of workers, who are “tired” after struggling to improve production to meet incentives promised to restore at least some of the ‘85 cuts, and who have begun to see the company as an adversary rather than an embattled but kindly benefactor. The latest vote contrasts with 4-1 approval of 1985 concessions, when most workers seemed to believe G-P had workers’ interests at heart. He also said plans are being made to install an automatic stacker in place of the Quad Mill greenchain, which will mean the loss of dozens of jobs. “the company is really making a profit now and we want some of it,” he said, referring to the argument used in ‘85 which held that G-P was in financial jeopardy.
When I asked about the perception of Fort Bragg’s long-term economic future as related to the resource base, he indicated that it was not a high priority in his own mind, reflecting the customary American working-class fixation on coping with short-term financial realities to the exclusion long-term environmental considerations.
Mill #1, which, combined with the old planing complex, accounts for roughly half the Fort Bragg jobs, and where many high-seniority workers are, is generally conceded to be on the way out before long, as the supply of old-fashioned logs dwindles. The retooled and modem Quad Mill at the southern end of the complex, beside modern Planer #2, is designed to accept small logs, so will last longer. The replacement of manpower by machinery such as automatic stackers cuts further into the job market, and will certainly harm union effectiveness.
He also stated that a small faction are actively campaigning to replace Business Agent Don Nelson, believing him too willing to compromise in negotiations with the company. Nelson, frustrated with traditional lack of communication within the local, where the officers have been known to outnumber membership at monthly meetings, said, “There has been a lot more talk since the strike vote,” and that he believed most workers have lately begun to play closer attention to the details or the struggle.
When asked about this week’s contract meetings, he said, “I’m not negotiating in the press,” but that he would present the workers’ case as realistically as possible for the Mediator, whose job will be to evaluate arguments from both sides and propose the most equitable solution. Should the Mediator’s recommendation fail to please both sides, the possibility of a walk-out looms distinctly in the future.
Nelson, known as a skillful mediator in his own right, said that he recommended acceptance of the contract based on the fact that it is “very close to or better than the industry standard,” and that “wage enhancements are enough to make it better.” The wage-enhancement formula is based on production and, he noted, if it had been in place over the last two years it “would have been worth about $1.74 an hour.”
The local negotiating committee also recommended approval “without hesitation.” There is speculation that union representatives “up north” persuaded the committee to ask for the membership’s approval of the package.
Since 1987, the IWA has been split into US and Canadian branches, a move which reflects artificially manipulated rivalry between North American workers as mammoth corporations divvy softwood forestland among themselves and force cuts in the standard of living achieved as a result of the often bloody struggles earlier this century. The original IWA was formed in 1936, in time to preside over and prosper from “boom” times over the next forty years. During the ‘40s and ‘50s, factions referred to as “white” and “red” blocs jockeyed for control of worker destiny. It seems the “whites” eventually prevailed.
By the 1980s new generations of workers were able to take the forty-hour week and $10 an hour wages plus comparatively generous health, retirement and vacation schemes for granted. As the major heavy industry in a predominantly rural and far-flung region, timber workers never saw the kind of wages common in the heavily-industrialized “Rust Belt” union which peaked in the late ‘70s.
The IWA came to Fort Bragg in the early 1970s and was certified as the official bargaining representative by popular vote after organizers won the support of influential workers. Boise Cascade Corporation had bought the Union Lumber Company several years earlier, then sold the operation and lands to Georgia-Pacific early in the 1970s. Louisiana-Pacific ran a plywood manufacturing plant on the south side of the mill pond for several years, quitting the town in 1977.
Georgia-Pacific permanently laid off woods employees throughout the 1980s, preferring to contract with small independent companies whose employees belong to no union. Some loggers had quit “the company” in the ‘70s when it became a union operation, as it conflicted with their beliefs, or they were lured away by higher wages offered by gyppo operations whose capital was not tied up in mandatory benefits packages, and who also were known personally to the workers, as opposed to company men from Oregon and elsewhere who were sent to Fort Bragg to gain executive experience within the corporate bureaucracy.
The Industry Standard
In May of this year, 800 IWA members in Weed and Anderson, California, and Roseburg, Oregon, accepted a compromise wage cut of $.60 per hour, and benefit reductions, after a five-month strike against Roseburg Forest Products Company. The vote came after 3,500 Western Council of Industrial Workers members had accepted the package (IWA members had at first voted against it). Roseburg’s demand in January called for cuts of $1 and $2 in wages, which would have brought them down to the new standard wage established in 1985. Roseburg workers had granted concessions earlier, but not as deep as most others.
The IWA-US’s official paper, The Woodworker, noted that the WCIW acceptance after IWA rejection was “the first time the two unions have failed to vote the same on a settlement in 26 years of joint bargaining.”
Overall, it seems timber workers are intimidated by the prospect of disappearing jobs, and that both the IWA and WCIW are willing to fight for what they can get of the spoils as venture capitalists consolidate their grip on both workers and resources. To some extent the unions are willing collaborators. Particularly in relation to environmental preservation, as timber unions have clearly invested their faith in the concept of perpetual overcutting and miracle regeneration, although the workers are much more keenly divided than their official representatives.
The rejection of the proposal by Fort Bragg workers, against the recommendation by their leadership at the national and local levels, indicates a new willingness to re-draw the lines. Activists within the local are calling for recognition that the times are tight for fundamental change in the relationship between workers and owners as it becomes increasingly clear that the owners are determine to push their advantages as far as possible. The function of the labor union is properly representation, not leadership. Leadership must come from the workers, who are best able to calculate the damage resulting from loss of control, and the gains to be had only by demanding greater influence.
Nominally American virtues such as the independent spirit and generous cooperation among fellow-travelers are frequently invoked in anti-union propaganda, and outfits on the level of Jackie Presser’s Teamsters have helped make unionism unfashionable in the Raging ‘80s, but those same traits lie at the heart of successful union struggle.