Dear editor,
In response to “Don Demens Letter of Yesterday”, I would like to provide further information to ensure your readers are aware that that Western is an evil empire whose aim is to bust the union and should not be allowed to continue in this shameful fashion.
The strike has gone on too long and the NDP Government should revoke the TFL’s and hand them over to the forest workers in the Province. Not a day goes by where I don’t think about the impact the strike is having on British Columbia families, and dozens of communities who are feeling it the most because of people like Don Demens who makes a salary of more than $2.8 million a year and Jim Pattison who are creating misery for thousands of families throughout British Columbia. That is why the Government should revoke their TFL’s and hand them to the Unions so that they can get people back to work at a fair and decent wage with benefits.
Western’s most recent claim is that the proposal maintains the terms of the previous collective agreement and offers more in wages than other recent forest-industry agreements. Western made its latest offer public to enable everyone to see, and draw their own conclusions, about whether they believe it is fair and recognizes the important contributions of employees.
Western had asked the USW to take their offer to the membership for vote and also proposed that employees return to work during the voting process. They proposed binding arbitration. All of these proposals were made with the singular goal of ending the strike. All of these proposals were rejected by the USW. And how can blame them as Western is planing a massive lay off and shuttering of coastal mills in conjunction with Interfor and Canfor so that they can export more logs and jobs overseas.
Demens goes on to say “Every day brings another story about curtailments because of market and cost challenges facing the forest sector. In these challenging times, it is critical that unions, companies, and government work together to protect the working forest and improve the cost structure to ensure we can continue to offer sustainable employment and benefits to communities. That continues to be our commitment as we work to end the strike and bring people back to work.”
But he fails to mention the strength of the Forest Industry is its ability to identify profitable opportunities and markets something lacking as the Forest Industry does not pay its sales force and reneges on its hand shake agreements and will go as far to commit murder to evade paying its bills. These big white elephants are dishonest in their business dealings and should be dismantled.
Roy Harris
President and Chief Executive Officer
Redco Trading Corporation