The withdrawal of heavyweight mediators from a protracted forestry labour dispute is bad news for the thousands of people affected by the impasse, says the mayor of Port McNeill.
“We are living in a literal nightmare that doesn’t seem to have an end,” said Gaby Wickstrom, adding once financially secure people have been forced to line up for free meals.
The mayor called on the province to ask for the mediators’ recommendations or create a commission to help both sides resolve the longest strike in coastal forest history — now in its eighth month.
Western Forest Products and the United Steelworkers Local 1-1937 received a letter Tuesday from independent mediators Vince Ready and Amanda Rogers informing the parties that the two have withdrawn from the meditation process, as they see no basis for a negotiated settlement.
“Vince Ready comes with a reputation and if he has not been able to help them reach a deal — there’s very few disputes he has not been able to assist in reaching an agreement — then it is horrifying to me as a community sitting here in limbo,” said Wickstrom.
Nearly 3,000 Western Forest Products’ employees and contracted workers at six Island manufacturing plants and timberlands around the coast have been on strike since July 1. Talks last broke down before Christmas and resumed on the weekend.
Don Demens, president and CEO of Western Forest Products, said in a statement that the company is disappointed that despite “previous proposals offering superior wage and contract provisions to what the USW and the forest sector have agreed to throughout British Columbia,” the parties have been unable to reach a negotiated settlement.
Demens said the company will continue to explore all options available to bring an end to the prolonged strike, noting it has reached out to the Ministry of Labour to seek clarification on next steps.
The United Steelworkers Coast Bargaining Committee also issued a statement, saying it was frustrated with the lack of movement by Western Forest Products. “The mediators stated in the letter that the parties were too far apart, at this time. It is clear to the USW that the WFP’s refusal to move off their concessions and change any of their positions led to the frustration of the mediators and their decision to withdraw.”
Wickstrom said families, small businesses, contractors and community leaders are caught in the crossfire, with mounting debt, depleted savings and “now mills are closing.”
“It isn’t about a private labour dispute anymore,” said Wickstrom. “It’s about thousands and thousands more that are affected by the strike.
“It keeps me up at night, I’m not going to lie. I wake up sometimes at three in the morning and I sit and I ponder and wonder if there’s anything else I can do. It’s so hard.”
Last month, at the Truck Loggers’ Association convention in Vancouver, B.C. Premier John Horgan announced a $5-million Coastal Logging Equipment Support Trust to fund bridge loans for contractors whose equipment is under threat of repossession because of the impasse. Wickstrom said it won’t go far.
Wickstrom said she no longer trusts what is said by the leadership on either side of the dispute.
The way the mayor sees it, the provincial government wants Western Forest Products’ profitable tenures to log Crown land on the mid-to-north Island greatly reduced; the Steelworkers’ union, the single biggest donor to the NDP’s 2017 election campaign, wants the government to remain out of the dispute in order to gain back what it lost in prior binding arbitration; and the company wants to reduce costs to be more profitable (it has more than $1 billion in revenue annually and 30 per cent of the allowable annual cut in the region).
“There has to be a larger game afoot,” said Wickstrom. “And I call it a game because we are pawns in the middle here suffering.”
The mayor said the prolonged dispute is affecting people “up and down the Island.”
“My concern is that it’s 15 years of policy that has got us to this place and it appears as though the current government wants to right it overnight,” said Wickstrom. “And any time that happens, small rural communities are left reeling because it hasn’t been measured and thought out.”
Wickstrom spoke emotionally on Wednesday about a family that has exhausted its savings, forcing the husband to take work in Alberta, where he can’t afford to come home on his week off.
Wickstrom said she is trying to arrange for North Island NDP MLA Claire Trevena to visit next week.
