(The following article is from the April 16-30,  2010 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)

Letter to the editor from Graham Auger and Jack Higgins, retired workers from Elk Falls Plant, Campbell River, B.C.

Catalyst Paper is having troubles. Their just released Annual Report talks about the global recession, the post Olympic-post recession world, the strong Canadian dollar, the weak market globally for newsprint and the fact that the Chinese market will set demand levels for the next several years.

     There isn't one of their troubles, or the troubles of the corporate world generally, that is caused by the workers in their four mills or the residents of the BC cities they are located in.

     Why then did they pilot an attack on municipal taxes to impoverish the towns that have nurtured them and why won't they pay the millions they owe after they lost in the courts? Why do they demand a roll-back of negotiated wages, benefits and working conditions as a condition for re-opening the Elk Falls plant?

     There are two years left in the current "pattern" agreement and they want the workers to break the pattern by re-opening at Elk Falls. They want the remaining 105 Elk Falls workers to take ridiculous concessions. On top of this they want to have new "non-core" wages for almost every maintenance and service job that is not directly production of paper.

     Is it possible that this is a move by Catalyst to introduce a two-tier wage and benefit system, a direct attack on new hires and a separation of workers into different classes? This is exactly what has happened in all other concessionary bargaining and it is at the heart of the nine month strike in Sudbury, Ontario, by nickel miners.

     If the Elk Falls workers are finagled into accepting a concession agreement below the other plants, with no guarantee of re-opening, it is likely the agreement will be used as a club against workers at the other three plants and a bidding war will ensue. This could only escalate downward and bottom out with no bargaining power and almost certainly the loss of the union. It is very probable in the next several years that three of the four plants could supply the weak global market and Catalyst could keep rotating its closures to keep the equipment working and to keep forcing concessions in a plant by plant bidding war to the bottom.

     The $82,000 per year wage being used in company propaganda is a farce. It includes all employment costs, benefits, pension costs, severance and retiree costs. It probably includes landscaping and building maintenance. It is exactly the method of phony bookkeeping used by General Motors against the Autoworkers in Ontario. To spread the lie through a complicit media is to tell all BC citizens that the workers in Campbell River are greedy and overpaid when they are really unemployed and in dire straits.

     Most Canadian manufacturing corporations have taken advantage of the crisis, which was not created by workers, to force huge concessions in wages and working conditions. The Auto industry was the leader but the same has taken place more quietly with a more or less passive trade union leadership across manufacturing.

     If working people want to have any future and not return to the conditions of the 1930's it is necessary to resist the offensive being launched against them and their communities. The corporate world created the crisis and not working people. If they want to close mills instead of operating them then they should be seized for taxes owing and nationalized. If we are to maintain sustainable industries and communities then let us work in mills we own and earn equity in. If we are going to pay the bills we want the ownership deed and the profits.