http://www.pww.org/index.php/article/articleview/11750/1/391Urge shoppers: Don’t buy Western Forest products
PITTSBURGH — In front of 100 Home Depot stores in Canada and the United States, members of the United Steelworkers and environmental activists from the Sierra Club and the Rainforest Action Network will be distributing flyers, Sept. 29, asking shoppers not to buy wood products with Western Forest Products, Interfor and Weyerhaeuser (Cedar One) logos. More than 7,000 loggers and sawmill workers from five local unions affiliated with USW have been on strike in the Canadian northwest since July 21. Their goal is to win an ironclad contract which lessens the hours of work and protects their health and safety.
Workers’ lives are on the line, says British Columbia-based USW Director Steve Hunt, a former miner. “Since 2005, 65 loggers, sawmill workers and truck drivers have been killed at work,” he said in a telephone interview, amid a din of activity at the union hall. “We believe the fatigue factor plays a fatal role. Tree harvest is dangerous work in remote locations. In 2004, the companies, backed by the provincial government, changed the laws governing hours at work. Now, drivers or workers in the forests or sawmills can be on the job 16 hours a day, with alternating shifts. It is dangerous, deadly. We had enough.”
A 2006 coroner’s jury investigating the deaths of forest workers concluded that long hours of work and the corporations’ practice of contracting out jobs proved a fatal combination.
Forest workers are on the road long before the sun comes up and after it sets. Moving logs from the forests to sawmills and other processing facilities means drivers spend hours behind the wheel, hauling heavy loads on mountainous roads. Falling trees, irregular terrain, miserable weather and heavy equipment create a work environment that is perilous for the untrained or tired.
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