Those areas are LICENSED to Irvings and the other companies, NEW BRUNSWICERS own them! Maybe someday New Brunswickers will stop letting the forestry companies rape the land for 8% of the labour force! But instead we're handing them a quarter of a billion dollars even though they are benefitting from the softwood embargo which Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia are under. What's going to happen when they settle the trade dispute and the province once again has to compete?
Isn't it nice to know that these corporations benefit more from the government owning the land than owning it themselves.
Stay tune for more on this issue this week. From what I'm told? Bernard Lord made a deal with the Irvings and other Forestry Industries that will cost over 5,000 or more jobs! Why do you think they made this story -
Expert warns of forestry's perfect storm Last updated Feb 27 2006 03:09 PM AST CBC News A forest industry expert says wage rollbacks at pulp mills may be the only way to save New Brunswick mill towns from the current industry crisis.
Don Roberts follows the forestry sector for CIBC world markets in Toronto, and says the entire country is bracing for more job losses and mill closures because of increasing global pressure on the forest industry. He says that means mills must save money in any way possible.
"My own sense is that with this new reality we're looking at out here, with China's different role and the decreasing demand, then we're going to look back across the country at reopening labour agreements. And that's never a pleasant exercise."
* INDEPTH: Pulp and paper's perfect storm
Roberts says three factors are creating the perfect storm for the pulp and paper industry in the Maritimes; the high Canadian dollar, decreased demand for paper products and increased competition from China.
He says pulp and paper mills have to decide if it's worth it to cut salaries and go after government for help today – if it's not going to improve things in the long run.
Workers at the UPM mill in Miramichi are on a three-month layoff to help the company turn a profit in 2006. They may also face a pay cut if they want the mill to reopen as scheduled in May.
A mill went bankrupt in Nackawic, then reopened under new ownership more than a year later with fewer employees. The Stone-Consolidated mill in Bathurst closed indefinitely in August.
Roberts says it's obvious something has to change. "Some of the mills, it may mean downsizing, some may mean closures. Others, it may mean do we look at producing different products. But the status quo isn't working very well."
Roberts says one way for mills to survive is to start producing something else.
That's advice the Irving Paper Mill in Saint John is following. The mill is transforming production from newsprint to higher quality glossy paper. Geoff Britt speaks for the company. "What we've been doing is moving away from the low value commodity products and moving up the value-added chain to produce high-quality catalogue paper and magazine paper as well."
* LISTEN: CBC radio's Terry Seguin interviews Don Roberts
More than 7,300 jobs have been lost in Canadian mills in recent months due to mill closures or layoffs. Roberts says no mill is safe.
"Every mill will be a little different and the company a little different, dependent on what their balance sheet looks like, how much debt they've got. But from an operating point of view, everyone has got to go under the microscope and say, should I keep this thing running right now?"
Roberts says those decisions will be difficult, and some mill towns may pay the ultimate price. "I think at the end of the day, we're going to see some communities die."
INDEPTH: FORESTRY Pulp and paper CBC News Online | October 20, 2005
Both industry and labour agree that the pulp and paper sector of the forest products industry is facing a perfect storm.
The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers union used the term in August 2005 to describe turmoil facing the industry, and two months later it was the turn of the Forest Products Association of Canada in its pre-budget submission to the federal government.
The industry is being pummelled from three directions: by international economic trends, provincial policies and changing technology. Any one of the factors would have been disruptive; coming together, they are remaking a key Canadian industry – including pulp, paper and timber, forest products represent three per cent of the economy – and the resource communities that rely on mill jobs.
Towns and cities across northern Canada, from Port Alberni, B.C., to Grand Falls, N.L., are reeling from the job losses as mills shut down, partly close or demand concessions from workers.
It's not just the actual forest sector jobs, although there have been more than 40,000 of those lost in five years; it's also the impact from the disappearance of the best-paid work (often over $24 an hour) on a small community, and on the people who sell the high-wage earners cars, vacations and restaurant meals.
A consultant's study estimated that more than two indirect jobs depend on each of the 285,000 direct forestry jobs, so every loss of a job at a mill has a ripple effect on the community.
Then there are the suppliers; the announced closing of the Prince Albert, Sask., pulp and paper mill (690 jobs in a city of 41,000 people) will spill over into Meadow Lake, where a sawmill provides wood chips to the pulp mill.
In smaller communities like Stephenville, N.L., and Terrace Bay, Ont., the cuts at the mills threaten the future of the community. Some resource towns only exist because of the mill, and the community's reason for being goes if it closes.
"When you look at all these faces at the Stephenville Dome tonight, we have a lot of scared people, including myself," a resident said as 2,000 people – a quarter of the town's population – turned out to hear the government's take on the July 2005 announcement that Abitibi Consolidated would close the mill.
Even in bigger centres, like Thunder Bay, Ont. – population 120,000 – disappearing mill jobs will make a dent in the city.
When the dreaded announcement comes, there's usually a strong political reaction. People feel threatened in a way that isn't felt in big cities, where the loss of any one employer is usually a much smaller deal.
So premiers try and save the mill, even going so far as to talk about expropriating it, in Stephenville's case.
Governments can sometimes save plants, as New Brunswick has done with the mill in Nackawic, near Fredericton, but it was already financially backing the mill. In other cases, governments are powerless to change companies' minds about the closures, if the company is claiming it has to stop the bleeding after years of losses. The economic forces driving the closures are often beyond the control of any municipality, province or country.
Among the "outside" factors battering Canadian mills are:
* The higher-valued dollar. As the loonie appreciates against the U.S. dollar, Canadian products become more expensive for American buyers. * Shifting production patterns. Manufacturing is moving to low-cost countries such as China, and the demand for packaging, a major part of the paper industry, has followed. * High gasoline prices. This is a huge problem especially in Ontario, where wood is often trucked long distances to mills. * Competition from low-cost regions in Russia, China and South America with cheap trees and labour, while huge, advanced European mills are more efficient. * Falling demand for key products. Newspapers, squeezed by the internet, are shrinking. Newsprint exports, once the centrepiece of the industry, have been falling by 4.4 per cent a year for a decade, a $3-billion drop.
But there's more. On top of the issues seemingly beyond Canada's control, local decisions have made the problem worse. Two stand out:
* High electricity costs. Mills use large amounts of electricity, and in many jurisdictions, prices have been shooting up. In Ontario, the increase has been as much as 30 per cent over four years as discounts for manufacturers were phased out. * Inadequate wood supplies. Moves to reduce unsustainable forest "harvests" so there will be trees to cut in the future, or for environmental reasons or competing uses such as tourism, have squeezed mills in Eastern Canada. Most dramatically, Quebec decided in early 2005 to slash allowable cuts by 20 per cent over three years.
Quebec will spend $450 million over three years to ease the industry's pain, it said in October 2005, and in September, Ontario promised $330 million over five years.
But the money is not enough, industry sources said.
And as the federal government noted in early 2005, "production capacity is still too high relative to the declining consumption of newsprint in North America, and more plant closures can be expected in the near future."
That story got reported, obviously, because it's true. Unions are driving labour costs way up in the forest industry, at a time when market prices for wood are dropping, demand for paper is dropping, and China is becoming a player in the forest products market. If labour costs do not go down, mills will close, and stay closed. It is shipbuilding all over again. I watched a story on CBC National Monday night and they had a husband and wife in NS going on about how they and their locked-out brothers and sisters would not accpet rollbacks. I thought to myself, "you'd rather be on welfare and have your milltown shut down, than take a pay cut?!"
Irving has put up the cost of wood our wood; the government has allowed this to happen. The same will happen with water and electricity in time. Irving owns 3 electrical plants now. Why don't we (people in the government) now try to make some money and make this area of Saint John wealthier? no instead we allow them to rape us, everyday decade after decade. LNG Deal if it is a money maker for them why not the people of Saint John! Helping the Irvings to have tax concessions, grants, deals to pay less taxes should come to an end. Now the citizens of Saint John need a large tax break and that can happen if all parties - corporations, businesses (small or large) pay their taxes; for get dealing to give a corporation a water deal and an LNG Deal. Pay up and you will see more businesses wanting to come here; many companies are tired of caring more than share. Irving only wants to prosper and no one else; the truth is there open your eyes! Our natural resources need protection and when corporations make money we should too.
I was waiting for the 'evil unions' argument to come out. The 'rollbacks' would account for roughly 3% of total costs. To blame the unions is like seeing a house on fire and blaming the wood.
You'll notice NONE of the factors mention labour costs, that's because the forestry industry has VERY few employees, and most of the employees are non-union. The Mill is the ONLY sector of the forest industry where there are ANY unions at all.
If you know ANYTHING about the forest industry you'll know that the problem is simply the price of wood. The chemicals that treat the wood are more expensive than the pulp. Pulp is a COMMODITY, and commodities are generally worth squat. This is why FINALLY most mills have started making 'glossy paper'. Why has it taken them so long? Because generous subsidies means the companies do not have to be competitive.
Ironically, UNION LEADERS and even environmentalists have been telling mill owners to stop making newsprint for DECADES and to focus on 'higher value' products like glossy paper and recycling. Yet they have been ignored because they are INTERNATIONAL in scope. If they lose money here, they simply pack up and move elsewhere, the world is their oyster as they say.
It's been known for over a decade that cheap wood is coming from tropical zones. THere, the trees grow year round, and many 'wood products' like laminate flooring use bamboo or sugar cane which are grasses, so they grow like weeds. Anybody who thinks a temperate zone tree farm can compete with any of those is simply retarded.
The government KNOWS this, and they are HAPPY. Because this will accomplish what they've been trying to do for years, which is close down all these rural communities. They are expensive to service (relative to their populations), it will increase housing and development in the cities, and politically it's well known that people in rural areas are far more active.
So be an IDIOT and think that this is because of 'unions' if you want to, they know this has been coming for years, and they know damn well that 'rollbacks' aren't going to save their jobs. The biggest increase in costs has NOT been worker wages-they have been administrative salaries, and those people live in Europe or Toronto.
There are also rumours that government is setting the stage to permit wood allocations from the Licences to be privatized and sold to the more offering. What happenned in the fishing industry where larger/wealthier operators bought out the smaller to have access to their quotas is bound to happen with the forest allocations if this goes through. Larger allocations will not benefit ressource-dependent communities and will not maintain forest industry jobs...
7 comments:
Those areas are LICENSED to Irvings and the other companies, NEW BRUNSWICERS own them! Maybe someday New Brunswickers will stop letting the forestry companies rape the land for 8% of the labour force! But instead we're handing them a quarter of a billion dollars even though they are benefitting from the softwood embargo which Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia are under. What's going to happen when they settle the trade dispute and the province once again has to compete?
Isn't it nice to know that these corporations benefit more from the government owning the land than owning it themselves.
Stay tune for more on this issue this week. From what I'm told? Bernard Lord made a deal with the Irvings and other Forestry Industries that will cost over 5,000 or more jobs! Why do you think they made this story -
Expert warns of forestry's perfect storm
Last updated Feb 27 2006 03:09 PM AST
CBC News
A forest industry expert says wage rollbacks at pulp mills may be the only way to save New Brunswick mill towns from the current industry crisis.
Don Roberts follows the forestry sector for CIBC world markets in Toronto, and says the entire country is bracing for more job losses and mill closures because of increasing global pressure on the forest industry. He says that means mills must save money in any way possible.
"My own sense is that with this new reality we're looking at out here, with China's different role and the decreasing demand, then we're going to look back across the country at reopening labour agreements. And that's never a pleasant exercise."
* INDEPTH: Pulp and paper's perfect storm
Roberts says three factors are creating the perfect storm for the pulp and paper industry in the Maritimes; the high Canadian dollar, decreased demand for paper products and increased competition from China.
He says pulp and paper mills have to decide if it's worth it to cut salaries and go after government for help today – if it's not going to improve things in the long run.
Workers at the UPM mill in Miramichi are on a three-month layoff to help the company turn a profit in 2006. They may also face a pay cut if they want the mill to reopen as scheduled in May.
A mill went bankrupt in Nackawic, then reopened under new ownership more than a year later with fewer employees. The Stone-Consolidated mill in Bathurst closed indefinitely in August.
Roberts says it's obvious something has to change. "Some of the mills, it may mean downsizing, some may mean closures. Others, it may mean do we look at producing different products. But the status quo isn't working very well."
Roberts says one way for mills to survive is to start producing something else.
That's advice the Irving Paper Mill in Saint John is following. The mill is transforming production from newsprint to higher quality glossy paper. Geoff Britt speaks for the company. "What we've been doing is moving away from the low value commodity products and moving up the value-added chain to produce high-quality catalogue paper and magazine paper as well."
* LISTEN: CBC radio's Terry Seguin interviews Don Roberts
More than 7,300 jobs have been lost in Canadian mills in recent months due to mill closures or layoffs. Roberts says no mill is safe.
"Every mill will be a little different and the company a little different, dependent on what their balance sheet looks like, how much debt they've got. But from an operating point of view, everyone has got to go under the microscope and say, should I keep this thing running right now?"
Roberts says those decisions will be difficult, and some mill towns may pay the ultimate price. "I think at the end of the day, we're going to see some communities die."
INDEPTH: FORESTRY
Pulp and paper
CBC News Online | October 20, 2005
Both industry and labour agree that the pulp and paper sector of the forest products industry is facing a perfect storm.
The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers union used the term in August 2005 to describe turmoil facing the industry, and two months later it was the turn of the Forest Products Association of Canada in its pre-budget submission to the federal government.
The industry is being pummelled from three directions: by international economic trends, provincial policies and changing technology. Any one of the factors would have been disruptive; coming together, they are remaking a key Canadian industry – including pulp, paper and timber, forest products represent three per cent of the economy – and the resource communities that rely on mill jobs.
Towns and cities across northern Canada, from Port Alberni, B.C., to Grand Falls, N.L., are reeling from the job losses as mills shut down, partly close or demand concessions from workers.
It's not just the actual forest sector jobs, although there have been more than 40,000 of those lost in five years; it's also the impact from the disappearance of the best-paid work (often over $24 an hour) on a small community, and on the people who sell the high-wage earners cars, vacations and restaurant meals.
A consultant's study estimated that more than two indirect jobs depend on each of the 285,000 direct forestry jobs, so every loss of a job at a mill has a ripple effect on the community.
Then there are the suppliers; the announced closing of the Prince Albert, Sask., pulp and paper mill (690 jobs in a city of 41,000 people) will spill over into Meadow Lake, where a sawmill provides wood chips to the pulp mill.
In smaller communities like Stephenville, N.L., and Terrace Bay, Ont., the cuts at the mills threaten the future of the community. Some resource towns only exist because of the mill, and the community's reason for being goes if it closes.
"When you look at all these faces at the Stephenville Dome tonight, we have a lot of scared people, including myself," a resident said as 2,000 people – a quarter of the town's population – turned out to hear the government's take on the July 2005 announcement that Abitibi Consolidated would close the mill.
Even in bigger centres, like Thunder Bay, Ont. – population 120,000 – disappearing mill jobs will make a dent in the city.
When the dreaded announcement comes, there's usually a strong political reaction. People feel threatened in a way that isn't felt in big cities, where the loss of any one employer is usually a much smaller deal.
So premiers try and save the mill, even going so far as to talk about expropriating it, in Stephenville's case.
Governments can sometimes save plants, as New Brunswick has done with the mill in Nackawic, near Fredericton, but it was already financially backing the mill. In other cases, governments are powerless to change companies' minds about the closures, if the company is claiming it has to stop the bleeding after years of losses. The economic forces driving the closures are often beyond the control of any municipality, province or country.
Among the "outside" factors battering Canadian mills are:
* The higher-valued dollar. As the loonie appreciates against the U.S. dollar, Canadian products become more expensive for American buyers.
* Shifting production patterns. Manufacturing is moving to low-cost countries such as China, and the demand for packaging, a major part of the paper industry, has followed.
* High gasoline prices. This is a huge problem especially in Ontario, where wood is often trucked long distances to mills.
* Competition from low-cost regions in Russia, China and South America with cheap trees and labour, while huge, advanced European mills are more efficient.
* Falling demand for key products. Newspapers, squeezed by the internet, are shrinking. Newsprint exports, once the centrepiece of the industry, have been falling by 4.4 per cent a year for a decade, a $3-billion drop.
But there's more. On top of the issues seemingly beyond Canada's control, local decisions have made the problem worse. Two stand out:
* High electricity costs. Mills use large amounts of electricity, and in many jurisdictions, prices have been shooting up. In Ontario, the increase has been as much as 30 per cent over four years as discounts for manufacturers were phased out.
* Inadequate wood supplies. Moves to reduce unsustainable forest "harvests" so there will be trees to cut in the future, or for environmental reasons or competing uses such as tourism, have squeezed mills in Eastern Canada. Most dramatically, Quebec decided in early 2005 to slash allowable cuts by 20 per cent over three years.
Quebec will spend $450 million over three years to ease the industry's pain, it said in October 2005, and in September, Ontario promised $330 million over five years.
But the money is not enough, industry sources said.
And as the federal government noted in early 2005, "production capacity is still too high relative to the declining consumption of newsprint in North America, and more plant closures can be expected in the near future."
That story got reported, obviously, because it's true. Unions are driving labour costs way up in the forest industry, at a time when market prices for wood are dropping, demand for paper is dropping, and China is becoming a player in the forest products market. If labour costs do not go down, mills will close, and stay closed. It is shipbuilding all over again. I watched a story on CBC National Monday night and they had a husband and wife in NS going on about how they and their locked-out brothers and sisters would not accpet rollbacks. I thought to myself, "you'd rather be on welfare and have your milltown shut down, than take a pay cut?!"
Irving has put up the cost of wood our wood; the government has allowed this to happen. The same will happen with water and electricity in time. Irving owns 3 electrical plants now. Why don't we (people in the government) now try to make some money and make this area of Saint John wealthier? no instead we allow them to rape us, everyday decade after decade. LNG Deal if it is a money maker for them why not the people of Saint John! Helping the Irvings to have tax concessions, grants, deals to pay less taxes should come to an end. Now the citizens of Saint John need a large tax break and that can happen if all parties - corporations, businesses (small or large) pay their taxes; for get dealing to give a corporation a water deal and an LNG Deal. Pay up and you will see more businesses wanting to come here; many companies are tired of caring more than share. Irving only wants to prosper and no one else; the truth is there open your eyes!
Our natural resources need protection and when corporations make money we should too.
I was waiting for the 'evil unions' argument to come out. The 'rollbacks' would account for roughly 3% of total costs. To blame the unions is like seeing a house on fire and blaming the wood.
You'll notice NONE of the factors mention labour costs, that's because the forestry industry has VERY few employees, and most of the employees are non-union. The Mill is the ONLY sector of the forest industry where there are ANY unions at all.
If you know ANYTHING about the forest industry you'll know that the problem is simply the price of wood. The chemicals that treat the wood are more expensive than the pulp. Pulp is a COMMODITY, and commodities are generally worth squat. This is why FINALLY most mills have started making 'glossy paper'. Why has it taken them so long? Because generous subsidies means the companies do not have to be competitive.
Ironically, UNION LEADERS and even environmentalists have been telling mill owners to stop making newsprint for DECADES and to focus on 'higher value' products like glossy paper and recycling. Yet they have been ignored because they are INTERNATIONAL in scope. If they lose money here, they simply pack up and move elsewhere, the world is their oyster as they say.
It's been known for over a decade that cheap wood is coming from tropical zones. THere, the trees grow year round, and many 'wood products' like laminate flooring use bamboo or sugar cane which are grasses, so they grow like weeds. Anybody who thinks a temperate zone tree farm can compete with any of those is simply retarded.
The government KNOWS this, and they are HAPPY. Because this will accomplish what they've been trying to do for years, which is close down all these rural communities. They are expensive to service (relative to their populations), it will increase housing and development in the cities, and politically it's well known that people in rural areas are far more active.
So be an IDIOT and think that this is because of 'unions' if you want to, they know this has been coming for years, and they know damn well that 'rollbacks' aren't going to save their jobs. The biggest increase in costs has NOT been worker wages-they have been administrative salaries, and those people live in Europe or Toronto.
There are also rumours that government is setting the stage to permit wood allocations from the Licences to be privatized and sold to the more offering. What happenned in the fishing industry where larger/wealthier operators bought out the smaller to have access to their quotas is bound to happen with the forest allocations if this goes through. Larger allocations will not benefit ressource-dependent communities and will not maintain forest industry jobs...
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