Their example of united action and resistance to the bosses' profit drive shows the way forward for all working people--in Canada, the United States, and elsewhere.

The British Columbia Federation of Labor has called on unionists to refuse to handle logs from the struck companies, which include Weyerhaeuser, International Forest Products, and other forestry giants.

The woodworkers are standing up to job conditions and employer demands that will sound very familiar to many workers. The bosses want to be free to impose "flexible" schedules--that would mean changing work schedules at will, job losses, and eliminating overtime pay.

Other concessions include attacks on vacation rights and pension cutbacks. Throughout North America, employers have been driving to speed up production and stretch the workday to the max, while slashing pensions, health-care coverage, and other social gains.

The forestry companies, big-business media, and capitalist politicians are waging a propaganda campaign to try to convince other workers that we have common interests with the bosses and that "our" forest industry is in trouble with a market glut, limited access to the U.S. market, a slowdown in the Japanese market, and "high labor costs."

This is a lie. We, working people, have no interests in common with them, the employers. The only way to defend our interests as workers is to reject the bosses' framework and fight for what our class needs, both at home and across national borders. This is what the striking IWA members are demonstrating by standing up to the lumber, paper, and pulp bosses.

The forestry strike coincides with other working-class battles in that region. Members of the Hotel, Restaurant, and Culinary Employees and Bartenders Union have set up picket lines at seven major hotels in the Vancouver area. Thousands of Vancouver area city workers organized by the Canadian Union of Public Employees are discussing strike action.

And, taking a stand for human dignity, 150 Chinese immigrants who have been imprisoned since they arrived in Canada one year ago, have revolted and occupied a prison in northern British Columbia to protest inhuman conditions and the threat of deportation by the Canadian authorities.

These fights reinforce each other. They create openings for workers to join forces, learn from each others' struggles, and reach out to broader numbers of working people.

This includes militant workers in the United States--from meat packers fighting for a union in the Midwest, to striking coal miners in the West, to Mexican-born workers opposing attacks by the immigration cops.

Support the striking forestry workers and hotel workers! Stop the deportations of Chinese immigrants--release them from prison now!  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home