By Mike Koepf - Anderson Valley Advertiser, June 21, 1989
A substantial number of union members who belong to the International Woodworkers of America in Fort Bragg may be getting ready to clearcut their IWA Local (#3-469) business manager, Don Nelson. IWA workers, whose contract with the Georgia-Pacific Corporation in Fort Bragg recently expired, attended tense and often stormy meetings on Wednesday and Thursday of last week at the IWA hall in Fort Bragg. Reliable rank and file sources in attendance at those meetings have indicated that there was outspoken opposition not only to G-P’s contractual positions but also to Nelson’s handling of negotiations with G-P.
“Nelson gets up there with a big speech and he didn’t say nothin’,” a worker who was present at the meeting reported. “It just came out but he didn’t make any sense. He was talking about stupid stuff, how they were wording this and wording that in the (union’s) constitution. People were there to see if they were getting money and wage benefits back. He didn’t tell ‘em a damn thing.” Apparently at one point in the Wednesday meeting, IWA union members were near open revolt when Nelson was reluctant to report what had been occurring during negotiations with G-P management. One worker reported: “That’s what we were all yellin’ about. I told him (Nelson) all you have to do is put it out on a piece paper as to what we got and what we’re not going to get… let’s hold our hands up! (expressing approval or disapproval of the contract).”
“Everyone was pretty much mad,” another union member said when union members continued to press Nelson for further details of his talks with G-P management. At the Wednesday meeting there were more than 100 union members present and at the second Thursday meeting for the night shift a lesser number. But not one union member seemed particularly happy at either meeting when Nelson finally let it be known to IWA millworkers that G-P was firmly against any increase in health and welfare benefits for workers, and there would be no signing bonus, and no restoration of the large wage cuts the mill workers took over three and one-half years ago. At the Wednesday meeting, a group of workers angrily walked out on Nelson. And Nelson is reported to have walked out of the second day’s meeting when he apparently felt that he was being questioned too closely by union members.
In 1985 during the height of the Reagan administration’s pro-corporation, union-bashing euphoria, IWA Union members who toil at G-P’s mill in Fort Bragg took a 25% to 30% cut in wages. Since that time the IWA has attempted to restore those cuts without much success, until last year when the company agreed to begin paying “bonuses” to company employees who were hurt by the ‘85 roll-back. Most union members look at this “wage restoration” with mixed feelings.
One mill worker, who prefers to not have his name made public, said that, “We never got any (wage restoration) until this last year, and for this year’s bonus I’ve probably got about three thousand bucks, but for every year they took 30% from me, I lost seven thousand. See, so what they’re doing is they gave you half of your first year’s (1985) wages back in bonus but kept the other three and one-half (years) that they got from you from the steal that’s what it is.” This same mill worker is also displeased about the current contract submitted by his union to Georgia-Pacific which calls (as near as he can determine because he claims negotiation news comes sparsely from his union chief’s lips), for a four-year contract with gradual three percent annual increase. Over four years this totals twelve percent, which is still less than half of the big wage rollback of 1985.[1] “It’s like two bucks a day, a pack of cigarettes or something,” a mill worker complains. This same mill worker says that, “I think they’re (the rank and file of the union) going to strike. The lumber industry is boomin’ now. We got to stop’ em from shipping it out. They got six or seven months worth of lumber stored in those sheds down there. They could last us out just by having their bosses ship it out on trucks. So all it is, is a matter of gettin’ on Highway Twenty and stopping the trucks.”
What is meant by “stopping the trucks” this union member did not elaborate. But he did comment that what would have to happen if such a hypothetical situation developed was that “all those truck drivers on CBs would have to start saying, ‘Don’t go near Fort Bragg, they’re getting pretty rowdy over there.’ They (the company) will sit there on their lumber.”
Whether or not this scenario could ever come to pass with the IWA in Fort Bragg is pure conjecture at this point. Informed sources who understand the workings of the IWA in Fort Bragg indicate that union-head Nelson is definitely not a striking type of leader. One union member reports that Nelson specializes in committee work with small groups of older workers who are close to retirement, workers who endorse Nelson’s philosophy of not making waves. According to one source at one of these meetings not too long ago a local union policy was passed stipulating that union business managers could not be removed unless there was a two-thirds vote for dismissal by the rank and file.
In any event, at the IWA union meeting last week in Fort Bragg there was growing discontent with not only local union leadership but also the multi-million dollar profits realized by the Georgia-Pacific Corporation last year.
At the Wednesday meeting one worker who works at a “planer” position in the Fort Bragg G-P mill stood up and said that he had “bought lumber last year and it cost two hundred and sixty dollars a thousand for doug fir. I bought the same damn lumber this year and they’re charging me four hundred and six dollars a thousand!” In the meantime this very same mill worker has received no increase in wages or benefits. In response it was reported that Nelson cited the “majority” as condoning his handling of contract negotiations to date but Nelson was countered by a mill worker who stood up and said, “This is the majority right here and we’re tellin’ you right goddamn now what we want.” Another worker explained that what Nelson was apparently alluding to by citing the “majority” were “his little inside meetings.” This same individual says that “everybody was pretty mad.” Mad not only at union boss Nelson but also mad at the corporation.
“Everything’s profit for them. They’re making nothing but profit.” This man went on to say that the Fort Bragg mill wasn’t an average mill. “There isn’t a mill on the West Coast that pumps out a million board feet a day.” This worker also reports that the majority of this prodigious production is accomplished in the new quad mill section of the Fort Bragg millsite that was technologically and mechanically upgraded a few years back. Ironically or cruelly, depending upon one’s attitude towards those who physically produce the lumber that create the roofs over our heads, the up-grading of the Fort Bragg Mill is often cited as the main reason that mill workers were asked to take a wage cut in the first place. In other words, the workers were allowed to finance their own exploitation.
In the meantime, some millworkers at Georgia-Pacific await the outcome of further contract negotiations, in resignation or apathy to be led by Mr. Nelson. Others who seem to be part of a growing and vocal majority and who are unhappy with union boss Nelson’s tepid actions are calling for stronger solutions. One action is a petition that is reportedly being circulated by some mill workers calling for Nelson to step down. The other proposed action is the most severe of all: strike.
Footnote:
[1] See “G-P Earnings Earn Employees Wage Restoration for 1987”, North Coast News, January 21, 1988.