PAGE 1

In March, 300 members of the United Steelworkers’ Local 1-184 ratified a four-year labor contract with a plywood plant in Hudson Bay and a sawmill in Carrot River in Saskatchewan, Canada, owned by Weyerhaeuser Co. The agreement, which was retroactive to April 2004, included a two percent wage increase each year, improvements to the pension plan, benefits and floating holiday pay language.

The company has placed the two operations for sale since last year, but at the same time, the firm has announced its intentions to keep its publicly-owned forest management

agreement.

Weyerhaeuser has closed several profitable mills—including mills in Vancouver, the British Columbia Interior, Alberta and Saskatchewan. Additionally, the Canadian operation has contracted out jobs and imported an American drug and alcohol testing policy—without regard to USW members’ privacy, labor agreements or Canadian human rights laws.

On March 30, USW and PACE, unions representing over 10,000 Weyerhaeuser workers or nearly half the company’s unionized work force, held a joint solidarity day at over 60 facilities across North America.

The next day at Weyerhaeuser logging operations, sawmills, corrugated plants and pulp and paper

mills from Vancouver Island to Florida, unionized workers handed out leaflets and wore stickers that stated “Respect Our Union.”

Issues troubling the members include Weyerhaeuser’s demand for concessions in collective bargaining agreement negotiations; contracting out of union jobs; shifting the cost of health care, pensions and other benefits onto union members; excessive executive salaries and compensation; and company policies that the unions believe force accident and incident reporting underground.

In April, a delegation of members of the USW attended Weyerhaeuser Company’s annual shareholders meeting in Federal Way, Wash….(go to ‘Stifles’; pg. 8)

GO TO PAGE 2-->