It's Kind of Sad. - A rantFollow

The usual small town cry story.

The pulp and paper mill in my home town closed. No surprise, you could have seen it coming from a decade ago. Still 340 jobs (not to mention jobs that relied on that industry such as logging companies, etc) like that gone in a community of 16,000 is a big blow.

It is frustrating though. My main gripe is with the union and the employees. The company was upfront and said "look you have to be so productive in order to stay open, you currently arent hitting production quotas so either step up or be prepared" and the workers pretty much said "they're bluffing", guess what they weren't. The workers also striked for higher wages when they were already getting above industry pay.

Then the township which owns its own electrity company of which the mill is the biggest customer refused to give a deal to the mill on the price of power to help keep it cost effective.

There other factors such as an overabundance of news print lowering its price, the conservative provincial govt ended subsidies to building of new logging roads, etc.

So the last six months have been a mad dash to save it but the union seemed unwilling to budge in anyway. So today the mill closed. Worse the Union (in a small petty gesture) has stopped the Corporation that owns the mill from selling its logging rights which cover vast tracts of crown land to other lumber operations in the area. Since the crown land is in the possession of the company for 20 years per contract that means abig bloody nose to all the logging companies in the area that could easily have logged it and hauled it to any number of mills in the surrounding 300 kms.

Now you have to listen to all these untrained, unskilled mill workers that had mint jobs that paid extremely well that came with amazing benefits complain about getting fired for Christmas. Boo fu[b][/b]cking hoo.

Edited, Fri Dec 16 15:27:09 2005 by bodhisattva

There once was a time when unions were necessary to have workes treated fairly. That time has come and gone. Now it is just a license to be a whiney, lazy *****.

crossbeams out of skew on the treddle?

I am the 'them', not the 'you', so I could care less.

My brother is a mill worker.

When he was 20 he got on at a mill that produced wood products like your everyday 2x4's etc. By the time he was 23 he was the Union rep for the mill. He could see it going down hill and jumped ship a year before it went under due to mismanagement. He got hired at the newly opened strand board mill. He is already worried because thanks to affirmative hiring and a sort of sense of entitlement the mill is populated by unskilled labourers who feel they deserve high wages for little work. Thus the same problem is popping up, the mill is not as productive as the company hoped (even by minimum estimates) not by a long shot. If the mill isnt making money in 10-15 years after start what are the chances you think its going to meet the same fate as the one that just closed?

The cure for this is not a union, it is better management. Plants with poor management should fail and be forced to shutdown. Basic economics would dictate that this would move skilled workers to a plant with good management, who would grow and expand rather than be losing 1/2 it's potential skilled workforce to the crappy plant where because management stinks, will never offer the atmosphere that the workers want or deserve.

Times are a chaingin'. **** or get off the pot.

Can the "freak" off the street do the job just as effectivly for less money?


The people I feel bad for in bodhi's story are the ones who sat in the back of the room, the ones who said quietly "is this really a good time to rock the boat" maybe this job isn't so bad just the way it is and if I didn't like it I would just go find another one. After all it could be allot worse, like if there was no mill and I had no job and benefits.

The ones who really don't even want to be a part of the union.

To add to this point, my old man has been in a union for 30+ years, and is a millright working in the maint. department (like the guy posted above). When it comes time for the union to negotiate their new contract he says that the people who are usually ******** and wating to go on strike are the people who are under 30 years of age. Most old timers know that they have something good. It's the new lazy generation brining them down.

Any monkey can push a button and at least half the time move out of the way of a machine before it smashes them, but no someone right off the street cannot be just as effective as someone who interned for 4 years to work on specialized machinery and has been in the industry for 25+ years.

With your thinking, should you be fired tomorrow and be replaced by someone with 1% of your experience that is willing to make half your salary?

I guess it really does sting a little more when the table is turned eh?

Funny, but I feel the same way about Affirmative Action.



Trollin', trollin', trollin',
Keep them puppies rollin',
Trollin', trollin', trollin',
Rawhide!

Someone with only 200 posts?

The problem is there is no such thing as employee loyalty anymore. People put in 30 years and 2 weeks before they retire they are fired for "poor peformance" and screwed out of everything they worked for in their life. Corporations do not care about people, only the bottom-line. You may or may not agree with this, and you may think I am full of s[/b]hit, but it happens and quite frequently.

Look in the news lately, Verizon is ******** the hell out of their managers in order to save money on their merge. Ford is buttf[b]ucking the hell out of their employees as well right now trying to stay competitive in the market. Instead of cutting cost and making products that are more attractive and reliable to consumers, they are putting the pinch on their employees, because they can.

You should earn your position to be at a company, but companies do not honor your effort to stay there. If they feel you can be replaced more efficiently, they do it, and the government (no matter who is in charge) lets them do it.

With the destruction of unions this behavior will become more common.