A4 Announcement

As most of you know by now, Catalyst announced the "temporary" curtailment of #4 P.M. this morning. Though it may not be overly surprising to most of us it still comes as somewhat of a shock. It is expected that 592 will see the loss of another 101 jobs.

Following is a 592 release that should get distributed into the mill soon. (It has been emailed to the Union Hall for printing and distribution since the President is in Vancouver at wage caucus with the other wage delegates - myself included.)

Today Catalyst Paper informed CEP Local 592 that Port Alberni Division’s #4 Paper Machine would be curtailed indefinitely. This results in the loss of a further 185 jobs at the Port Alberni site. The affect on Local 592 will be the loss of 101 jobs, 45 in operations and 56 in maintenance.

The decision by Catalyst to remove 134,000 tonnes of newsprint capacity from the market has had a devastating impact on both Local 592 and the community of Port Alberni.

CEP Local 592 will be meeting with the company to address the specific details and impacts of this announcement.

Though none of this is good news, I would like to urge you to maintain solidarity. Though healthy discussion is good, some of the comments have been getting a little bit out of hand. We all have different opinions, but let's remember that it is the company making these decisions and, though they would like to point a finger of blame at us, we have very little input into these decisions they make. I couldn't help but think this morning that we get blamed for not reaching a concessionary agreement, but their side of the table continue to operate at a high level in the company, even though, in my opinion, the failure of the talks can be largely attributed to them.

In solidarity,

Tim

Report From the Wage Delegates

TO ALL MEMBERS CEP LOCAL 592

WE WILL BE HOLDING 2 SPECIAL MEETINGS ON MONDAY JUNE 18TH TO DISCUSS AND VOTE ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF ARTICLE 23 (42 HR SPECIAL LEAVE)

HANSEN HALL

2PM AND 7PM

( The general meeting will follow the 7PM meeting)

WE ARE EXPECTING AN ANNOUNCEMENT AT THE END OF MAY THAT COULD FURTHER AFFECT THE CURRENT MANNING NUMBERS.

WE WILL ASSUME THE 42HR WORK WEEK UNTIL THE REFERENDUM IS COMPLETE IN JUNE.

Local 592 Wage Delegates

Retiree's Get Together - May 11

I just got an email from someone who was uncertain about the date of the Retiree's get together. The confusion comes because the March Forward Look had the wrong date in it. The April Forward Look corrected this.

It will be this Friday, May 11 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Hope you have a good time.

Tim

From the President

The Seniority Posting Grievance was presented to Arbitrator David McPhillips yesterday. The Union council was Charles Gordon and the Company was represented by Donald Jordan. Our council called upon Doug LeSire, Jim VanDusen and myself to give evidence on the history of our bargaining process and all the details on the grievance. The main issue was the language in our local agreement (Item 10) that gives the company the right to choose anyone they want for a posting and ignore the main wage language (Article XXI Seniority). The Arbitrator will have to decide if the main wage language (Article XXI) supercedes the local language (Item 10). Although the proceedings got off to a rough start, (the company council disputed some of our evidence that we had planned to present) it went fairly smoothly and I feel our council did a great job. I have to thank Doug LeSire for taking the time to come and testify and providing evidence that I hope will aid the Arbitrator in his ruling. Arbitrator McPhillips stated that we will have his decision within 4 weeks.

Pete Rayburn