| disagreements between the two pulp unions
and the IWA.
....“Perhaps it is better to
be irrespon-sible and right, than to be responsible and wrong.”
....Or, recalling the tv voices of
so many union representatives during the long grey winter and spring
of our discon-tent, P.G. Wodehouse once said: “It is never
difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and
a ray of sunshine.”
....I like Henry Kissinger’s
remark as it could be quoted by Premier Bennett during last fall’s
labor problem. “There cannot be a crisis next week, My schedule
is already full.”
....While all this strike-lockout business
was progressing, a possibly far more serious and far reaching event
was happening in Ottawa and Victoria. The waffling and buck passing
was at its political best as announcements of cut-backs to reforestation
and silviculture programs were issued.
....Groucho Marx once summed up a situation
that fits this very serious long term setback to our forests: “Why
a four year old child could understand this report! Run out and
get me a four year old child. I can’t make head nor
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tail
of it.”
....I don’t believe any of us realized
last summer when forest industry labor negotiations began, that events
would turn from bad to worse to awful. Kaiser Wilhelm II of the old German
Republic at the beginning of World War I said it well in August of that
year as he spoke to his troops as they left for the front. “You
will be home before the leaves fall from the trees.” Oops!
....So sayeth the varied opponents over the
long grey winter: “We should sup-port whatever the enemy opposes
and oppose whatever the enemy supports.” Quote from Chairman Mao
Tse Tung.
....Then there was Marlene Dietrich’s
great song in “Destry Rides Again” as it refers to the frustrated
negotiators on all sides. “See what the boys in the back room will
have.”
....One would have to say that of all the
personalities who have weathered the storm of protests and haranguing
during this near year long period, the IWA boss, Jack Munro, did more
than any-one else to calm the sides at critical times. I can’t think
of anyone in gov-ernment, management or union who stood out better than
Munro.
....This forest industry has talken lots
of setbacks in its earlier days and until
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recently things have been going
pretty well for it. Maybe, like the little boy who has had his own
way for too long a time, we find it hard to adjust when new rules
enter the game.
....And there are a lot of new rules
that we are learning from this recession. Those who don’t
learn – quickly – can be out of business in short order.
....There are experts everywhere pre-dicting
anything you want to hear. Where were they when this recession took
the forest industry into a head spin? And what if it doesn’t
gedt over in the next three or four years? Hadn’t all sides
better stop the rhetoric and bring out the compromises?
....It’s tough, and the wonderful
W.C. Fields summed up the frustrations of these days in the forest
industry when he said: “ Yes, yes, it’s a funny old
world. A man’s lucky to get out of it alive!”
“Keep out of the bight!”
Bill Moore |
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