DEAL WITH STEEL

Forest Industrial Relations Limited

British Columbia, Canada

The United Steelworkers will soon be bargaining with the Forest Industrial Relations Ltd. who represent a number of employers in the coastal region of British Columbia, including Vancouver Island and the area around Terrace in northern BC. While at one time Forest Industrial Relations represented the majority of big forest products companies in broad table negotiations, they now represent smaller independent companies engaged mostly in logging, and pole manufacturing.

FIR-USW 2010-2014 Memorandum of Agreement - Click to view pdf.

STEELWORKERS AND FIR CONNECT ON TENTATIVE DEAL

The USW BC Coast Bargaining Committee has reached a tentative agreement with Forest Industrial Relations on September 17th and the USW Bargaining Committee will be recommending that the membership accept this agreement in ratification votes which will be held in the coming days. Using the earlier ratified Western Forest Products agreement as the pattern, the United Steelworkers and Forest Industrial Relations hammered out a deal that they feel makes sense to both Forest Industrial Relations member companies—now mostly coast logging contractors—and USW members that they employ in the somewhat cyclical coast logging sector.