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PL sends 'scabs' to-steel mill By David Anderson The Times-Standard EUREKA - Union members say both laid-off and active Pacific Lumber Co. employees are being used by Maxxam Inc. as strike- breakers at its Kaiser Aluminum plants in Washington. "We're mounting informational pickets Thursday at the Scotia headquarters and at the PL mills in Carlotta and Fortuna," said Don Kegley of Spokane, a member of United Steelworkers of America Local 338. "We want to make contact with the PL workers, tell them what's happening and ask them to support us, not to scab us." The steelworkers will hold an open forum at 6 tonight at the Riverwalk Inn in Fortuna to discuss their cause. The company confirmed parts of the action. PL President John Campbell on Wednesday blamed the union picket at the plant on the company's environmental opponents, especially Earth First. ãItâs just an extension of the same destructive tactics Earth First has been pursuing in the forest,ä Campbell said. ãIts purpose is to create chaos.ä MAXXAM acquired Kaiser Aluminum in a leveraged buy-out in 1987, the year after it bought PL. The strike started at plants in Washington, Ohio and Louisiana after contract negotiations failed on Sept. 30. A union spokesman said the negotiations broke down over the companyâs demand to replace union employees with contract workers, increase medical cost to pensioners and eliminate bonuses. Kegley said Maxxam hired a firm called I-Mac Inc., which started advertising for strikebreakers weeks before contract negotiations ended. I-Mac provided security guards, fencing trailers, food and replacement workers in one package. He said the strikebreakers were both hired locally and brought in from out of state. PL spokeswoman Mary Bullwinkle confirmed that employees laid off after PL lost its logging license were recruited as temporary replacements for the strikebound aluminum plants in Spokane and Tacoma. But she said that no active PL employees were sent there ãso far as we know.ä Bullwinkle stressed that the laid-off workers went to spokane of their own volition. ãThey were presented an opportunity, and they volunteered to go up,ä she said. Kegler said several PL electricians were sent to the Spokane plant, and at least one has now returned to Scotia. He said that about 400 strikebreakers were put into a plant that had employed 1,100 union workers, but that 286 left during the first 60 days. Initially they were housed in trailers at the plant, he said, until an influenza outbreak swept through the camp. They were then moved to a off-site apartment comblex. Few if any of the strikebreakers are trained aluminum workers, Kegley said, and they appear to be engaged mostly in a show of keeping the plant running. He added that several of the inexperienced replacements have suffered serious injuries. ãThey were recruiting whoever they could get, wherever they could find them.ä he said. ãThey even got some from the homeless shelter, offering $25 to $30 an hour and bonuses.ä
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