Union members and Supporters picket Weyerhaeuser Corporate Headquarters as Drivers Strike in NC

PRLog (Press Release) - Dec 08, 2008 -
Contact:
IWW IU 530 Drew Robertson – IWW rep, 319-651-2032
Dec 8, 2008


North Carolina and Virginia Truckers Form Union, Hold Work Stoppage
United Truckers Cooperative to Picket Outside of Weyerhaeuser Mills


Since February 2008 Log and Container haulers for Weyerhaeuser along coastal North Carolina and Virginia have been organizing for higher pay, less hours and more respect on the job. Now, after all these months, The United Truckers Cooperative has emerged as the Union organized by the drivers. They have chosen December 8, 2008 to hold a work stoppage, shutting off production to the mills and ports in order to demand recognition of their union, a meeting with the company over working conditions and that no retaliation against the drivers occurs. In solidarity with that strike, fellow union members and supporters are holding a picket and press conference at Weyerhaeuser Corporate Headquarters in Federal Way, Washington.

As founders of the first truckers’ union ever built in that part of North Carolina, the members of United Truckers have voted to affiliate with the Industrial Workers of the World: Industrial Union 530 (IWW IU 530). Founded in 1905, the IWW is a democratic and militant rank and file-and-file industrial union. In recent years, the IWW has offered organizational support to workers in the trucking industry so that drivers can break the pattern of brutal exploitation and injustice faced by the men and women who carry everything our communities need to ensure their livelihoods.

The drivers, who haul logs and wood products to mill and containers to port, have labored under a subcontracting system that has reduced them to little more than sharecroppers. Although many drivers are misclassified as “independent contractors,” almost all work for subcontractors of paper giant Weyerhaeuser. The company based in Seattle, Washington, Weyerhaeuser is the second largest landowner in the United States and owns over 600,000 acres of forest in North Carolina alone. Besides having a history of mistreating their workforce, Weyerhaeuser’s environmental record is abysmal, in the United States and around the world.

Also showing solidarity with the United Truckers Cooperative of North Carolina and sending representatives to the press conference in Federal Way, WA: the IAM Woodworkers District 1 who holds contracts with Weyerhaeuser in Oregon and Washington, the United Steelworkers of Sub-District 3 in Auburn, WA, and the Northwest Log Truckers Cooperative of Washington State an affiliate of the IAM Woodworkers.

Finally, the drivers would like to take this opportunity to express their own solidarity with the workers inside the mill who are patiently awaiting the outcome of negotiations between USW and Weyerhaeuser management.