DECEMBER NEWSLETTER

On December 3rd-4th, we attended a meeting in Montreal with the Eastern pulp and paper group. The emergency meeting was called to discuss the companies asking for concessions that were negotiated just last year. Each local gave a report on their mill’s status and were asked if there was trouble with the negotiated contracts, or for some mills, where they were in negotiations. There were several mills that had survival plans in place, but that the pattern settlement would still be in place whether now or in 2009. One mill gave a 20% loan to the company on their wages and will get this back by 2009 or when the company turns a profit. There were also conditions of no layoffs and other conditions - but this appears not to be helping as they are in credit protection and now looking for a buyer.

At the end of the meeting, all locals gave their support to uphold the pattern agreement that we helped support each other with. Otherwise, it will put mill against mill and drag everybody down.

We have sent a letter to the Company notifying them that we will ready to meet with them January 3,4 & 5th, but as of December 19th we haven't heard back from them. We were told at the meetings that a plan would be developed within 30-60 days and so far it has been silent. One would figure that if the mill were in that bad of shape that we would have been meeting already.

We had our 4th stage grievance meeting with the Company and we dealt with 6 grievances and still have more to scheduled. With the bumping grievance, the Mechanical staff was denied

being able to bump into operations and the company maintains they never did before on a temporary layoff. We are awaiting their answer on this.

The Company grieved us on our bylaw saying the Local is having a concerted effort to stop our people from working overtime which constitute an illegal strike. We will answer them in due time.

Deceased member was Dan Bottos.