Global Game, Local Arena: Restructuring in Corner Brook, Newfoundland (review)

The paper mill in Corner Brook, NL, was an engineering wonder when it was started in the 1920s. It involved a limestone mine, a massive hydroelectric development project at Deer Lake, and the construction of a port, a mill, and the company town of Corner Brook. With massive timber concessions and loan guarantees from the state, after a slow start, the enterprise developed to become, in the 1950s, the largest newsprint producer in the world.

In the early 1980s, demand for newsprint declined and market prices fell. Elsewhere in Canada, pulp and paper operations had been restructured in the 1970s and early 1980s, but failure to update the aging and inefficient Corner Brook plant led to production at the Bowater mill being cut back and workers laid off. Anxious to divest themselves of the operation, in 1984 the mill's owners sold the operation to the Kruger Corporation of Montreal.

This book is about Kruger's takeover and restructuring of Bowater's. Arguing that recent industrial restructuring is 'a political project' linked to liberalization and market deregulation, Norcliffe points out that global processes are worked out in rather different ways, depending on a range of factors, which may change as circumstances change. Decisions rest on the outcome of negotiations with unions, municipalities, and federal and provincial governments, and, we might add, what happens in one place depends on the outcome of negotiations over operations elsewhere.

The core of Norcliffe's book deals with the negotiations that led to the takeover, and subsequent events as Kruger aimed to remove barriers to 'in situ restructuring' in the direction of 'lean production.' In the woods operations, changes involved mechanization and subcontracting to non-union operators. In the mill, the labour force was reduced, reorganized, and required to provide concessions to increase productivity and lower operating costs. What follows is an account of the impact of restructuring on work and family life and the community of Corner Brook.

From the start of negotiations, the labour force and the provincial state were pressured to abandon established protections for workers. In addition, Kruger sought financial and other support from the Newfoundland government. They demanded, but later abandoned, a five-year suspension of workers' right to strike and to lodge grievances. They succeeded in getting a retroactive change to the provincial Labour Standards Act, which freed them from responsibility for paying wages due to Bowater workers who had not been given adequate notice of layoff.

This is a detailed and sobering account of the power of capital, aided by the state, to force concessions out of workers. One key moment in the account occurs when the provincial government pushed through the Kruger Act, without full disclosure of the actual terms of the act to even the MHAs who were discussing and voting on the legislation.

A more detailed account of the dynamics of union resistance to the Kruger agenda would have been useful. The events might have been discussed as part of the Peckford government's general approach to labour relations in the period, which involved a broad-based attack on labour, and foreshadowed attempts to rework labour relations in the 1990s as part of the Economic Recovery strategy of the Clyde Wells government.

It may be that 'place attachment and the will to exercise political power within the place give the local some countervailing authority in its dialectical dance with global capital' (211–12). But my concern is that in his desire to show that there is resistance and resilience in the face of big capital, Norcliffe, like many others now writing about the plight of Newfoundland and resource-dependent communities elsewhere, overstates his case.

Glen Norcliffe's book is important and topical. It ends with a scene shift to the mill at Stephenville, not far from Corner Brook, and the battle for that mill's life. Newfoundland's premier, Danny Williams, once assured voters that the mill would not close on 'my watch.' Some short-term...