Wholesalers' annual breaks records

LfORTH American Wholesale lll-umber Association president for the coming year will be Gordon J. King, Hampton Lumber Sales Co., Portland, Or.

Other elected officers are Clenn L. Banks, Banks Lumber Co., Elkhart, In., first vice president; John Weston, Far West Fir Sales Co., Huntington Beach, Ca., second vice president, and Robert Scholl, Scholl Lumber Co., Bethlehem, Pa., treasurer.

James K. Bishop, PlunkettWebster, Inc., New Rochelle, N.Y., was the recipient of the John J. Mulrooney Memorial Award, the highest recognition which can be bestowed by the wholesale lumber industry.

Over 450 members and wives attended the April 23-27 meeting at the Greenbrier Hotel in White Sulphur Springs, WV.

"New Horizons" was the theme of this 92nd annual meeting. For the first time the manufacturer,/service supplier/wholesaler contact session, which provides NAWLA associate and service affiliate members the opportunity to display their services at no charge to wholesaler members, featured 55 participants with several companies wait-listed. This year's event was the largest since the progftrm was incorporated into the annual meeting.

Art Holst, a former National Football League official, motivated his audience with a presentation filled with humorous stories from his many years experience in football.

Dr. William C. Freund, senior v.p. and chief economist of the New York Stock Exchange, provided an insight- ful look at the financial future of our nation, leaving the audience with a feeling of hope and optimism for the next 18 months.

James Norris, Arthur Andersen Co., Chicago, Il., acquainted the delegates with future trends in wholesaling, including information on industry and company growth, com-

Story at a Glance

Record number of manufac. turers and suppliers participate in contact session. Bishop receaves Mulrooney Memorial trophy. King elected pres.

petitive structure, competitive advantage, functional change and profitability. He also outlined a systematic approach to long range planning for wholesalers.

Panel discussions on computerization and company succession as well as the traditional manufacturer,/serv- ice supplier/wholesaler working session, which allows all classifications of NAWLA members to work together in finding solutions to problems presented by an industry panel, drew attentive audiences.

Social events included a welcoming reception, a Monte Carlo fun night and the president's reception and banquet as well as tennis and golf.

Japanese Wood Tariff Hit

The National Forest Products Association has protested to Toshio Kohmoto, minister of Japan's economic planning agency and chief coordinator of economic relationships with its major trading partners, over a new package of Japanese trade liberalization measures which did not include tariff reductions on processed wood products.

Calculated to reduce trade friction between the U.S. and Japan, the package also discusses elimination or reductions in tariffs on more than 60 industrial agricultural products including certain paper items as well as the possibility of speeding up the phasing of some 1,200 tariff cuts negotiated in the 1974-79 Multilateral Thade Negotiations.

NFPA said the U.S. industry had offered to support reductions in U.S. tariffs on Japan's major wood export to the United States, certain types of hardwood plywood, in exchange for similar tariff reductions on U.S. wood panel products exports to JaPan. Japan now exports twenty times more wood panel products to the United States than the U.S. exports to Japan, NFPA claims.

They pointed out the U.S. forest

The Merchant Magazine products industry is one of the strongest U.S. advocates of free trade. "Our country has long requested that your country pull down the high wall of protectionism which you maintain around your wood processing industries. While Japan freely and enthusiastically buys billions of dollars of raw material from our industry, you continue to maintain high tariffs on many of our processed wood Products. Your 12 to 150/o tariff walls on panel products, for example, reduce our shipments to Japan to a trickle, less than one-half of l9o of your annual consumption," the NFPA statement said.

Wlllamlna Stdke Settlement

After more than a year of negotiations with the International Woodworkers of America and a 13 week strike, Willamina Lumber Co., Portland, Or., has signed a new labor agreement incorporating major changes in the industry wide approach to compensation.

'fhe package includes a wage cost freeze for the first year, with wage increases in the second and third years tied to productivity gains with annual minimums, profit sharing, reduction of vacations, reduction of paid holidays, replacement of IWA-TOC pension plan with an alternative plan, substitution of a major medical plan for a more costly Union plan, elimination of Union membership as a condition of employment, and other changes designed to enhance cost reductions to make the plant more competitive.

"The Company has accomplished every single major objective that it set

Flrm to Assist Home Centers

DataSolutions, a national data processing consulting firm, has been formed in Phoenix, Az.,to assist retail hardware and home center firms.

Richard A. Falk and Business Information Systems, Inc., a data processing service bureau, are co-founders. Falk was formerly dfuector of research services, National Retail Hardware Association, director of the Home Center Institute, Indianapolis, In., director of marketing for Wickes Companies and vice president of marketing and sales, California Hardware Company, Los Angeles, Ca.

New Lumber Div. Formed

Berger & Co., a San Francisco, Ca., based international commodity trading company, has established a new lumber division. Based in Sacramento, Ca., it is headed by veteran lumberman Robert Glatt, who recently left the Nikkel Corp. after 26 years with the firm.

Working for Glatt are Bill Hanrahan and Jim Haas. Presently dealing in foreign and domestic wood products, the new division anticipates eventual involvement in the import and export field.

out to achieve at the beginning of negotiations," said John C. Harnpton, president of Willamina Lumber Co. "We have reduced guaranteed costs largely for unproductive benefits which provides better job stability in bad markets, while substituting a mechanism for paying for improved performance and profits, which is where the money has to come from in the final analysis," said Hampton.

A petition for decertification of the IWA as bargaining agent was filed by a number of Willamina Lumber employees with the National Labor Relations Board prior to the signing of the new agreement. Unfair labor practice charges filed by the IWA against the company which have delayed the election have been dismissed by NLRB's Regional Director. The election will be held in due course, notwithstanding the execution of the new contract.

"Productivity, overrun and efficiency now exceed pre-strike levels," said Hampton, "attesting to the value of the company's insistance on putting both company and employees in a position to benefit from becoming more competitive to face the difficult times of the present and the future."