Forestry Workers Fight for Sustainable Jobs
By Ken James
The Youbou TimberLess Society was founded in 2000 by sawmill workers who were about to lose their jobs because of a company (TimberWest) whose agenda, was and is, to export raw logs. We believe that a work ethic can and must co-exist with an environmental ethic. After almost 5 years our society is still going strong and we continue to try and educate the public of the harmful effects of shipping out our precious resources in a non-value-added form. Exported Logs = Exported Jobs.
Over the last 4 years log exports have almost tripled and are 7 ½ times what we averaged in the 1990’s. Well-paying jobs in the forest industry have steadily declined on the coast in that same period, which make statements made recently by government and industry about the “healthy industry” laughable to all those who have lost jobs. The current situation is only “healthy” for the corporations, not the workers or the environment.
The Forestry Revitalization Act passed in 2003 has been a real blow to working families and their communities. It removed the “social contract” that for over 50 years protected our forest dependant families and communities from the greed of the companies. This social contract helped to ensure that the public got fair compensation and employment from the companies in return for their right to harvest on our public lands. That is all gone now – in addition to many of the Forest Service staff who used to enforce the environmental laws in the woods.
We have worked closely with many groups, both industry and environment, and have been very successful in bringing together groups that normally would not meet. We know that most people in BC want to see jobs continue to flow from our forests, but not at the expense of destroying them.
We believe solutions are very possible. Control and decision making in our public forests needs to be given back to the public, and should not remain in the hands of absentee company CEO’s who tell us what is best for us, while lining their own pockets. Regional log markets must be established so that the smaller manufacturers can gain access to logs to ensure that a real value-added sector is created and that our communities get more local jobs out of what we are harvesting. We want good jobs now, but we also want there to be trees and forests left for our grandchildren.
Ken James, Vice President, Youbou Timberless Society
Sustaining Forestry Jobs
“Environmentalists and new parks are destroying vast numbers of jobs!”
Forestry workers protest the export of raw logs at the Surrey Docks. Photo: WCWC photo file.
Through constant repetition, this widely promoted industry myth became standard truth for some people in the 1990’s. In reality, the amount of loggable forests under protection on Vancouver Island only increased from 3 to 6% in the 1990’s.
What then are the main causes of job loss in the timber industry?
Mechanization, in which workers are replaced with machines, is a primary factor. This includes technological advances in mills and in logging equipment, and the increasing use of helicopter logging. The BC timber industry creates three times fewer jobs than the U.S. industry per volume of wood logged.
The rising export of raw logs to foreign lumber mills also plays an important role. Between 2001 to 2004, the BC Liberal government nearly tripled the export of raw logs compared to the previous four years. According to BC Stats, they allowed 14 million cubic metres (a cubic metre is about one telephone pole worth of wood) of BC logs to flow to foreign mills, the equivalent of exporting almost 14 000 BC mill jobs over four years.
Overcutting (taking too much too fast) and in particular, high-grade overcutting (taking all of the high value wood such as oldgrowth red cedar first) is another major culprit. Companies continually overcut the readily accessible, prime timber in the valley bottoms. This leaves nowhere to log except for far away valley headwaters and steep, high slopes of marginal timber that are expensive to reach. The increasing transportation and road-building costs, combined with the decreasing value of the remaining wood supply, has led many mills to shut down.
Youbou TimberLess Society vice-president and former millworker Ken James.
Doing More With Less
How do we maintain jobs while we make the transition to sustainable forestry? Primarily, it requires that we cut fewer trees while doing more with the wood that we do cut. That is, we must “add value” to our wood by applying more labour to it to make a variety of higher-end products, such as furniture, window frames, moldings, stair components, pre-manufactured homes and paneling. Value-added manufacturing can more than quadruple the jobs-to-harvest ratio. This increase in jobs can offset any job loss from the necessary reduction in the rate of cutting (the Allowable Annual Cut) and from the designation of new protected areas
Log markets and Community Forests
How do we ensure more value-added jobs in the BC timber industry? Besides banning raw log exports, our provincial government must mandate that over half of all the logs cut down must be made available at regional log markets. At log markets, small and large manufacturers can buy logs in all the volumes, species and grades they need through competitive bidding - individual logs or in large bundles. Most of the value-added sector in BC lacks a readily accessible wood supply, as most of it is tied up with a few major corporations who have exclusive logging tenures on Crown lands. If these major companies were forced to put their wood up for auction, instead of putting them through their lower-end mills that produce 2 by 4’s or exporting raw logs, it would go a long way to enhancing the value-added sector in BC.
Greatly expanding Community Forest tenures in BC would also help ensure that harvesting jobs go to local workers and the wood is sold to locally based mills who employ even more local folks.
For more info: www.savebcjobs.com
