Sometimes even inverted pyramid misses the point

The standard, straightforward, time-tested format for news stories is called the inverted pyramid. The most important information is packed at the top, tapering to the less important at the bottom. This structure, in addition to helping the harried editor up against a deadline, benefits the reader with the short attention span.

Like the story Thursday with this attention-grabbing headline: “Timber firms seek housing for laborers.” The subhead read: “Driving to sites deemed risky.”

The news story that followed offered details on how the tragic accident last month that killed 14 foreign forestry workers here in Maine – an accident in which the lack of housing and the risk of driving to remote sites played an important role – would lead to change. The dreadful working and living conditions those poor Guatemalans and Hondurans endured and that the accident exposed would be improved. The damage that exposure did to Maine’s image might be repaired.

Having read many dozens of news stories the last few weeks on migrant workers in the United States, I’ve come to recognize a variation of this format. Call it the obfuscated pyramid – at the top of the story, you’ll find promises of intent to improve shameful working conditions; come the bottom, there’s enough “buts” offered for why they probably can’t be improved to cover any contingency.

Maybe that won’t be the case this time, but…

Reading Thursday’s story from top to bottom, the forestry industry and state labor officials go from striding together purposefully toward a brighter day for workers to ducking for cover. From the industry, there are fretful warnings that federal regulations on migrant worker housing might be too unreasonable to meet – clean outhouses, safe drinking water, a sleeping area in excess of seven feet by seven feet, who knows what other frills? From state officials, square-jawed determination turned to timid advisories that this is a federal issue over which the state has almost no control.

This has been the pattern, from the industry and the state, at every stage since the Sept. 12 accident. Gov. King was shocked and saddened by the tragedy, he promptly directed the state Department of Labor to conduct a vigorous and thorough review of the process by which it certifies the need for foreign forestry workers under the H2B visa program. That done, the governor then resumed his “happy talk” tour to remind local chambers of commerce what a swell job he’s done the last seven and three-quarter years. The state Department of Labor launched its review with vigor, then started muttering about how it’s largely a federal deal, so don’t expect much from us.

Why should much, or at least more, be expected? The forestry industry is the recipient of one the state’s most generous and long-running tax breaks – this is Tree Growth’s 30th year, three decades of cut-rate property taxes for this industry, with the difference being made up by every other property taxpayer in the state. In return for this break, the industry should provide good jobs, with pay and working conditions that will sustain the local economy instead of bottom-feeding among the world’s poorest nations (the annual per-capita income in Honduras is barely $850).

The landowner in this particular case, Seven Islands, paid $200 per acre for thinning. These desperately poor men from Central America were being paid $75 an acre, that before some thoroughly absurd paycheck deductions. The remaining $125 went for a double layer of contractor/subcontractor overhead commonly used in the industry to protect the landowner from the legal obligations of being an employer. The state Department of Labor is supposed to certify that companies seeking to bring in foreign workers under the H2B program (for nonskilled, non-agricultural workers) have made a genuine effort to hire U.S. citizens. The number of H2Bs in Maine has grown in the last six years from 50 to 1,200. An application has never been denied.

What should be expected? From the state Department of Labor that it do more than merely keep its rubber H2B stamp inked; an acknowledgment that the effort to hire U.S. workers is not genuine if the low-paying jobs appeal only to people from the poorest places on Earth while $125 per acre is blown trying to avoid responsibility. From the governor that his incessant bleating about how casino gambling will tarnish some fantasy he holds about of Maine’s quality of life would mature into the realization that the tragedy in the Allagash revealed some ugly truths about Maine’s quality of life and how his administration responds truly matters.

So far, the response has been shallow, almost as if a whole lot of people in Augusta will be changing jobs in a couple of months and don’t especially care to start paying attention now. Here’s a telling, yet amusing, example:

On Sept. 23, this newspaper made a written request to Vaughn LeBlanc of the Maine Department of Labor’s Division of Migrant and Immigration Services for information, under the Freedom of Access law, on companies certified to employ foreign workers in Maine. What companies, how many workers, that sort of thing. The request was made in a standard business-letter format – date at the very top, addressee next.

On Sept. 30, we received a response. Our written request of Aug. 14 to Juan Perez had been denied. Even the time-tested inverted pyramid doesn’t work if the reader isn’t even trying to pay attention.

Bruce Kyle is the assistant editorial page editor for the Bangor Daily News.