New legislator seeks review of logging pay Foreign workers’ deaths spur concerns about safety

BANGOR – The 14 foreign workers who drowned when their van flipped into the Allagash River in September might not have died if the Legislature had followed through with a committee’s recommendations to improve wage and working conditions in the woods, according to a newly elected representative.

The ad hoc legislative committee, which included forestry experts and timberland owners, presented the Legislature with eight ideas to “keep more value-added wood processing in the state and to make logging a more respected and more attractive profession, thus benefiting the economy of rural Maine,” according to its report.

Only three of the committee’s recommendations, all concerning workers compensation, were addressed by the last Legislature. The others were not, including two that instructed the Maine Department of Labor to ask Congress to investigate wage rates and improve working conditions for the “health and safety of woods workers,” said Troy Jackson, an independent from Fort Kent.

“You couldn’t get anyone on the federal or state level to do anything about it,” Jackson said.

Last week, Jackson submitted five bills for consideration in the next legislative session that are identical to the committee’s five recommendations. The former logger, best known for organizing border blockades in the late 1990s to stop Canadians from going to work in Maine’s woods, participated in the committee’s meetings and the development of its recommendations, which were sent to the Legislature in December 2001.

Jackson’s bills were not written because of the foreign workers’ accident, but he said the tragedy energized his desire to fix a system that makes it attractive for logging companies to hire foreign workers at cheaper rates instead of employing Mainers.

He said there’s enough work for both groups, and everyone should be equally paid a wage to live on without feeling pressure to do more work just to get by. Woods work should be safe for all workers, foreign or domestic, he said.

On Sept. 12, 15 foreign workers from Honduras and Guatemala were speeding to get to their remote job site almost three hours away from where they were living, according to the lone survivor. It had rained the day before, and the crew’s foreman wanted to make up for lost work time thinning small trees.

Workers’ paychecks are bigger if they get paid piece rate – or a specified amount per acre – instead of the prevailing wage rate of $10.43 an hour. On good days, workers can brush cut between one and two acres and make about $100.

On Thursday, the state labor department asked Congress to study why two separate visa programs give foreign workers in agriculture better protections in such areas as housing and transportation than their counterparts in forestry, but it did not ask for a review of federal forestry wage policies or working conditions.

The legislative ad-hoc committee was an offshoot of a 1999 report commissioned by the state labor department. Pan Atlantic Consultants was paid $100,000 to study the forestry industry. It didn’t find any significant relationship between the use of Canadians or other foreign workers in forestry and wage rates.

But, Jackson said, the report did note that since the late 1980s, landowners profits were up 169 percent and worker productivity was up 74 percent, yet wages had dropped 32 percent.

Jackson said he personally was affected by the increased use of foreign labor in Maine’s woods. Like the 14 foreign workers who died when their van flipped into the Allagash River two months ago, Jackson has worked tree trimming and planting.

That’s where the similarities end. Jackson was paid $165 an acre as a forestry worker in 1986, while the men from Honduras and Guatemala were paid $75 an acre and required to rent their equipment, pay for gas that fueled those tools, and reimburse their employer for a rented van.

Both Mainers and foreign workers are losing out, Jackson said Friday, due to the “low-wage” structure in the forestry industry. “We can’t afford to do [the jobs] and they’re getting abused. It must be awfully bad in their countries for them to think that this is good.”

Some members of the Legislature’s labor committee are interested in finding out whether they actually could pass requirements to protect foreign workers when they’re in Maine. Specifically, they want to know whether they could require companies that hire forestry employees to provide housing for them close to their remote work sites.

“Yes, I definitely think something is going to happen,” said Rep. Russell Treadwell, R-Carmel, in a recent interview. “I think it’s important. It’s tragic that we had to lose 14 people for this to be considered.”

State Rep. William Smith, D-Van Buren, said he wondered whether the state could require companies to provide housing.

“Whether we can compel them to furnish housing, I don’t think we can,” Smith said. “It’s still something where a worker can elect to live where he wants.”

Other than Jackson’s bills, it is not known whether any other legislation has been submitted to review the wage and working conditions in the forestry industry. A number of labor committee members said they did not know of any.

But state Sen. Karl Turner, R-Cumberland, said he questions whether the labor committee should be doing anything at all.

“My concern is when we try to look at legislative remedies for a specific incident like this we tend not to craft good remedies.

He said the accident occurred because of “poor judgment and a lack of thought.”

“You can’t legislate changing that,” Turner said. “I think we need to be careful.”