Importing loggers?

The American Loggers Council is outraged over a proposal to import loggers from a foreign country when there are plenty of domestic contract loggers willing to work for a fair day’s pay. The American Loggers Council is the only national trade association that represents independent contract loggers, exclusively.

A recent press release from Maine’s congressional delegation urges the support of Labor Secretary Elaine Chao to grant Canadian loggers entry to the United States on H-2A visas. H-2A visas apply to agricultural workers while any current logger from Canada is working under a H2-B visa.

The press release states, “These Canadian loggers have traditionally entered our country in the H2-B visa classification for temporary nonagricultural workers. Early this year, the annual H-2B quota of 66,000 visas was reached, leaving the timber industry without its traditional means of hiring Canadian loggers. … The Department of Labor could address this anomaly by immediately reclassifying loggers as agriculture workers for this limited purpose.”

The letter asserts “there will be a calamitous drop in the ability to get wood to pulp and saw mills, and the economic consequences mostly for U.S. workers threaten to be enormous.”

The manufacturers’ argument in favor of the H2-A visa classification claims “to help the economy.” The American Loggers Council position against the H2-A visa classification is “to protect the economy.” We believe that agricultural exemptions for the logging industry would be good to help stimulate the logging industry, but the abuse of the classification of logging as agriculture as only applying to labor laws to hire a Canadian labor force that is willing to work for lower wages that can be translated to higher wages when the exchange rate is applied when the U.S. dollars are taken back across the border is bad policy.

The delegations release states, “According to a study commissioned by the Maine Forest Products Council, Maine Pulp and Paper Council and the Forest Resources Association, all timber manufacturing groups, nearly 9,000 jobs could be lost in total due to the economic effects on Maine – nearly 3,000 jobs directly with the paper mills. The report also states that, “In compliance with the Department of Labor certification process, the industry hires these foreign workers only after all (italics added for emphasis) attempts to hire sufficient numbers of U.S. workers have failed.”

The American Loggers Council position is that if they want a healthy, viable work force in the logging industry in the United States, then harvesting rates should be high enough to promote those jobs. The report states the “all attempts to hire sufficient U.S. workers have failed.” That does not include considering giving U.S. logging contractors a rate increase so that they can afford to hire those highly skilled and competent local professionals who are willing to give a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay.

The perceived “labor shortage of U.S. workers” is not because there are not enough people to fill the jobs, it is because the logging rates corporations are willing to pay to the loggers will not allow the loggers to hire American workers. Supporting this “reclassification” of H-2B visas will only promote importing more labor from Canada and displacing U.S. Logging jobs. It is inconceivable how any organization can support the loss of jobs in the United States, but with the spin that has been put on this issue, it looks like there are those who not only support importing our wood products from other countries, but jobs as well.

The American Loggers Council will be meeting in Bangor this September and is hopeful that this issue will be resolved prior to that meeting.

Danny Dructor is executive vice president for the American Loggers Council.