Bonding promotes American unemployment and greed

Recent opinion articles have provided a lot of information about the H2-B bonding program and logging, but I think it’s important people hear from a logger. The H2-B program brings Canadian loggers to Maine and other states to cope with a shortage of workers in our forests. On the surface, it sounds like a good deal.

The bonded labor program began during World War II because of a real shortage of workers who had gone into military service. Since that time, the battle for jobs and decent pay has never ended.

I can remember my grandfather telling me stories about going to woods camps in the 1950s, and being sent home because Canadians with teams of horses had taken all the jobs. Our equipment has changed since then, but the problem remains the same. Large landowners and their contractors use bonded workers to maximize profits by driving down logging rates and discouraging Americans from applying for jobs.

Many jobs I see advertised are really a farce. These contractors advertise in case they need bonds later in the season. Because of this, the number of jobs, estimated at 700, is greatly inflated. If you review the list, you’ll find that many of the contractors have filed for operators for equipment they don’t own, or even more likely, have filed for double the workers that they can actually use. I would estimate there are probably closer to 300 jobs actually available.

In Fort Kent and Millinocket, towns with some of the highest unemployment rates in Maine, you would think that people would be glad to have these jobs and that positions should be easy to fill. Think again. What is really going on is that there is no equipment, but contractors want to hire a Canadian worker who comes with his own equipment and will work for a price Americans can’t compete with. The industry says that a lack of their precious, cheap, foreign labor would cause a fiber shortage.

They say 3,000 jobs would be lost, and another 9,000 jobs would be lost in a ripple effect. Maine exports half of its wood to Canadian mills, which already trickles down to a loss of probably more than 3,000 manufacturing jobs in this state. If this is the case, can’t we just take some of that 50 percent and send it to Maine mills if there is actually a shortage? Why are we so concerned with the Canadian mills?

Labor disputes about Canadian owner-operators date back the 1970s. The U.S. Department of Labor’s solution was to establish prevailing wage rates for skidders and chainsaws. Prevailing wage rates were a minimum price that contractors had to pay to lessen the adverse effect on American workers.

To some degree, this worked, at least giving loggers a basis to argue for better rates. As mechanization has evolved the use of cable skidders and chainsaws have been nearly eliminated. Feller-bunchers, delimbers and processors have taken over. Although this type of equipment has been used for more than 20 years, the U.S. Department of Labor has failed to set prevailing wage rates for new equipment.

There is absolutely no minimum price that a contractor must pay an American bringing his own processor to work. A contractor can offer $1 per ton knowing the American will refuse, and then hire a Canadian. With exchange rates as high as 50 percent on the dollar, it is easy to see how Canadians can work for less. Besides the low pay, Canadians don’t need health insurance since Canada has a national health plan.

In 15 years working in Maine’s woods, I have only had health insurance for two years, when I worked in southern Maine. I have never been offered health insurance since. In a time when health insurance is so valuable, I have seen many people leave the industry to take lower paying jobs that offer insurance.

In 1998, I joined others fed up by the U.S. and Maine Department of Labor’s failure to act on these problems to block three ports of entry on the Canadian border to protest the use of bonded labor to depress logging rates.

We refused to allow any workers to cross those ports for a week until decision-makers could come discuss the problems with us. We thought our northern seclusion kept government officials from knowing a problem existed. What we found out was that their inaction and catering to the special interests of large landowners were the sources of our problem.

According to the Pan-Atlantic study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Labor, landowner profits from logging have risen 169 percent in the last 25 years. Logger productivity has increased 74 percent, but their wages have fallen 32 percent. From this research, our contention that logging wages were too low is evident, but during our protest, we were called lazy, dishonest and radical by some in industry and government.

Now, as state representative for District 151, I have been flooded with calls from constituents eager to know what was happening with bonds this year. They were excited about the possibility of finally getting jobs with competitive pay in places they could never work before. Many talked of investing in new equipment or coming back to the industry. I was even surprised that some contractors who had used bonded labor in the past said that they hoped that they stopped the influx of foreign labor. They said the only reason they used bonded workers was because landowners didn’t pay them enough to hire Americans.

For all of these people, opportunity has again passed them by.

It is unfortunate this type of greed continues to go on. Logging used to be an occupation where you never hurt anyone, made an honest living, and could be proud of your hard work. It’s too bad that the people who have ruined this industry with their greed can’t say the same thing.

Troy Jackson represents District 151 – Allagash, Eagle Lake, Fort Kent, New Canada, Portage Lake, St. Francis, Wallagrass, the plantations of Garfield, Nashville, Oxbow, St. John and Winterville and unorganized territories. Professionally, Jackson has worked as a logger for 15 years.