ASHLAND – A senior vice president of Fraser Papers Inc. said Tuesday that 85 employees of the company’s Ashland sawmill will be temporarily laid off Friday.

Pierre McNeil, the company’s senior vice president of wood products in Toronto, Ontario, said the company will maintain a processing line for pine sawing and keep the operation at Masardis operating. Fraser also will continue to operate its wood driers. The company has a work force of 280 people in its Aroostook County sawmills.

The layoffs were announced to workers on Monday night, McNeil said. The company hopes to reassess market conditions over the next three weeks.

“Right now we need to see how the market will evolve,” McNeil said. “Indicators are down in the U.S. markets.

“This is our first shutdown of our operations in the United States,” McNeil said. “We have had shutdowns already at our Canadian sawmills.”

McNeil said layoffs are for a three-week period. The affected workers, according to the official, are on the main line in the stud mill at Ashland. McNeil said the market price for stud lumber leaves the company no alternative but to shut down.

The slowdown in housing starts across the United States and the recent approval of a softwood lumber agreement between the U.S. and Canada have caused a glut of sawn lumber across the country.

“It’s happening Friday,” Ron Beaulieu, mill manager for Fraser said Tuesday. “It’s the first time these sawmills [have seen] a shutdown.

“We have been losing money for the past couple of months,” he said. “Last Friday the stud market took another hit.”

“Hopefully market prices will increase over the next three weeks,” he continued.

Beaulieu said lumber is being sold for $300 per thousand feet delivered in Boston. He said those were the prices of lumber 15 years ago.

The announcement was hitting the small northern Maine town of 1,474 hard Tuesday. Town Manager Jim Gardner heard about the layoffs Tuesday afternoon.

“This will hurt for sure,” Ashland Town Manager Jim Gardner said Tuesday. “Just before the holidays this way.

“Fraser is the major employer in this town,” he said. “I haven’t heard what the extent will be, but it’s a somber message.”

The mill has employees that come from Fort Kent to Presque Isle, according to Beaulieu. The majority, though, are from the Masardis-Ashland-Portage Lake area.

The town, according to Gardner, also has cedar and hardwood sawmills not owned by Fraser. The town also has a mill making wood pellets.

“Lumber is not moving anywhere,” Sen. John L. Martin, D-Eagle Lake, said Tuesday afternoon. “There is an oversupply because of the agreement with Canada.

“There is a glut of Canadian softwood in the United States,” he said. “It’s a saving grace for Ashland that [wood] chips are still needed for the Edmundston operation because the layoff would be worse.”

Wood chips are a by-product of sawmills. Chips from Ashland go to several outlets including the Fraser mill at Edmundston, New Brunswick.

Martin blamed the problems of the lumber industry on President Bush’s trade policies which, Martin said, sold U.S. interest “down the river.”