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Forest Worker Forum press coverage
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Tracy Katelman, ASJE
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Feb 01, 2007 22:56 PST
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Testimony tells of forest full
of abuses
By Diane Dietz
The Register-Guard
Published: Thursday, February 1, 2007
Two dozen Hispanic forestry workers told high-ranking Bush administration
officials about wrongs they suffered at the hands of unscrupulous
contractors on federal forests in Oregon.
The tree planters, stand thinners and slash burners said they're driven
in cramped vans three or four hours to work sites - where they work three
hours - then return home, and they're only paid for their time on the
forest floor.
"We go home and the bills are waiting for us. How are we going to
pay them?" said Marcos, a Medford worker who would not give his full
name because he feared retaliation from the contractors he works for.
The job is dangerous and injuries frequent, the workers told Agriculture
Department Undersecretary Mark Rey and Labor Department Deputy
Administrator Alex Passantino, who appeared at the forum held in a
University of Oregon building near Autzen Stadium.
Workers are cut by chain saws, whipped by branches and hit by falling
trees. And when they're hurt, the unscrupulous foreman turns his back,
the workers said.
"They don't want to take you in for treatment," said Medford
worker Martin Carrera. "They want to wrap you up with a rag and hope
you get better."
The workers say they are taken from job to job, sometimes 20 or 30 hours
from home. The contractor puts them up with six or seven men to a hotel
room. They must cook their own food outdoors, no matter the weather.
They work eight, 10 or 12 hours a day, get 10 minutes for lunch and no
breaks. When they are thirsty, they must stoop and drink from forest
streams.
"They don't treat us like people. They treat us like slaves,"
said a woman who identified herself as Francisca, who testified for her
husband, who was traveling to a job.
Hugo Peregrino, a manager with Mount Saint Helens Reforestation, traveled
from Washington to testify.
"Everything they have said is true," he told the officials.
"We have been suffering for 20 years and it will continue to happen
if you don't do something."
Rey and Passantino told the crowd of 80 contractors, forest workers,
academics and government officials that the Forest Service and the
Department of Labor spent 2006 working on the problem - and the agencies
will use information gathered at the forum to improve working conditions
in the coming season.
"It's clear there's a lot more that needs to be done," Rey
said.
Over the past year, the Forest Service reviewed all 150 active
reforestation contracts. The Department of Labor conducted two dozen site
inspections and expects to do a similar number this year.
The inspections yielded four cases where contractors were shorting the
pay of their workers, said Ron Hooper, the Forest Service director of
acquisitions management. Two were in Idaho, one was in Utah and the
fourth was in New Mexico, he said. The agency ordered back pay for the
workers and in some instances levied fines.
Officials created a wallet-sized card in English and Spanish it plans to
deliver to reforestation workers that explains their rights under federal
law. It includes a toll-free phone number to report abuses.
The Forest Service also revised its contracts to educate contractors on
what they must pay. It's the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour on
private land and the typical wage for the job - usually $11 or $12 an
hour - on public land.
The contracts also spell out what safety gear the contractors must
provide and what rules apply to housing and travel conditions.
The goal was to "take the vagueness and generalities out of the
contracts and make them very specific," Hooper said.
The Department of Labor made a "red flag" checklist to help
Forest Service employees spot, document and report violations of labor
laws. The Forest Service agreed to give labor officials a list of where
the forestry contracts are to be carried out, so they know where to
inspect.
The contracts require the companies to keep good wage and hour records,
so inspectors can verify that the workers are paid properly.
"We are serious about this and we are putting accountability into
the process," Hooper said.
Still, federal officials admit the task of enforcement is difficult. The
work sites are remote and difficult for inspectors to reach. Hispanic
workers who are unfamiliar with the concept of worker rights are
reluctant to report abuses to the government. The contractors' ranks have
frequent turnover.
"The bad contractors are moving in quickly and moving out quickly -
taking advantage of the workers - and they're gone before you guys know
it," Philomath contractor Lee Miller told the group.
Denise Smith, coordinator of the Alliance of Forest Workers and
Harvesters, said the inspections are just scratching the surface.
"It takes a lot more than showing up one day when everybody knows
you're coming," she said.
But Rey said the reforms are going to
take time. "We have to sustain this over several years," he
said. "One season by itself is not going to make the systemic
change."
The contractors told Rey the system of strict low-bid contracting the
Forest Service follows has given the advantage to fly-by-night
contractors.
They submit bids that are based on exploiting undocumented or guest
workers who are unwilling or unable to seek redress for poor conditions.
No legitimate contractor can compete, said Nick Cicero, a forestry worker
from Ashland. "The prices they do per-acre is physically
impossible," he said.
But Rey said the Forest Service's hands are tied. The courts have ruled
that the agency can't reject a low bid because it believes the price is
too low.
Strong enforcement would help, said Enrique Santos, an interpreter for
the harvesters' alliance. "You sting a couple of those suckers and
this would be straightened out in no time," he told the federal
officials.
--------
Attached and included below are three additional stories about the
Forum on Working Conditions for Forest Workers.
William McCall
AP
Published: 02/01/2007
A top Bush administration forestry official announced Wednesday the
Forest Service will try a new business model for contract work in federal
forests to help prevent worker abuse and encourage investment in rural
communities.
Mark Rey, Agriculture Department undersecretary for natural resources and
the environment, said test programs are planned this year for three
national forests the Colville in Washington state, Shasta Trinity in
Northern California, and the Allegheny in Pennsylvania.
The goal is to make forest management projects into long-term projects
stretching over 10 years to allow contractors to invest in equipment and
training for workers, and to allow them to build stronger ties to the
community, Rey and other federal officials said.
"What we're trying to do with this new business model is see if we
can respond to some of the problems that the current contracting system
creates in terms of making it more difficult for local communities to
participate,"
Rey said.
Bids for work such as reforestation or forest thinning projects typically
cover only one year and rely heavily on the lowest bidder too often a
"fly-by-night" or unscrupulous contractor who abuses immigrant
workers mostly from Mexico, Rey and other officials said at a public
hearing on forest worker conditions at the University of Oregon.
The new business model likely will have to address current law that
prohibits the U.S. Forest Service from rejecting bids it considers too
low, Rey said.
"In the past we have tried to reject bids like that, suspecting that
probably either the work would not get done well or it would get done
through the abuse of contract workers," Rey said.
Rey said the administration will reintroduce legislation called the
Healthy Forest Partnership "that will in part see if Congress will
give us authorization to contract not only with private contractors but
with other units of government including local
communities."
The hearing was sponsored by the university, the Alliance of Forest
Workers and Harvesters and Sustainable Northwest to discuss federal
efforts to protect the health and safety of contract workers in national
forests.
The Forest Service stepped up those efforts following a series of stories
by the Sacramento Bee in 2005 on abuse of contract workers, largely
Mexicans in this country legally under what was a little-known federal
guest worker program to fill low-paying, non-farm jobs.
In 2006, however, investigations found only four significant cases across
the West two in Idaho, one in Utah and another in New Mexico, said Ron
Hooper, the Forest Service director of acquisition management.
"But it's going to be part of a long-term effort," Hooper
said.
Rey, Hooper and Alex Passantino, deputy administrator of the Labor
Department's Wage and Hour Division, listened to a number of forest
workers talk about contractors who refused to pay overtime, failed to
provide needed safety equipment or charged the workers for it, jammed six
workers into a single motel room on trips, and threatened to fire them or
blackball them if they complained to authorities.
Most spoke in Spanish and declined to give their full names.
Enrique Santos, spokesman for the Alliance of Forest Workers and
Harvesters, said the hearing would have been packed with hundreds of
other workers but they were afraid of retribution. He added that most
immigrants are hard workers who take pride in improving forest
health.
"There has been an increase in unscrupulous contractors that makes
it more difficult for the good contractors," Santos told the panel
in brief comments on behalf of the workers calling for even tougher
enforcement of federal labor laws.
"If you sting a couple of these suckers, I have no doubt this thing
would be straightened out in no time," Santos said.
__________________________________________________________
OPB
News
Feds Step Up Inspection of Forest Contractors
By Chris Lehman
SALEM, OR (2007-02-01) U.S. Forest Service officials say they've
increased inspections of companies they hire to manage Federal
timberland.
The move comes after complaints from activist groups about the
mistreatment of workers who do things like plant trees and put out forest
fires.
Ron Hooper is in charge of lining up contractors for the Forest Service.
He told a group of forest workers and employers in Eugene Wednesday that
the government will also be closely monitoring the contracts to make sure
they're fair to everyone involved.
Ron Hooper: "So that you as contractors, you as workers on these
contracts, can look at that contract and know exactly what you're
entitled to in terms of being treated appropriately and in terms of your
wage and benefits that you're entitled to."
Hooper says the government will also distribute pamphlets to workers
outlining their rights in both Spanish and English.
Many forest service workers are in the country on special work visas and
aren't aware of existing protections.
© Copyright 2007, OPB
___________________________________________________________
Forest workers air their grievances
By Andy Peterson
KVAL
(To view the accompanying video segment go to:
http://www.kval.com/news/local/5435356.html?video=YHI&;t=a)
Workers are hired by contractors to work the forest lands, and those
workers tell us that, while there are plenty of good contractors out
there, there are some who are abusive.
"From my perspective, I've worked in the woods for 30 years,"
says forest worker CeCe Headley, "and I think it's the best job you
could possibly have. That said, you can suck the fun out of
anything."
Headley was just one of the forest workers to attend a forum Wednesday at
the U of O, a chance to speak with federal officials about how workers
are treated by contractors in the field.
"Some of them, their conditions are quite good and they want to go
to work everyday, and they're wonderful," says Cassandra Moseley of
the UO's Ecosystem Workforce Program, which recently completed a study of
forest workers. "And other people, you just can't believe that it's
happening."
"They're worked like dogs," Headley elaborates. "They're
in substandard housing, they're in substandard vehicles, as I said.
They're not treated with respect and dignity, and they're not paid
well."
In fact, some of the workers we spoke with today said they didn't even
want to have their faces shown on camera, out of concerns that just by
being here at this event, they could potentially lose their
jobs.
This event is part of the US Department of Agriculture's increased
efforts to hold contractors accountable.
"We asked our contract administrators take a more aggressive
role," says U.S. Undersecretary of Agriculture Mark Rey, "in
making sure that H2B, temporary forest workers, were treated in
accordance with existing law."
That includes an increase in random inspections of job sites looking for
abuses. Workers like Headley tell us that it's a start.
"What we used to say in tree planting, is they care very deeply
about the health of the tree, and don't look at all to the person
planting the tree," Headley explains. "So that's what the
change that we're looking for."
Those inspections have been underway for the past year, and officials
with the USDA and Department of Labor say they wanted to get feedback
before the next planting season begins.
Tracy Katelman
Executive Director
Alliance for
Sustainable Jobs and the Environment
POB 1361, Eureka, CA
95502
Office: 840 E Street, Suite 5, Eureka Labor Temple
Phone/FAX:
707-498-4481
Mobile: 707-845-8579
tra-@asje.org
www.asje.org
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www.asje.org/jonew.html
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