Katie DeRosa, Times Colonist
Published: Saturday, August 23, 2008
Bruce Henderson, at 48, is leaving the only career he's ever known and going back to school to start over. Jack Miller is 55 and considering early retirement but doesn't want to see his pension cut. Tim McGonigle, 50, is caught somewhere in between, thinking he is too old to find a new job, but too young to retire.
The three men have one thing in common. They are out-of-work forestry workers struggling with how to move forward in the face of chronic layoffs and instability in Vancouver Island's forestry sector, an industry which experts say is facing the worst market conditions in decades.
A housing market crippled by the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis, a powerful Canadian dollar and softwood lumber export tariffs have piled up to create a volatile environment for many loggers who say they've been idle for most of the year.
Henderson, who lives in Campbell River, says he is tired of crossing his fingers that he'll be called back to work before his employment insurance or savings runs out.
"You just throw your hands up in the air. I'm going through stress every year for the same thing: 'When am I going to go back to work?'" he said. "I need to find something better, something that's going to give me steady employment and this is not steady employment at all."
After a 24-year career as a heli-logger, Henderson has decided to bow out of the industry altogether.
"It's hard to make a living at it now and it's just getting worse. So I needed to bail because I'm trying to feed my family."
Henderson hasn't worked since November. He previously worked for North Shore Scaling Ltd. but his outfit, which conducted waste surveys on logged sites, has been terminated.
Layoffs have been widespread across the Island in recent months.
In July, Catalyst Paper put 440 people out of work when it permanently shuttered its pulp mill near Campbell River.
In the same month, 530 people were left without jobs when Pope & Talbot shut down its Harmac operation in Nanaimo and in May, 190 got the axe after the Madill Equipment bankruptcy.
Earlier, Western Forest Products laid off a whopping 2,000 loggers and sawmill workers in June when it announced it would cut back more than half its logging operations and close its sawmill at Duke Point.
Industry experts estimate up to 5,000 forestry employees are out of work on Vancouver Island.
"This is as bad as its ever been," said Rick Jeffery, CEO of the Coast Forest Products Association.
The coastal industry's logging production is down 30 per cent and lumber production is down 20 per cent from last year.
Henderson decided to move from the slumping forestry industry into construction, which is begging for workers on the Island. In June he started a forming, framing and finishing carpentry course at Campbell River's Discovery Community College.
By the time he's done the 52-week, $17,000 course, he'll be able to set the foundation of a house, erect the walls and finish it with cabinets and floors -- what Henderson calls "the whole enchilada."
He was eligible for tuition assistance through the provincially run Community and Development trust fund and the North Island Employment Foundation Society.
Using $129 million granted by the federal government over three years, the Community Development ministry set up a three-pronged program in May that offers retirement and tuition assistance and alternative job opportunities.
The tuition assistance program offers up to $5,000 for forestry workers laid off for at least four months who want to upgrade their skills. The ministry has received almost 400 applications, and forestry workers are eligible for tuition funding over the next three years.
Ken Stratford, Victoria's Economic Development Commissioner, said forestry workers have valuable transferable skills that allow an easy transition into other trades such as construction. And the fact that many of the displaced loggers are 40 and older will not affect their ability to land a job, he said. With Victoria's low unemployment rate of 3.2 per cent, many sectors are begging for skilled workers, said Stratford. The average construction worker in B.C. is 51 years old, he added.
But Henderson said the transition between jobs is far from easy, as finds himself struggling financially. His tuition was mostly covered by assistance programs, but he still has to pay for books and supplies -- which totals almost $1,500 -- as he lives almost entirely on employment insurance.
"I have a grade average of 95 and I might have to drop out because I have to support my family and I can't do that on $176 [every two weeks]."
He said workers looking to retrain need to come armed with lots of patience and a "thick wallet" to ride out a long period of the student life, with lots of reading and little income.
"A lot of these guys are going to find this out the hard way and it's going to be brutal for some people."
Kent Larden is the manager of NIEFS, the federally funded organization that helped Henderson find his new future in the construction business. The number of forestry workers coming into his office to search for new careers has nearly doubled this year from last, he said. From March 2008 to the end of June there were 461 clients who reported they were from the forestry industry, a jump from 259 in 2007.
"So definitely we've seen an increase," Larden said.
"We get some clients who have seen the writing on the wall, that they felt this was going to happen and already did a lot of research and know what they want to do. And then you see others who say they don't know what they're going to do next."
PUSHED OUT
Some veteran loggers say that even though they are physically capable of several more years of work, they are being pushed out to make room for the younger generation of forestry workers. And they are finding seniority doesn't give them much clout in skirting layoffs.
Jack Miller, 55, of Port McNeill, has tackled nearly every forestry job during his 37 years in the industry and has clocked less than four months of work this year. He now works as a faller for Western Forest Products in what was a halted operation in Nimpkish Valley.
He was called back to work Aug. 18, but said he is always uncertain as to how long the job will last before he is laid off again.
He would be eligible for almost the maximum amount of the retirement fund offered by the ministry. The transition to retirement program gives up to $60,000 for forest workers 55 years or older who are ready to retire. (The closer the individual is to 55 years old and the longer they have been in the industry, the more money they receive.)
But Miller said $60,000 is a paltry sum to span the duration of one's retirement.
"If the provincial government had maybe met what the federal government had given, then you'd maybe be able to do it."
Bill Routley, president of Steelworkers Local 1-80 in Duncan, echoed the sentiment that the provincial government has "abandoned" its forest workers during the industry's darkest hour.
"When you look at what's happened in the steel industry and the auto industry, the provincial government works with them to do retraining," Routley said. "Our provincial government has said 'boo hoo' to our forest workers."
If Miller does takes the carrot the ministry is dangling, he said he risks losing 18 per cent of his pension for retiring before 60.
"They're trying to get that age group out and make way for the younger ones," he said.
Forests Minister Pat Bell could not be reached for comment.
STATE OF LIMBO
At age 50 and with 30 years in the industry, Tim McGonigle is not one of the younger ones, nor is he eligible for the retirement funding.
"We're too young to retire, too old to find new jobs," is how the self-described "jack-of-all-trades, master of none" from Lake Cowichan identifies the state of limbo he shares with many other laid-off forestry workers.
Jobless since June, McGonigle has done everything from setting chokers to running hydraulic logging equipment for Island Pacific Logging in their Honeymoon Bay division. He has put out some resumés for logging operations he heard were hiring, but he said "if nothing happens there, I will look to re-school."
When the industry was in a slump in the mid-1990s, McGonigle went back to school to take a pharmacy technical assistance course. He said he is considering doing an upgrade to open up pharmacy as a career option. He could also head east to Fort McMurray, Alta., where an abundance of lucrative jobs in the oilsands continually draw tradesmen.
"I'm hoping that the economists are right and the industry is just in a [temporary] downturn and there is a light at the end of the tunnel."
And while the fact that things seem to have hit rock bottom sounds like little comfort to those working in the industry, analysts predict the forestry sector will pick up again by 2010.
"It's always darkest before dawn," Jeffery said.
The industry has been doing a lot of work improving productivity, reducing costs and tapping into new markets such as using wood products for energy production, he said.
"My message to [forestry workers] is that there is a future in the industry, these are the most difficult times we've ever seen and we're doing everything we can to get through it."
kderosa@tc.canwest.com
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