Street Roots • Feb. 5-11 2016
News
Page 5
TIMBER, from page 4
cool.’ Then I see a few white folks, but
they’re the ones that have a really nice
jacket, they’re driving the tractors, they’re
inside the cab or they’re just walking around
with their rubber boots, insulated and well
covered.”
The day was spent pulling saplings from
the frozen earth for later replanting in the
forest. The rubber boots and gloves he wore
didn’t keep out the frigid cold. By the day’s
end, his hands were bleeding and his body
ached so badly he could barely move.
In Mexico, he planted crops - beans,
squash and com. He had raised livestock as
a ranch hand. “I was used to work,” he said,
“but not under these conditions and
definitely not pulling trees and having my
back bent all day long.”
He had been pulling trees for a month,
miserably, when his brothers came to him
with news of a job change.
“They started telling me that those trees
that we were pulling - we were going to go
out into the woods and we were going to
plant them - and that it was much worse!”
he said. “I’m like, ‘G reat So I’m going from
this to something much worse?’”
He planted trees off and on for the next
five years. “You absolutely do it because you
have to - to survive,” he said. “For me, it
was the lack of understanding of the
language at that time, and so I did it
because I had to do i t ”
Because many reforestation workers have
families to feed and few other options given
their immigration status, they keep their
heads down and their mouths shut, out of
fear of being blacklisted from the industry
for reporting commonplace on-the-job
injuries, dangerous working conditions and
wage theft.
They pile into vans before dawn to travel
- sometimes for several unpaid hours - to
worksites in forests across the Pacific
Northwest!
They carry 50-pound bags full of saplings,
often on steep inclines during winter
months; planting more than 40 million trees
each year.
They swing chainsaws and spray
herbicides - in many cases with no formal
training. At night, far from home, they are
commonly put up in motel rooms where the
bodies outnumber the beds.
When they’re working on public lands, tax
dollars'pay their wages as they fulfill
government contracts.
But they don’t work directly for timber
companies and government agencies, but for
the hundreds of small companies across the
state that win reforestation contracts -
removing any liability from the government
or timber industry for their abuse.
Montes found time to take English
Classes between jobs, practicing with his site
supervisors when he could. It helped get
him and his brothers work at a sawmill in
Monroe. It was stable, but not better, he
said.
As in reforestation, many jobs in today’s
sawmills are also filled by immigrant
workers.
One day while he and his brothers were
working at the sawmill, the youngest of the
clan got his jacket caught in a chipper. His
arm was pulled into the machinery, tearing
it off his body at the shoulder. He was only
19 years old.
“It was an accident that could have been
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P H O T O BY NATALIE H A R D W IC K E
Joel Iboa holds up a bottle o f m urky water, showing the Governor’s Environmental Task Force in September what im m igrant laborers are
drinking at a labor camp near Medford in Southern, Oregon. Seated next to him is Dagoberto Morales, founder and director o f Southern
Oregon Center fo r Farmworker Advocacy.
avoided,” said Montes, adding that a
protective cover that should have prevented
the amputation w as m issing. H e had to
Carl Wilmsen, the nonprofit has offices in
the Bay Area and Medford.
A survey conducted by th e center in 2012
gives a‘ glimpse into just how'frequent these
workers are denied basic rights, such as
water and rest breaks, and how often their
supervisors short them on pay.
Staff at the center interviewed 150
workers in Jackson and Josephine counties
in Southern Oregon. Those workers
included employees from exactly half of the
42 reforestation contractors operating in
that area.
Forty-eight percent of workers reported
that they don’t get paid time and a half when
they work more than 40 hours in a week,
and 45 percent said they’ve been shorted on
pay during the year leading up to the
survey. One in 8 said it happened more than
six times.
Nearly all of the workers reported they
worked out of state during the prior 12
months, and more than three-quarters said
there were not enough beds for all the
workers staying in the company-supplied
motel rooms.
Ninety-five percent said the safety
equipment they were using is “sometimes
or always worn out,” which is a problem
when working with chainsaws.
Additionally, only 39 percent reported
receiving safety training. The training they
did get was usually just few minutes.
Despite the rigorous nature of their work,
sometimes in extreme heat, more than
three-fourths of the survey respondents
reported never getting rest breaks and the
same amount repbrted that they don’t
always get a lunch break.
More than half reported the contractor
they work for does not always provide
drinking water, with 10 percent saying they
he Northwest Forest Worker Center has
drink from mountain streams - putting
been advocating on behalf of
reforestation workers since 1997. Headed by them at risk of contracting E-coli or giardia.
retrieve his little brother’s mangled arm
from the machine after the incident.
About 20 years later, in Jan. 2015, Oregon
Safety and Health Administration cited that
same mill for 15 violations after two
inspectors toured the facilities. In addition
to missing flooring and railings near
dangerous machinery, they found employees
were applying a fungicide to wood that can
cause blindness without any facial
protection or training, let alone gloves.
There was no eyewash available in case of
emergency.
Iboa watched his uncle try to get by with
only one arm; an undocumented immigrant,
he was never eligible for disability benefits
and struggled to find work. He shudders to
think he still has family at work in that mill.
Another uncle is missing fingers from
years of farm work. Iboa said his
grandfather’s brother, well into his 70s with
no retirement money, continues to work
long days in the peach orchards near
Medford. His aunt told stories of being
sprayed directly with pesticides while
working in strawberry fields.
And now, said Iboa, he’s watching cousins
his age fall into those same lines of work.
“The same stories I heard growing up,”
said Iboa, “are the same stories I hear now
from my cousins.”
Montes said it makes him furious to
watch his nieces and nephews doing the
manual labor that he made certain his own
three children would never have to do.
a
In November, Oregon OSHA announced it
was awarding the Northwest Forest Worker
Center $ 4 0,000 to com bat beat-related
illnesses among forestry workers by
educating workers about their right to take
breaks and the importance of hydrating.
When asked why a government regulator
is awarding money to teach workers how to
stick up for themselves rather than
enforcing the laws that already exist to
protect them, OSHA Administrator Michael
Wood said his staffing levels are set by
legislatures.
Wood said over the past 20 years, the
number of Oregon OSHA inspectors has
been cut in half. Today, there are 48 safety
inspectors and 28 health inspectors for the
entire state of Oregon. They inspect 3
percent of all workplaces each year.
But, he said, the more dangerous the
jobsite, the more likely it is to be inspected.
Between 2011 and 2015, an average of 14
of Oregon’s 284 reforestation employers
were inspected each year.
The majority of contractors over that five-
year period were found to be non-compliant,
and citations issued were consistent with
data collected by the Northwest Forest
Workers Center.
Wilmsen said the center hears a lot of
complaints from injured workers whose
employer told them to he at the hospital
about how they were hurt in an effort to
avoid workers’ compensation claims.
Street Roots asked Jennifer Flood, the
state’s ombudsman for injured workers, if
this scenario sounded familiar.
“Unfortunately yes, it does,” she said. While
it isn’t a forestry-specific problem, she said
forestry workers are more vulnerable to it.
Forest workers who initially lied about
their injury typically call her office because
they are having trouble paying bills when
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