Street Roots • Feb. 19-25, 2016
TIMBER, from page 4
attached to a federal spending bill last year
forbid certain expenditures on the
enforcement of protections for these workers.
“First, we need to make sure that
Oregonians have a chance to secure these
forestry jobs and that contractors are not
abusing the H-2B visa program,” Merkley
said. “Second, strong enforcement is needed
to make sure that all workers in Oregon have
a safe workplace and aren’t being mistreated.
There are too many stories of workers being
put in unsafe working conditions or exposed
to pesticides.”
In the meantime, gradual policy shifts on
the federal level and grassroots efforts in
Southern Oregon show that improvements to
the working conditions of Oregon’s
reforestation workers are possible, if not
expeditious.
It’s in the contract
In the late 1990s, the U.S. Forest Service
began moving away from its policy of
automatically awarding tree planting and
thinning contracts to the lowest bidder - a
policy that drew criticism for its potential to
put contractors under pressure to maximize
profits by cutting costs in a sector with
already tight margins and high employee
turnover.
“The people who get impacted by those
comers being cut are the laborers,” Bey said.
With government inspections few and far
between - Occupational Safety and Health
Administration inspects about 5 percent of
reforestation contractors each year - remote
job sites, and immigrant and guest workers
who are fearful of reporting labor violations,
employers can keep costs down by shorting
workers on pay, skipping formal training and
not providing adequate safety gear.
Today, the U.S. Forest Service awards
contracts to the “best value” bidder. This
means other criteria, such as technical ability
and quality of work, as well as price, are taken
into account.
But because bids are confidential, very
little data shows how often the lowest bidders
are awarded these contracts.
Cassandra Moseley is the director of
Ecosystem Workforce Program at the
University of Oregon. She also chairs the
USDA Research Advisory Council. She’s been
studying U.S. Forest Service cofltracting for
years, and after signing confidentiality
agreements, she examined reforestation
contracts in New Mexico to see how best
value awards were playing out
She determined that while criteria varied
from contract to contract, price was typically
equal to all other factors combined. Of 34
contracts studied, the U.S. Forest Service
awarded 74 percent to the contractor offering
the lowest price. However, the sample was so
small, she can’t definitively say whether it
points to a larger pattern.
What she can say for certain is that it’s a
competitive marketplace.
“Different contractors have different
strategies for dealing with that
competitiveness,” she said, “and some of
them are strategies that work better for
workers than others.”
She said a number of businesses have
begun to diversify their services by offering
fire suppression during wildfire season and
reforestation activities, such as thinning, in
the off-season. This allows them to keep
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people employed and improve their skills -
and they can afford to bid lower on thinning
contracts because it’s not their only source of
revenue.
Grayback Forestry is an example of a
contracting company that offers year-round
services. Its owner, Michael Wheeler, said he
pays his employees fair wages and benefits,
and follows all labor laws, which puts him at a
competitive disadvantage.
“For the last five years, more rules have
been added and less contractors are adhering
to them,” he said - rules such as paid sick
days.
“My biggest grievance is minimum wage,”
he said. The Service Contract Act sets wages
for reforestation activities. “A lot of
competitors don’t pay that - add all that other
stuff, and it makes it tough to compete.”
Stephen Baker, spokesperson for U.S.
Forest Service Region 6, which oversees
forests in Oregon and Washington, told Street
Roots his agency considers “a number of
factors when making a decision on how to
award a service contract” and “decisions are
not decided on ‘lowest bidder.’”
Moseley said there isn’t any fresh evidence
pointing one way or the other.
“I do think that budgets have gotten tighter
and targets are still really important and that’s
an area where the Forest Service is working
to make change in how they measure their
performance,” she said.
She said a shift away from focusing on
production volume is a strategy the U.S.
Forest Service could take that would remove
pressure from businesses to treat high
quantities of acres and focus on quality of
work instead.
Enforcing labor protections
The most effective strategy for combating
worker exploitation, said Moseley, would be
to cross-train U.S. Forest Service and Bureau
of Land Management inspectors to function
as labor and safety inspectors as well.
State labor and safety regulators don’t have
the resources to visit more than a small
fraction of these remote job sites, and simply
finding them can be a challenge.
But federal land management inspectors
are already driving out to each of these sites
to inspect the quality of the work.
The U.S. Forest Service and state and
federal industry regulators have been
collaborating on this issue in Oregon since
2006, but how consistently and
comprehensively efforts are implemented on
the ground is unclear.
U.S. Department of Labor developed a red-
flag checklist for the U.S. Forest Service
nearly a decade ago so it could train its
inspectors on how to spot wage and hour and
safety violations, labor department officials
told Street Roots.
This way, they said, U.S. Forest Service
employees would be better informed to make
referrals to their department.
According to its spokesperson, Baker, the
U.S. Forest Service does “monitor conditions
and report violations to the Department of
Labor.” He said, “If violations are occurring
on site, we can issue a stop work order until
the concerns are addressed.”
While their inspectors have been trained
on how to spot certain labor and safety
violations, it’s no match for a comprehensive
inspection and has not appeared to effectively
stifle what research at the Northwest Forest
Worker Center suggests is still widespread
Page 5
disregard for labor laws among contractors.
Moseley said what she’s suggesting would
be “an integrated job - and an expectation.”
Perceptions among reforestation workers
and advocates Street Roots interviewed for
this series are that making sure contractors
are abiding by the labor laws within its
contracts is not a priority for Region 6
inspectors.
Director of the Northwest Forest Worker
Center, Carl Wilmsen, said it’s been the
position of his organization for years that the
U.S. Forest Service should enforce the labor
provisions in its contracts, and only hire
contractors who abide by the law.
“Their response is, ‘we don’t have that
expertise, it’s
the
Department of
Labor that
"My biggest grievance is
does
minimum wage. A let of
enforcement,’” competitors don't pay that
he said.
— add all that other stuff, and it
Wheeler’s
mates it tough to compete."
experienced a
similar
MICHAEL WHEELER
reaction. “They
OWNER, GRAYBACK FORESTRY
don’t check
compliance,”
he said. “They
say, ‘we got it in our contract’”
According to Department of Labor officials,
it inspects less than 1 percent of America’s
job sites each year. Since 2004, it’s conducted
19 investigations into Oregon reforestation
companies for wage and hour violations.
Oregon’s OSHA inspects an average of 14 per
year for safety.
There are 284 reforestation employers
across the state, according to data at Oregon
Employment Department.
Combatting fear
The underlying issue, Moseley said, is that
reforestation workers are vulnerable to
exploitation.
“Making it easy and safe for people that are
being mistreated to speak up is really critical,
and that’s very difficult in this environment,”
she said.
At a Feb. 5 meeting of the Environmental
Justice Task Force, top regulators at Oregon’s
OSHA and Bureau of Labor and Industry told
a representative from the Northwest Forest
Worker Center to contact their agencies when
workers come to the center with grievances.
Virginia Camberos, program coordinator at
the center in Medford, is the person who’d be
making those calls.
She said she’s optimistic about conditions
improving in light of recent efforts to unite
agencies, but it’s difficult to get workers to
come forward and file a complaint.
“This is their only source of income, and
many do not qualify for unemployment
benefits if they are fired,” she said.
There is a solution to this problem,
although not a permanent one, said Andrea
Miller, executive director at Causa, Oregon’s
Immigrant Rights Organization.
In November 2014, President Barack
Obama announced a series of executive
actions to prevent the deportation of up to 5
million undocumented immigrants. In part,
the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans
would allow undocumented immigrants who
have been in the U.S. since 2010 and have
U.S.-born children to apply for work permits
See TIMBER, page 7