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By Dan Benoit
Staff reporter
Forestry is the backbone of northeastern New Brunswick's economy.
A woodcutter all his life, Danny Stewart from Miramichi, N.B. knows
this all too well.
Married with two sons in college, the 45-year-old has worked in
the woods "since I was a kid, right out of high school."
It shows. With his grizzled face and work-worn hands, he looks like
a man used to hard labour.
His right eye shines with fierce pride.
His left eye is made of glass and stares lifelessly into space.
He lost his real one hammering a wedge into a tree years ago. He
missed a stroke of the hammer and the wedge flew back and struck
him in the face.
The eye, cut in two, dripped down his face. Like his father before
him, he carved out a life for himself and his family from the province's
forests.
At least, that's the way it used to be.
UPM Kymmene Miramichi is a Finnish-owned pulp and paper mill and
the region's single largest employer. When word leaked in February
that UPM was switching to a fully mechanized harvesting operation,
there was an outcry by woodcutters who saw one of their last sources
of income going down the drain. Stewart is one of those men afraid
for the future. Some people have called UPM's move to mechanization
progress. Stewart has a different view.
"It's going to devastate the Miramichi."
Over the years he's watched companies like Miramichi Timber Resources,
Boise-Cascade and Repap come and go. Now UPM has stepped up to the
plate.
"This company was going to come to the Miramichi and do wonders.
All it's done is cut jobs, from the high end jobs right down to
the woodcutters."
He vows he and others like him aren't going to take it anymore.
"UPM is raping our province and in a few years they'll be gone.
It can't afford to be raped anymore," he said.
UPM sees things differently. Workers displaced by the mechanization
have been "misrepresented at public meetings and in media reports,"
said Sharon Pond, the communications manager for UPM Kymmene Miramichi.
Reports that several hundred workers will lose their jobs are wrong,
Pond said. The figure is closer to 100.
UPM says it is committed to working with those who want retraining.
Workers have a unique opportunity to retrain for new jobs available
this year in the silviculture field, a branch of forestry where
trees are grown and tended. There will be enough jobs to eventually
offset the current job losses, Pond said.
"There will be work there and UPM is doing everything we can
to prepare these workers for this transition into another field
of forestry."
And UPM will be doing silviculture and woods management for years
to come, she said
. "These aren't short-term jobs." However, many workers,
Stewart among them, have made it clear they're just not interested
because silviculture is much harder work for far less pay.
On the government side, the man responsible for natural resources
in New Brunswick is stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Jeannot Volpe is New Brunswick's natural resources and energy minister.
Although he feels badly for the woodcutters, New Brunswick industries
have to become more competitive to succeed globally and people must
accept progress, he said. Ivan Morbeault is a member of the Coalition
for the Fair Application of the Crown Lands and Forests Act. He
disagrees.
"I wish we took people into consideration when we talk about
progress," said Morbeault during a protest meeting in Nelson,
N.B. March 12.
He angrily waved a newspaper interview with Volpe. Not enough access.
The coalition is concerned citizens don't have enough access to
Crown land, which makes up more than 50 per cent of New Brunswick's
land area and contains more than $3 billion in standing timber.
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 Photo
courtesy of the Miramichi Leader
Woodcutters
around the Miramichi area have filled meeting halls to protest the
loss of their livelihoods. Their futures remain uncertain.
"And when the minister talks about progress, ask yourself,
whose progress? The people of New Brunswick? The forests? The water?
The wildlife? Or the progress of a few?" Morbeault shouted.
"I think woodcutters have been victimized in New Brunswick
and very seriously."
The people of New Brunswick must stand up and have a say in the
way their land is managed, he said. Among other things, the coalition
is asking government for access to portions of Crown land so woodcutters
can still make a living.
"Ten per cent would be enough," said Jean-Guy Comeau,
the president of the Community Forestry Committee and a member of
the coalition. "We're not asking to change the world."
Although sympathetic to the woodcutter's plight, UPM's move from
men to machines was inevitable, said Joe O'Neill, a retired vice-president
of woodlands at the former Repap mill.
O'Neill said UPM is only completing a mechanization process started
by previous owners of the mill as far back as 1973. UPM's practice
of hiring woodcutters was something unheard of in other parts of
the country, he said.
"You would not find another eight-foot trail cut operation
across Canada for a company. Not one. They've been obsolete for
20 years across Canada."
When O'Neill started working in the woods in 1960, harvesting was
done entirely by horse and powersaws. In 1964, the first logging
machines began to appear. There were protests because people wanted
to stay with horses.
"Then in 1968, the horse began to be phased out in a big way,"
he said.
By the 1980s, machines that could do all the harvesting began to
appear.
"One man could go in the woods with this big machine with four
wheels. He could cut down the trees, he could take the branches
off, he could buck it into eight-foot lengths, he could load it
on itself (the machine) and one man would forward it out to roadside
and put it on a truck.
"That machine is the predominant one now. In one hour they'll
cut four cords. A man would cut four cords in a day doing the same
thing."
He said another factor in the mechanization was the lack of workers.
"And that's when woods workers only had to work eight weeks
to get U.I.C. (employment insurance)...there was a great shortage
of labour because a lot would just work eight weeks and then go
home and stay on U.I.C. for the year," he said. "That
prompted more mechanization."
The latest protests were fuelled by men afraid for their jobs, O'Neill
said.
"Those older workers went to the woods when they were 16. So,
they're 50 years old, they've been doing that exact same job for
34 years. "(They have) low education. It's the only job they've
ever had. It's the only job they know how to do," he said.
"They feel safe and they feel secure in that job.
"The silviculture is a much more complicated job. It takes
a brand new set of skills and there's a learning period that you
have to go through to get your productivity up so that you can make
a decent day's pay to feed your family and get your U.I.C. stamps.
"So for someone that's been doing basically the same job since
he was 16, and is now 50, it's absolute panic for that person.
"It's a fear factor. The person does not have a choice if he
lives in north east New Brunswick."
The area has an unemployment rate of 28 per cent, he said, one of
the highest unemployment regions in Canada right now.
As for men like Danny Stewart, caught in the middle of change, there
are no easy answers, something they're used to.
Not the kind of men who give up easily, they fight a future which
threatens to leave them by the wayside.
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