Published Thursday, March 16, 2006
After reports of wage abuse, substandard housing, hazardous travel and on-the-job injury and death in the nation's forests, the U.S. Forest Service and Department of Labor promised to step up enforcement.
"Documented violations must be a factor in evaluating future bids and awarding future contracts," wrote Forest Service chief Dale Bosworth in January.
Yet The Bee's Tom Knudson reported this month that companies that violate laws still have no trouble landing certification to hire migrant workers and contracts to do thinning, tree planting, brush clearing and other work in the nation's forests.
The story, "Firm fined in van crash is OK'd to hire pineros," shows that at the same time the federal government is fining a forestry contractor for the death of 14 forest workers in Maine, it has certified the same contractor to recruit and hire more migrant forest workers for a forestry project in Arkansas.
This company has a track record of violations going back to the early 1990s. But the government continues to certify the company to hire migrant workers and to allow it to bid on projects.
The federal government is sending a message: Despite ringing new rhetoric about enforcing laws, it is business as usual in the nation's forests. If a contractor with deaths and more than a decade of violations in its record cannot be barred from Forest Service projects, who can?
The willful government blindness to terrible working conditions hurts the forest industry as a whole. Companies that fail to pay proper wages, that illegally charge workers for items related to work, that fail to assure proper safety and generally cut corners are able to bid for forest jobs at ridiculously low prices. That makes it nearly impossible for responsible contractors to compete for forest jobs.
At a U.S. Senate hearing before the Public Lands and Forests Subcommittee on March 1, senators heard multiple witnesses urge the Forest Service and Labor Department to hold repeat offenders responsible for their actions. Their failure to do so has created what one witness called an "underclass industry" among forest contract workers.
Blatant and persistent violators should be barred from applying to recruit migrant forest workers by the U.S. Department of Labor and from bidding for forest contracts by the Forest Service.
The Forest Service and Labor Department need to send a message to the entire forest contract industry. Begin by banning Idaho-based Evergreen Forestry Services from future Forest Service contracts - and keep track of the ownership of all forestry contractors to assure that violators do not turn around and form new companies to bid for Forest Service contracts.
When are we going to see the Labor Department and Forest Service enforce the numerous laws in place to protect forest workers? So far, we're still seeing words and little effective action.