WORLDWIDE BIODIVERSITY/FOREST CAMPAIGN NEWS
USA: Boise Cascade Profile-Timber Giant or Corporate Welfare Bum?
4/15/95
OVERVIEW & SOURCE
Following is the Siskiyou Regional Education Project's Profile of
Boise Cascade, who has been the the number one purchaser of tax-
payer subsidized federal timber in the United States for the past
three years. The Siskiyou Regional Education Project and other
environmental groups are promoting a boycott of Boise Cascade
Corporation because of their refusal to give up the Sugarloaf
timber sale, "a mountainside of giant, ancient trees in the
Siskiyou National Forest that lies inside a crucial roadless
wildlife migration corridor." This area was to be set aside as an
Ancient Forest Reserve and a Key Watershed under the Clinton
Forest Plan. But at the last minute, it was allowed to go
through. "The Sugarloaf 'sale' is really a license to steal from
the public and exemplifies how the timber industry exercises
control over ostensibly "public" lands." At the end of the piece
is an extensive list of recycled paper product suppliers. This
was posted in econet's econ.boycotts conference.
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
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From: Siskiyou Project
Boise Cascade - Timber Giant or Corporate Welfare Bum?
by Kelpie Wilson
The Siskiyou Regional Education Project and other environmental
groups are promoting a boycott of Boise Cascade Corporation
because of their refusal to give up the Sugarloaf timber sale, a
mountainside of giant, ancient trees in the Siskiyou National
Forest that lies inside a crucial roadless wildlife migration
corridor.
Under the Clinton Forest Plan, this area was to be set aside as an
Ancient Forest Reserve and a Key Watershed. But at the last
minute, because this sale was auctioned (but not sold) back in
1989, the Administration created a loophole to allow it to go
through. The Sugarloaf "sale" is really a license to steal from
the public and exemplifies how the timber industry exercises
control over ostensibly "public" lands.
Boise Cascade, the nation's second largest forest products
company, was originally incorporated by Frederick Weyerhauser back
in 1913 as Boise Payette. In 1957, it was merged with Cascade
Lumber into Boise Cascade. The company received at least 172,000
acres of Northern Pacific Railroad grant land from the federal
government between 1913 and 1947. The legality of this land
transfer has been challenged by Spokane environmentalist John
Osborne, who has proposed that Congress take the land back from
Boise Cascade, Weyerhauser, Plum Creek and other giant timber
companies because of violations of the original conditions imposed
upon Northern Pacific Railroad.
There is precedent for such an action. In 1916 Congress took back
lands given to the Oregon and California Railroad, now known as
O&C lands and managed by the BLM and the US Forest Service.
In 1995, Boise Cascade now owns 1.3 million acres of land in the
Pacific Northwest and 1.4 million acres in New England and the
South. They also hold long term government licences to log 3.4
million acres in Central Canada.
In their annual report to shareholders, Boise Cascade boasts of
its independent fiber supply - claiming that 50% of its raw
materials are supplied from its own lands and the Canadian
licences. But in the Pacific Northwest, Boise Cascade has been
the number one purchaser of tax-payer subsidized federal timber
for the past three years. Most of that is old growth. Last
year they bought 13.7% of the sales offered, a total of
110,000,000 board feet.
The company owns 7 pulp and paper mills in Alabama, Louisiana,
Maine, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington and Ontario and they own 7
corrugated container plants in Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and
Washington. They operate 26 lumber, plywood, particleboard and
engineered lumber manufacturing facilities in Idaho, Oregon,
Washington, Alabama and Louisiana. They are the third largest
distributor of home building supplies.
In recent years Boise Cascade has been moving strongly into the
office supply distributing business. They run office products
distribution centers in 23 states and have contracts with large
companies (Boeing, IBM, United Airlines) and state institutions
like schools and universities (University of Oregon, University of
Nebraska). Last year they acquired Reliable, a mail order office
supply distributor with 260,000 active accounts. By the end of
1994, office supplies accounted for about 20% of the company's
sales for a third of its profits.
Paper manufacturing represents almost half of Boise Cascade's
sales, but the company has been losing money badly on paper for
the past few years, throwing the whole company in the red. (It is
currently saddled with a $2 billion debt load.) This year,
however, paper prices are surging upward and Boise Cascades 1980's
investments in new plant capacity may start to turn a profit for
the company on paper. Boise Cascade makes all grades of paper,
from newsprint to coated magazine papers and office copy paper.
Office copy paper is sold under the brand names "Boise Cascade,"
"Cascade," and "Oxford".
Boise's paper problems may be partly to blame for its tendency to
put "profits before people,' in the words of Minnesota AFL-CIO
President Dan Gustafson. The company has a terrible record of OSHA
violations, one of the worst in the idustry, according to Council
on Economic Priorities. They have been charged with over 350
"willful" (meaning purposefully, not accidentally negligent)
violations of worker safety rules since 1988. As of July, 1994,
295 of these willful violations remained on the company's record.
Only about half the company's 17,000 workers are now protected
with union contracts: Boise has a recent history of brutal union
busting tactics. In Rumford, Maine and in International Falls,
Minnesota, Boise Cascade hired the scab worker service BE & K
along with a professional goon squad to provoke violent
confrontations between strikers and scabs. When the Rumford
strike was over, scabs were given seniority over the regular
workers. Boise Cascade "won" that strike, but it cost them over
30 million dollars. John Case, writing in the journal, Political
Affairs said,
"The attack on Boise workers is essentially a strategy that seeks
to achieve a higher return on investment at the expense of the
workers. For Boise to spend $30,000,000 on such a strategy
astounds the average person. Yet it is typical of the parasitic
and arrogant position of the giant corporations."
Forest defenders in Oregon must consider that if Boise Cascade
would spend 30 million dollars to break a strike, how much will
they spend to break resistance to their logging of the last of the
old growth forests?
Approximately 73% of the woodchip supply for Boise Cascades
Northwest mills comes as residual from saw timber mills. As this
supply shrinks, the company is looking for other sources of pulp
chips. Their long term plan is to move more of their resources to
the South, but they have made one small investment to secure a
more sustainable supply in the Northwest: they recently planted
15,000 acres in fast growing cottonwoods (6 years to harvest)
using drip irrigation in Eastern Washington. They expect this
land to supply 20% of the raw fiber for their Wallula paper mill.
If the company would spend more of it's money on this kind of
investment for the future and less on resisting the inevitable
change away from using old growth, we might begin to consider them
environmentally and socially responsible.
Boise Cascade is a very active member of the American Forest
Resource Alliance, and a major contributor to timber industry
political action committees. Those PAC's gave $2.7 million to
candidates in 1991-1992. Boise has also opposed a mandated
recycling law in Idaho and tried to weaken an Oregon regulation
controlling pulp mill emissions of organo-chlorides. Former Idaho
Senator, James McClure, sits on Boise's board of directors. He
also runs a Washington, DC lobbying firm, so you can be sure Boise
Cascade is well represented in our government.
In a reply to a letter asking Boise Cascade to give up the
Sugarloaf Sale, CEO George Harad suggested that if the sale was
not appropriate, the Forest Service is to blame. But Forest
Service policies are determined by politicians who are bought and
sold by the timber industry. It is clear that the buck stops at
industry's door, and that is the door that must hear the pounding
of angry citizens.
Boise Cascade claims a committment to "...being a responsible
corporate citizen in the communities in which we operate, and
providing active stewardship of the timberlands under our
management." (1994 Annual Report) Yet, their bottom line is that
they are only responsible for increasing the profits of their
shareholders. They must come to see that the real bottom line is
the sustainability of the forests and the health and safety of
workers. Since we are all shareholders in Planet Earth, Boise
Cascade's greater responsibility is to meet the Earth's bottom
line.
Here are some steps that Boise Cascade can take to become a truly
ecologically and socially responsible company:
1) Agree to give up the Sugarloaf sale.
2) Stop promoting growth in paper consumption. Instead, sell
increased value in recycled and alternative fiber papers and
encourage reduced consumption.
3) Stop all dependence on cutting native forests for raw
materials.
4) Improve worker health and safety to the highest levels.
5) Encourage workplace democracy and unionization of all employees
who want to be unionized.
6) Stop spending money on "greenwashing" advertising designed to
deceive the public about Boise's committment to environmental
values.
7) Stop making large contributions to politicians and hiring DC
lobbyists.
8) Stop opposing regulations to reduce organo-chlorides. Produce
more unbleached and non-chlorine bleached papers.
More Information About Boise Cascade
Major subsidiaries: Reliable (mail order office supplies), Rainy
River (Canadian pulp and paper), Duropak and Schumacher (German
container board)
Brand name list: paper - Cascade, Oxford, MP; office supplies -
Associated, Cascade, Frederick-Sherry; building supplies - Noyo,
Vinyl Bond, Wevelite; containers - Specialty Paperboard, Duropak,
Shumacher
Major Shareholders: State Farm Auto Insurance (5%), Ohio State
Teachers Retirement, New York State Teachers Retirement, Harvard
College, California State Teachers Retirement, California Public
Employees Retirement.
Interlocking Directorates (other corporate boards that Boise board
members sit on): Albertson's, Alco, American Express, Boeing,
Citicorp, Ford Foundation, Gen Corp, General Motors, Hewlett-
Packard, McKesson
Alternatives Sources of Paper and Office Supplies
While researching this article, I called up my friend Denny
Haldeman of the Land Ethics Alliance in Tennessee. They are
boycotting Champion Intl., which is clearcutting the Southern
states to feed giant chip mills for the international pulp market.
Boise Cascade has been expanding its operations in the South,
quadrupling its capacity there in the last decade. Denny points
out that the only way to stop the stripping of southern forests is
to drastically reduce paper consumption. Even the recycled paper
that schools and other government institutions are now required to
buy is usually only %10 - %15 recycled post consumer waste. Until
businesses and institutions switch over to %50 or more recycled,
or even better, tree-free paper, the devastation of forests around
the world will contine.
According to the Council on Economic Priorities, Union Camp paper
has high marks for social and environmental responsibility. Union
Camp is distributed in Oregon by Kirk Paper Co. (503) 684-4911.
Kirk had the Oregon state contract a few years ago. They also
distribute for Boise Cascade, so it would have to be made clear to
them that Boise paper was not wanted.
Council on Economic Priorities also recommends Mead office
products and 3-M Corporation for general office supplies.
There are also several smaller distributers who specialize in
recycled paper, tree-free paper (from hemp, straw and kenaf
fibers) and office supplies of all types. Here are some
addresses:
Real Recycled - paper and office supplies - 1541 Adrian Rd.,
Burlingame, CA 94010 (800)233-5335
Tree Free Ecopaper - hemp and straw paper - 121 SW Salmon St., ste
1100, Portland, OR 97204, (800) 775-0225
Vision Paper - manufacturers and suppliers of kenaf paper. Their
paper now used at some Kinko's copy centers - P.O. Box 20399,
Albuquerque, NM 87154-0399, (505) 294-0293
EcoTech Recycled Products - recycled office and business products
- 14241 60th St. North, Clearwater, FL 34620 (813) 531-5353
Green Earth Office Supply - P.O. Box 719, Redwood Estates, CA
95044 (800) 327-8449
GreenCo Products - recycled paper and office supplies - 239 Ferry
Road, Unit 2, Brattleboro, VT 05301 (800) 326-2897
Atlantic Recycled Paper Co. - 822-A Frederick Rd., Baltimore, MD
21228, (800) 323-2811
Full Circle Paper Outlet - 3437 Hillsborough Rd., Durham, NC
27705, (919) 309-0811
Peacetree Recycled Paper - paper and office supplies - 523 NE
Davis, Portland, OR 97232, (503)233-5821
House of Doolittle - Calenders and appointment books on recycled
paper - 701 Lunt, Elk Grove Village, IL 60007, (708)228-9591
Siskiyou Regional Education Project is looking for other
organizations willing to sign on to this boycott. Please contact
Kelpie Wilson, SREP, P.O. Box 220, Cave Junction, OR 97523
email: siskiyou@igc.apc.org
Many thanks to Institute on Trade Policy for research used in this
report. Council on Economic Priorities and the Data Center of
Oakland, CA also provided useful information.