Logging Jobs Disappearing, Mills Closing
2/2/99
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Logging Jobs Disappearing, Mills Closing
Source: David Syme & Co
Status: Copyrighted, contact source to reprint
Date: 2/2/99
Byline: Claire Miller
Hundreds of logging jobs are disappearing and sawmills are closing as a
result of flaws in the Federal Government's regional forest agreements
with the states, the national forestry union claimed yesterday.
The union, giving evidence to a Senate inquiry, said the forest
agreements process had failed to protect jobs or create a sustainable
industry.
The regional forest agreements have been promoted by governments as the
best compromise in the intractable forests dispute. Under the
agreements, areas of high conservation value are reserved while the
industry is guaranteed timber supplies for 20 years.
The agreements include limits on logging for high-grade timber, with all
left-over logs in clear-felled areas deemed residual and available for
chipping.
More than half the timber from native forests is classed residual, and
there are no limits on woodchip volumes since federal export controls
were lifted as part of the agreements process.
A Senate committee is looking into impending federal legislation to give
the forest agreements legal force. As it took evidence yesterday in
Melbourne, conservationists and loggers clashed on the steps of
Parliament House.
The timber workers accused greens of denying them income by continuing
to blockade forests, while the conservationists highlighted revelations
that the Victorian Government is selling timber from native forests for
as little as nine cents a tonne, effectively pricing plantations and
recycling out of the paper
and pulp market.
The National Association of Forest Industries told the Senate committee
that the agreements must have legal force if the industry is to invest
in substantial value-adding and jobs.
But the assistant national secretary of the CFMEU forestry division, Mr
Michael O'Connor, said the union would not support the legislation
unless it was amended to include a national watchdog over industry
conduct and provisions that would lead to greater job security.
The union's Tasmanian secretary, Mr Michael Grey, said ``cartels'' were
forcing sawmills to chip high-quality timber by refusing to take low-
grade logs. Contractors were cowed into silence because the companies
had the power in an oversupplied market to put them out of
business.
In such a climate, there was no incentive for sawmills to invest in the
equipment and upgrading necessary for a sustainable, labor-intensive
industry based on value-adding, Mr Grey told the hearing.
One international woodchip giant, the Japanese company Harris Daishowa,
which is based at Eden, New South Wales, rejected the union cllaims. The
general manager, Mr John Sparks, told The Age the company only took
waste from contracted sawmills plus residual logs from contractors as
required.
He said the logs were graded in the forest, overseen by government
agencies. Another company, North Ltd, did not respond.
Copyright (c) David Syme & Co 1999.