***********************************************
WORLDWIDE
BIODIVERSITY/FOREST CAMPAIGN NEWS
USA:
Boise Cascade Profile-Timber Giant or Corporate Welfare Bum?
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Forest
Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises
April
15, 1995
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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/*
Written 6:23 PM Apr 11, 1995 by siskiyou in igc:econ.boycotts
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/*
---------- "Boise Cascade profile (at last!)" ---------- */
From:
Siskiyou Project <siskiyou>
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.
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TEXT ENDS###
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though ultimate responsibility for verifying all
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