Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Washington, D.C. — Cassandra Moseley, director of the Ecosystem Workforce Program in the Institute for a Sustainable Environment at the University of Oregon (Eugene, OR), and Denise Smith, executive director of the Alliance of Forest Workers and Harvesters (Willow Creek, CA), testified today before Congress regarding the role of the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) and Department of Labor (DOL) in protecting the health and welfare of workers carrying out tree planting and other service contracts on National Forest System lands.

Their testimonies were provided to the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands of the Committee on Natural Resources of the United States House of Representatives at an oversight hearing entitled “The Piñeros: Reviewing the Welfare of Workers on Federal Lands.”

The federal government spends millions of tax dollars each year on contracts for labor intensive activities on public lands.  These activities include planting trees, thinning overstocked stands, piling brush, and fighting fires.  A number of conditions have created a system that rewards contractors who cut corners and offer the lowest prices to do the work.  This, in turn, leads to violations of labor laws and poor working conditions for contract forest workers.

The available data show that safety and labor law violations are rampant.  According to a May 2008 DOL report, 80 percent of the forest contractors DOL investigated were in violation of the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act and 40 percent were in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act.  Similarly, the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) found over 500 safety violations across 168 inspections.

“Contractors who underbid and cut corners frequently fail to provide required first aid kit equipment and training, hazardous chemical information, personal protective equipment, and health and safety programs.  They frequently defer maintenance on vans used to transport workers and have unrealistic expectations about the time needed to complete a job.  This leads to driving workers to the point of exhaustion—the conditions under which accidents occur,” said Smith.

“Improving working conditions is a difficult task, and we cannot hope to solve a three-decade old problem overnight. We have seen some increased enforcement over the past couple of years.  But it hasn’t translated into big change on the ground,” said Moseley.

Moseley and Smith each made recommendations on how the federal government could improve working conditions and build high-quality jobs stewarding our public forests, including the following:

1. More inspections and investigations - The DOL and USFS should further increase their inspection and investigation of service contracts on public lands and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) should join them.  The DOL should expand its enforcement efforts across multiple landowner types.  The BLM and USFS should assure reporting of these oversight results to the DOL Wage and Hour Division and OSHA.  When violations of laws are found, the land management agencies should take action.
2. Provide needed resources - Congress and the Office and Management and Budget should bring to a halt the USFS’s and BLM’s downsizing and outsourcing, which are destroying the agencies’ capacity to undertake land management, appropriately oversee contracts, and focus on job quality.  More resources are needed, not less, so that agency officials are able to meet land stewardship and community well being objectives.
3. Reporting and accountability - The USFS, BLM, and DOL should increase the visibility of their efforts by regularly publishing and reporting information to Congress and stakeholders about how they enforce labor laws and the impacts of those efforts.  Agency accountability can be improved by creating a publicly accessible, central database for recording the inspection results.
4. Quality jobs for workers and communities - The USFS and BLM should create performance measures that gauge progress towards improving the quality of business and employment opportunities for public lands communities and workers.  Switch from low-bid to best-value contracting for work on public lands, which considers other qualities of the bid in awarding contracts besides price.
5. Reform H2-B Guest Worker Program - Reform the H2-B Guest Worker Program so that it includes safety protections for workers.

The House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands Chairman is Congressman Raul M. Grijalva (D-Arizona) and the Ranking Member is Congressman Rob Bishop (R-Utah).

The Alliance of Forest Workers and Harvesters is a multicultural, grassroots organization promoting social, environmental, and economic justice in the Pacific West. The Alliance’s membership includes contract workers who implement land management activities on the ground through reforestation, restoration, fuels reduction, timber stand improvement, fire fighting, and other forestry activities.

The Ecosystem Workforce Program in the Institute for a Sustainable Environment at the University of Oregon seeks to build ecological health, economic vitality, and democratic governance in rural forest communities in the American West.  The Ecosystem Workforce Program supports these interconnected issues with applied research and policy education related to community-based forestry and federal forest management.   

The Alliance of Forest Workers and Harvesters and the Ecosystem Workforce Program are partners in the Rural Voices for Conservation Coalition (RVCC).  RVCC is a coalition of western rural and local, regional, and national organizations that have joined together to promote balanced conservation-based approaches to the ecological and economic problems facing the West.

View Smith’s and Moseley’s testimonies