Citing Waning Demand, Plum Creek Announces Pablo Sawmill Closure
By Keriann Lynch, Flathead Beacon, 4-27-09
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Officials from Plum Creek Timber Co. announced plans Monday to permanently close its Pablo sawmill. The company said the fate of sawmills in Columbia Falls and Evergreen is uncertain, giving a 60-day notice of possible layoffs to employees at both mills and saying future operation would be based on economic conditions and performance.
The company issued notices Monday to 87 employees at the Pablo facility, as well as to 69 workers at its Evergreen sawmill and 130 employees at its Columbia Falls sawmill.
Rick Holley, Plum Creek president and chief executive officer, said in a press release that the cuts were again the result of waning demand for wood products because of the troubled housing market.
“Housing starts dropped again last month and we expect economic conditions to continue to put pressure on new construction,” Holley said in the release. “Unfortunately, we must, once again, take steps to attempt to match supply with the eroding demand. We regret that the Pablo mill closure will affect a number of our valued employees and their families.”
The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act requires companies that employ more than 100 people to provide 60-days notices in advance of plant closings and mass layoffs.
The Pablo mill near Polson, which produces pine boards, has been operating at one shift, according to a press release from the timber company. The mill will continue to run for the next 60 days or until log inventory is depleted, whichever comes first, before closing permanently.
Plum Creek officials said employees will be paid for 60 days, whether the mill operates that long. They will then receive severance pay and be eligible for Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) benefits, which provide tuition relief for retraining.
Meanwhile, sawmills in Columbia Falls and Evergreen may have just another 60 days to operate.
After shutting down in January due to the slumping wood products industry, the Columbia Falls pine board sawmill reopened in mid-March and is currently operating with one-and-a-half shifts and 130 employees.
The Evergreen stud sawmill, which employees 69 people, has been closed since early January. Employees there will return to work on May 4 to restart the mill, Plum Creek said.
“These two mills will run for 60 days,” according to a press release from Plum Creek’s media contact Kathy Budinick. “The decision to operate these facilities beyond that time will be based on market conditions and the economic performance of each mill.”
This story originally appeared at FlatheadBeacon.com.
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Comments
That sawmills cannot operate when there is no lumber market does not mean that there will never again be a larger demand for home building materials, and myriad other uses. If that is true, then it is time to short everything you own and get out while the getting is good. Deflation will be the driver of our economy.
In the meantime, a lack of meaningful public policy towards timberlands, private and public, shuts down public forests and drives private timberlands into the hands of insurance companies, foreign hedge funds, and tax avoidance structures conveniently provided by Congress, a rather suicidal act in itself if you think about how that does not collect money to run our country as the school breakfast, lunch and afternoon snack provider, as the international policeman, the major R&D;funder, and the owner operator of General Motors and the keeper of its health plan and featherbeds, all in an effort to garner votes for the party in power. All things to all people who vote for them. The forests can burn.
Plum Creek is the nation's largest private timberland owner. That cannot be a fun place to work in this economy. It will be a lot more fun selling their assets to the US Govt., through selected NGOs who will acquire windfall profits as "finder's fees" and for their "costs and expenditures," which will far, far exceed what any real estate broker might command. And, local real estate folks get bypassed in the whole deal. They aren't in DC doling out money to the political funds of selected Congressmen.
There is lumber being sold in the US every day. Go stand by the tracks in Livingston and watch the lumber cars go by and count the US lumber company names vs. the Canadian lumber company names. You will see why Plum Creek employees qualify as workers displaced by foreign competition. It should also give you some hints as to why Canada is not suffering in this economy to the extent we are, and why their banks are not being bailed out (no need because they are run by wiser people).
Canada logs their timber and we burn ours. That makes us the richer nation, richer people. Unless, of course, you work in a Plum Creek sawmill.