Uprooted Lives Training Programs May Help Politicians More Than Workers

Abysmal.

That’s how the scorecard reads for timber worker retraining programs.

They are expensive and produce few graduates. Retraining attracts few unemployed loggers and millworkers - even those who acknowledge they would be better off in different professions.

Despite the millions invested by state and federal agencies over several years, retraining programs still don’t cover enough of the workers’ costs. That means people who enroll take huge financial risks, such as losing a home or a car. Or working full-time and going to school full-time - an enormous stress for most people, especially those unaccustomed to classroom work.

Those who succeed typically have good educational backgrounds before they start retraining. So “it’s not helping the majority of workers,” said Beverly A. Brown, who has chronicled the demise of southern Oregon timber workers in her book, “In Timber Country.”

“On the whole, I’m glad we’re doing something but it’s not enough and it’s not necessarily the right thing.”

Matthew S. Carroll, a Washington State University professor, agrees. “My concern is that we are helping a small number while giving political cover to those who say ‘we fixed that,”’ said Carroll, who authored another timber worker book.

That political cover comes at considerable cost. The federal government invests millions in programs run by state employment agencies and other programs designed to offset lost jobs.

Washington state has invested $1.25 million in timber worker programs at WSU and Western Washington University since 1991. About 340 timber workers and their families have enrolled.

Only 29 have graduated. Another 21 may get degrees by the end of this year.

Some were deterred by the requirement that they go to school full-time, without provisions for grocery money or child care. Some thought the downturn in the timber industry was temporary and only now believe they have to return to school to survive, according to a state study.

Information regarding the success rate of retraining programs at North Idaho College was not available.

There also are cultural problems with retraining. For Western Washington loggers - the focus of much of Carroll’s work - it’s difficult to give up the profession that has defined their families for generations.

Growing up in a logging household “the message is, this is an occupation like no other,” he said. “For many, there’s no other way to be in the world.”

Loggers also resent what they perceive to be social engineering - people from the outside telling them how to be retrained, Carroll said.

Brown initially found the same passion for the timber profession. But the more she probed, the more that unraveled.

“A lot of people are not in love with mill work,” she said. “It is very hard, body-busting labor.”

They are most concerned with being able to stay in the community where they have a home, friends and family. In the Rogue Valley of southern Oregon, state retraining officials asked workers to pledge to leave if they received certain kinds of retraining, Brown said.

That elicits anger, not participation.

Carroll and a graduate student have tracked nearly half of the 208 North Idaho loggers Potlatch laid off in May 1992. Only a dozen are participating in retraining programs.

Most of the rest have gone to work for independent loggers, making less money while cutting the same trees. If there hadn’t been strong demand for timber from private land, as the Forest Service scaled back logging sales, that option wouldn’t have been available and the ex-Potlatch loggers would be even worse off, Carroll said.

Brown says only 18 to 20 percent of the people laid off from timber jobs attend even a session of retraining in her area. The other 80 percent appear to be going to work at other mills for pay as low as $5.50 an hour.

People who opt for retraining find it frustrating because they end up competing for jobs with highly skilled people who are moving to rural areas from bigger cities, she said.

The programs don’t always mean better wages. Studies of federal programs show that people who get formal skills retraining end up earning little more than people who merely get help finding another job, said Duane Leigh, a WSU economics professor.

None of these experts advocates abolishing retraining programs. But they do push for an overhaul, including getting future employers more involved in shaping the curriculum.

Beyond that, the overhaul involves additional spending. More money to carry people through. More money for better training.

“We could use more technical education - experience with machines,” Brown said. “But technology is expensive to have in schools, and our schools are poor, so … we tend not to have very much of it.”

, DataTimes