Crown Pacific Reverses Decision To Close Mill But Timber Company Plans To Slash Work Force Almost 50%

Portland-based Crown Pacific Ltd. said Wednesday that it will keep its Thompson Falls, Mont., sawmill open but will cut the work force nearly in half.

The mill will process Ponderosa pine exclusively, said Fletcher Chamberlin, spokesman for Crown Pacific in Portland. About 80 of the 154 workers will remain employed at the mill starting next Tuesday.

Crown Pacific announced April 27 that it would close the mill - a vital part of Thompson Falls’ economic health - within two months because of poor economic conditions and because of a labor dispute at the mill.

The mill’s workers had been striking for three weeks before Crown’s April announcement. Workers immediately stopped the strike and offered to go back to work.

Crown reopened the mill May 3 but still intended to shut the facility down on Monday unless a buyer was found. To compete with other mills that process all kinds of trees, the mill would need more than a million dollars of improvements.

Crown will send all non-Ponderosa trees to its four Idaho mills for processing. Running only Ponderosa requires less machinery and fewer workers, hence saving money.

“We think we can be competitive just by focusing on this species of tree,” he said.

Crown Pacific agreed to operate by the terms of the previous labor agreement as long as the union agreed not to strike, Chamberlin said.

Crown will invest less than $1 million in the mill to improve its efficiency, he said.

Mill workers who lose their jobs will qualify for state-sponsored worker retraining.

After seeking voluntary staff reductions, Crown will base layoffs on seniority and job skills, he said.

“It’s not good news for the 70 or so workers we’ll be losing,” Chamberlin said. “But it is good news for the town, which gets to keep the mill.”

Crown Pacific owns billions of board feet of timber in the Inland Northwest along with four sawmills in Idaho and the Thompson Falls mill in Montana. Crown closed its Superior, Mont., sawmill in 1994.

, DataTimes