Why higher pay for forestry work would hurt rural communities

The headline for this Dale Kasler & Ryan Sabalow story caught my eye because of the rural angle, "Unions want higher pay on California forestry work. Here’s why rural counties are worried."  Here's the rural scoop: 

As California scrambles to reduce wildfire hazards by thinning its overgrown forests, rural government officials and forestry lobbyists are making a last-ditch effort to kill legislation that would mandate hefty pay hikes under the state’s “prevailing wage” laws for the workers wielding chainsaws and heavy equipment in the woods. 

In other words, higher pay means fewer acres cleared in the context of a fixed budget, and that's bad for rural places, who are under greatest threat from wildfire.   

Assembly Bill 1717, authored by Yolo County Assemblywoman Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, has the support of influential labor unions looking to grow their ranks and get their dues-payers a bigger share of the massive amounts of state and federal money that’s going to be spent on forestry projects in the coming years.

The unions usually get their way in a Legislature ruled by Democrats, but opponents of the bill are urging lawmakers to buck unions just this once. They say the bill would put California’s forested communities at risk by jacking up costs, which would dramatically reduce the number of acres that are in desperate need of thinning.

“If this bill passes, it will necessarily shrink the dollars that are going into the projects,” said Staci Heaton, senior policy advocate for Rural County Representatives of California.

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COSTS WOULD RISE FOR FOREST THINNING 

The exact wages for forest-thinning projects would vary by job description and the local cost of living.

 The Department of Industrial Relations would set the pay scales. But it’s clear the pay hikes would be significant. The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics says logging-equipment operators were paid an average of under $27 an hour in California last year. Cremins [who leads the California-Nevada Operating Engineers, the bill's chief sponsor] said the same equipment operators would earn about $45 an hour on projects covered by prevailing wage rules.

Meanwhile, CapRadio in Sacramento published this story today on the U.S. Forest Service's failure to execute in a timely fashion its own plan to alleviate some of the fire risk for the community of Grizzly Flats, which burned a year ago in the Caldor Fire.