A group that met Thursday at a local forum wants to make sure that when a tree falls in the Maine forest, a young logger is there to hear it happen.
The average age for Maine loggers is 46, members of the Forest Resources Association were told at a dinner meeting at Jeff's Catering. If nothing is done to recruit and retain new loggers, Maine's logging industry is going to be "in a world of hurt" in another five or 10 years from a lack of workers, according to Gary Keane of timber company Plum Creek.
"We've got to do something," he said.
Contributing to the low recruitment levels in the industry is a notion that the pulp and paper industry is fading into extinction, according to foresters at the forum. Logging may be arduous work but, contrary to its reputation as a dying industry, it is sustainable if done properly, and it pays well, they indicated.
According to Keane, part of the problem is that logging firms frequently want to hire experienced workers rather than train young recruits. To help address the issue, he said, Plum Creek has started a program to help make young high school graduates more appealing to potential employers and vice versa.
Keane, who manages the Plum Creek program, said the company sponsors high school students enrolled in vocational forestry programs. As an incentive to hire sponsored students, Plum Creek reimburses each contractor that hires a sponsored student for the first six months of that graduate's pay, he said.
In 2005, seven students who were enrolled in forestry programs at three Maine high schools - Foxcroft Academy in Dover-Foxcroft, Mattanawcook Academy in Lincoln and Oxford Hills in South Paris - were accepted into Plum Creek's program, he said. Of the four who stayed through the sponsorship program and were hired by logging contractors, only one is still working as a logger.
Keane said a 25 percent success rate is not bad for the first year of the program, considering how difficult and physically demanding logging can be. He said this success rate shows that young prospective loggers need to be better trained for the rigors of the work before they are hired.
"There's a big gap on the training piece," Keane said.
Plum Creek hopes to sponsor more students this year and to achieve a placement rate of 50 percent, he said.
Al Schaeffer, a forestry instructor at Oxford Hills, is chairman of the Western Maine Forest Resources Training Consortium, a multiagency group that is trying to improve the long-term viability of Maine's forest products industry. Preliminary results of a recent survey conducted by the consortium, which includes the Maine Department of Labor, indicate that many logging contractors, if not most, may not be taking advantage of state job-placement services that could draw new loggers into the industry, Schaeffer said.
"They are a huge resource," he said of the department's Career Center program, "an untapped resource, too."
Recruitment rates could be improved with a statewide forestry apprenticeship program, according to Schaeffer. Provided the program complies with state labor laws, industry could design and manage the program in whatever way it sees fit, he said.
"There are still kids in rural Maine, believe it or not, who want to do this line of work," Schaeffer said. "When their interest is high, you've got to hook them - no doubt about it."Bangor Daily News
