No forest certification without fair harvest contracts

JOHN WITHEROW, newly inaugurated Life Member in the Contractors Hall of Fame, recalled an old mate and sparring partner when he told a newly appointed chief executive of a major timber mill that he’d rather die on his feet than on his knees. That was in response to the timber mill CEO’s threat to tear up their existing contract and start again from a lower rate – a threat given strength in the CEO’s mind due to the level of investment John’s company had in harvesting and haulage equipment and the CEO’s perception that John would accept less money simply to keep the payments up on his machinery.
John’s company kept working longer than that CEO lasted in his role with the timber mill!
That concept of staying staunch in the face of adversity was an early theme in the Australian Forests Contractors Association’s (AFCA) Harvest & Haulage 2015 conference held early June in Coffs Harbour.
In opening the conference, AFCA chairman Colin McCulloch asserted to the audience that, while they may think sustainable logging of old growth forest might be a concept too difficult for politicians and the community to grasp given the $45 million per year the NGO’s have spent to paint timber harvesters as environmental wreckers compared with the $1.5 million the industry was able to muster for promotion and industry associations, it is a subject they must consider more deeply given the drive against plantations the NGO’s have more recently been mounting as witnessed in the recent Tasmanian state elections (Australian Forests & Timber News, May 2010).
With such political pressure and community misinformation at play, the conference delegates were reminded that, when the industry has faced difficulties and pressures in the past contractors have been called on to shoulder the cost of cancelled or suspended contracts by forest owners and timber mill owners to the extent that many contracts are now “unbankable”.
McCulloch called for contractors to consider more carefully the requirements for the provision of fair contracts to contractors and their employees under certification schemes such as the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification system.
Admitting he wasn’t able to understand how, under the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification system a forest might ostensibly be managed sustainably and yet, under the “Community perception” component of the system be denied certification, he went on to suggest that rather than dismiss certification as being fatally flawed the contracting industry should use some of the provisions of such certification to push for fairer contracts.
“There is a gap that exists through certification process that says that we can have, for want of a better term, an Australian Forest Contractors/CFMEU certified national contract standard that we have to adhere to as contractors (and which) forest owners have to adhere to as employers of us.”
Introducing Michael O’Connor as perhaps being the fox in the henhouse given his role as National Secretary of the Forestry & Furnishing Products division of the CFMEU, the union covering employees of forest harvest contracting firms, McCulloch called on him to suggest to the conference how such a standard might be achieved.
In responding to McCulloch’s invitation, O’Connor referred to FSC accreditation and said that contractors have to understand that it is not a purely scientific process but, rather, a heavily political one.
“You’ve got to look at it as a political issue. It’s not a scientific issue. It’s not like a normal standard. You know, you go into a manufacturing company and they’ve got ISO standards … and they have an auditor and they go through and they tick the boxes and if you pass you pass. Not in forestry!”
He suggested the key difference was that under the FSC agreement, each major stakeholder had to agree and that, given “environmental” groups are a stakeholder, agreement is less likely to be achieved as there is no scientific basis required for any disagreement. However, he also impressed on the audience that the “environmental” groups are not the only stakeholders that can have political influence over such agreements.
“Certification does give you some opportunities as well because if the … large processing companies want certification they do have to get everyone to agree. We know the greens can be hard to agree but they’ve also got to get you to agree.”
According to O’Connor, under the AFS and FSC certification schemes, contractors can make contributions to the process being certified insisting there must be a clause whereby the forest manager has to demonstrate that contractors are treated fairly.
He suggested this might be proven by the forest manager being required to demonstrate that contractors are employed under fair contracts perhaps constructed under the provisions of fair contracts legislation.
“I’ll make it very clear to you now,” he went on to say “if that’s the sort of thing you push in these meetings, the CFMEU will support you.”
That support is based on the pursuit of fairness for all parties but also as part of the requirement he sees to ensure timber plays its full and vital role in managing the environment back to better health. Having been part of the Australian delegation to Copenhagen, he had to leave the conference soon after his address to catch the first of the flights that would take him to the next round of meetings under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bonn.
“If you look at what’s happening in the world and you look at the environmental problems…we make this product (and) it’s renewable! It stores carbon! The whole world is going crazy over climate change and wants to tackle it (and) we’re part of the solution.
If they want to deal with carbon…in the atmosphere, they can’t fix unless they increase the amount of wood fibre products in buildings. It’s impossible to fix without it.
This is an industry that has an advantage. This is an industry that can compete with the rest of the world.”
After O’Connor’s presentation, the general consensus amongst attending contractors was that the issue of contract fairness raised was something perhaps AFCA and TCA members could take further with forest managers and parliamentary representatives in the hope of finally having science and fairness overcome the misinformation and lack of political backbone that $45 million of NGO spending has bought.