Study finds Hispanic forest workers hold harder jobs with fewer benefits

Employment - The research, from the UO, emerges amid debate on the role immigrants play in the U.S. economy

BRENT HUNSBERGER

The Oregonian

Hispanics make up a disproportionate share of workers toiling on federal forestland, and they do more difficult jobs with fewer health benefits than non-Hispanic white counterparts, according to a new study.

A yearlong survey of contractors that built roads, fought fires and replanted forests on six federal timberlands -- including two national forests in Oregon -- found that nearly 42 percent of their workers in the busy season were Hispanic. By comparison, the overall U.S. labor force is 13.7 percent Hispanic, according to the latest government estimates.

The study, published in the most recent edition of the journal Policy Sciences, also found that among forest workers, Hispanics are more likely than whites to work seasonally, away from home and for companies that don't offer health insurance.

"A lot of it has to do with the kind of work that people are doing," said the study's author, Cassandra Moseley, director of the ecosystem work force program at the University of Oregon's Institute for Sustainable Environment. "But even among people doing similar work, Hispanics tended to work for companies that offered fewer benefits and less stability in their employment."

The study emerges amid increasing scrutiny of forest worker safety and of immigrant workers' role in the nation's economy. Earlier this year, the Senate Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests heard testimony on forest worker safety after The Sacramento Bee newspaper uncovered worker abuses by U.S. Forest Service contractors.

One industry member largely agreed with the findings. Rick Dice, owner of PatRick Corp, a wildland firefighting company in Redmond, said his firm can no longer compete to win contracts to do prescribed burning and brush piling in federal forests. He suspects competitors who win those bids use Hispanic workers to lower their labor costs.

"You've got a smaller amount of work and people fighting harder for it," said Dice, president of the National Wildfire Suppression Association, a trade group. "If they've figured out some sort of edge, I'm sure they will. I know I can't compete. I don't even try anymore."

The study has particular relevance in Oregon, home to 14 percent of the nation's forest service businesses, the highest concentration in the nation. Moseley included contractors working in Oregon's Deschutes and Willamette national forests in the study.

Moseley said Tuesday that the findings could help rural communities tailor economic development efforts to find ways to replace lost timberland jobs. The study also reflects the status of immigrant workers in the larger economy, she said, as Congress considers reforming the nation's immigration laws.

Moseley interviewed more than 100 contractors that worked on six national forests in Oregon, North Carolina, Colorado, Montana and Arizona during 1998-2002. The firms employed 5,840 workers and performed such tasks as road construction, road repair, forest thinning, firefighting and forest replanting.

The surveys found that Hispanics made up two-thirds of what Moseley called the industry's labor-intensive work force, performing such tasks as thinning, tree planting and animal control. White workers comprised 71 percent of the industry's equipment-intensive work force on such jobs as road maintenance, stream restoration and culvert placement, the study found.

Most forest employees worked away from home more than three-quarters of the time. But Hispanics were more likely to do so than whites, Moseley said. Equipment-intensive workers were more likely to work close to home than those in labor-intensive jobs.

Benefits also were skewed. Nearly two in three Hispanic workers worked for companies offering no health insurance, versus about two in 10 whites. Overall, four in 10 employees worked for a company providing some type of health coverage.