UPM cuts more jobs

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Forestry giant UPM says it is being forced to cut around 50 contractor jobs related to its Crown land licenses because of government cuts to the Crown land silviculture program.

"It was as a result of that ... cut on license three that this work had to be cut back," explains UPM spokesperson Sharon Pond. "This year, it's $1.6 million that the funding is short."

UPM has let two of eight contracted companies go, but Pond said if funding is restored, UPM would be interested in hiring them back.

"The work needs to be done," she said. "It's very disappointing that we're not able to do the work this year, and it has not only an impact on our forestry management but, of course, as we now see, on people."

UPM shut down its Miramichi mill last year, but still maintains almost a million hectares of crown land.

Darrell Warren, owner of pre-commercial thinning company Warren Silviculture, worked as a contractor on the UPM crown allocation and told the Miramichi Leader he was let go Thursday, along with his 16 employees. He added he was initially told the total number of job cuts was much higher than the 50 UPM has acknowledged.

"My boss at UPM told me they had to cut 90 jobs," Warren said.

The province's 2008-2009 budget cut the Crown lands silviculture program by $4 million.

Natural Resources Minister Donald Arseneault said despite the cuts, silviculture efforts in the region will remain strong.

"There's no doubt when you reduce the budget by $4 million, it will have an impact," he said Friday. " ... We're still planting the same amount of trees as we did last year."

As for the job losses, he said those affected could contact their area MLAs to see if they can help.

"People like Rick Brewer are trying to find opportunities for those people, to find some other type of work or similar work," he said. "We're working on solutions to see how we can help that."

However, Warren said time has almost run out. He has been in the forestry business since 1992 and formed his own company in Gray Rapids in 2000, but now says he will have to close it down.

"It's a little easier for me," he said. "Some of my men, they're over 60. You can't retrain them for anything and there's no jobs, anyway, if you did retrain. They're only two or three years left to go, it would have been nice if they could have at least finished out their years in dignity."

He blamed the government's crown silviculture program cuts rather than UPM.

"I know they've got a budget surplus this year, so there's really no reason to do this," he said. "This is a really bad time to be cutting funding when there's nothing else left around here."

N.B. Crown licenses extended

The Ministry of Natural Resources reports that all Crown timber licenses are eligible to have their Forest Management Agreement extended as a result of the completion of the recent Five-year Licensee Performance Evaluation.

The licensees were evaluated for the 2002-2007 period. The ministry reports that all Crown license showed a significant improvement over the previous period in the areas of planting, pre-commercial thinning and remedial plantation clearing. This was also the first time since 1987 that licencees fully complied with the requirements for management plan development and submission.

Six forestry companies manage 10 licenses in New Brunswick. However, UPM's Crown licences are set to expire in August, one year after the company closed its mill in Miramichi. The next five-year review will take place in 2012.