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Jeff Miller
Fleet Admiral
Joined: 22 Nov 2001
Posts: 23947
Location: Mental Ward for the Mentaly Unstable 6th floor, Saint John's 1615 Delaware Longview Washington 98632
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 Thu Nov 13, 2003 6:02 pm Fine Paper closing for good |
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| Quote: | Fine Paper closing for good
By Pat Forgey
Nov 13, 2003 - 08:06:29 am PST
Weyerhaeuser Co. announced the permanent closure of its Longview Fine Paper machine Wednesday, hitting the reeling Cowlitz County economy with the loss of 119 more jobs.
"Everybody's just in shock," said George Wilson, president of the Association of Pulp and Paper Workers Local 680, which represents the 102 hourly employees who will lose their job at the Fine Paper mill, formerly known as R-W Paper Co. Another 17 salaried workers also will lose their jobs.
The remaining fine paper machine will shut down Nov. 23, though employees will continue to work for some time afterwards.
Though many members of the community knew the mill was at risk of closure, there was still shock among workers, retirees and community leaders.
"To have another hit like this is tough," said Ted Sprague, president of the Cowlitz Economic Development Council. "I feel awful for those families. That's terrible."
Fine Paper may have fallen victim to the age of its only remaining paper machine, as well as the 2001 takeover of Willamette Industries, which brought new, more efficient paper machines into the Weyerhaeuser system.
During the afternoon the company shut down the No. 1 Fine Paper Machine and called employees together to tell them the news. It simultaneously issued a press release after the stock market closed in New York. The night shift was told early in the evening.
The machine has been scheduled to close temporarily from Thanksgiving to Christmas. Instead, it will run until Nov. 23, when it will be shut down and decommissioned.
Job losses announced are the latest blow to Cowlitz County's manufacturing economy, which had lost 1,790 manufacturing jobs from August 2001 to September this year.
Wilson said employees knew the fine paper business was in a bad way, with other area mills struggling as well. Boise Cascade's fine paper mill in St. Helens, Ore. is losing money, and Georgia-Pacific just announced the closure of a fine paper machine at its Camas mill Nov. 5, and the elimination of 60 jobs. In February, 2001 Weyerhaeuser shut down Fine Paper Machine No. 2 in Longview, costing 187 jobs.
To try to keep Weyerhaeuser from closing the No. 1 Fine Paper machine, those running it said they worked hard to make it run as efficiently as possible. Last year they convinced Weyerhaeuser to spend several million dollars to install a dandy roll, a sophisticated piece of equipment designed to improve paper quality.
Weyerhaeuser spokeswoman Jackie Lang said the mill had boosted its quality and reliability, but what it couldn't cope with was the economy. The year's long economic downturn meant less usage of the advertising and business papers it produced.
Both Weyerhaeuser and its competitors in the fine paper business are competing fiercely, and Lang said paper machine No. 1, which with a capacity of 90,000 tons of paper per year, was dwarfed by mills which could produce five times that amount.
"We're operating in a marketplace where our small, 47-year-old machine struggles to compete with highly efficient, modern mills now operating here and abroad," she said.
The closure has nothing to do with the mill's workforce, she said. "It is driven by our need to achieve greater efficiency and competitive advantage," Lang said. The machine was one of the least efficient in a division which company executives said was "struggling," a Wall Street euphemism for losing money.
Wilson said the takeover of Willamette Industries in 2001 meant that some of that competition came internally as well.
"When they incorporated Willamette into this company, they got a lot of high-speed, very modern mills," he said. "It's hard for us to compete with those," he said.
In a statement announcing the closure, Weyerhaeuser Vice President Michael A. Jackson, who heads Fine Paper operations, blamed the closure on the age of the machine. He is based in Federal Way.
"The closure of the machine was a difficult decision, made necessary by the age of the machine," he said.
Knowing the reasons for the closure doesn't make it any easier to take, Wilson said.
"I think its just going to be a big impact on the community, and on a lot of people's lives," he said.
Lang said the company will offer affected employees severance pay and continuation of health care benefits, as well as job-transition service and counseling, in accordance with company policy and union agreements. Wilson said the paperworkers' union contract include provisions related to mill shutdowns, and union leaders and company officials will begin negotiating those next week.
Sprague said a rapid response team made up of representatives from the Employment Security Department, Southwest Washington Workforce Development Council and others would beginning as soon as today working with the company and employees on options.
That could include some early retirements and transfers to other Weyerhaeuser operations, but that's not likely to help that many employees.
"We've got one guy here, he's 53 and has been her 30 years. It's pretty hard to go out and find another job at 53," Wilson said.
No. 1 machine will be shut down on midnight Nov. 23, but employees will remain on for some time after that to finish converting and shipping operations. The machine will be dismantled, not sold, and the site reclaimed for other uses, Lang said.
Other Weyerhaeuser operations have also downsized, and few other openings are likely to be available, acknowledged Wilson.
"We all knew it was coming, but we didn't know when," said Charles Larson of Longview, who retired from Fine Paper last year. He began work there when it was R-W Paper Co., a Weyerhaeuser venture with Wisconsin's Rhinelander Paper Co.
He said mill jobs were a blessing for people who'd been working at service stations or in fast food, and helped keep the community strong for decades.
"It was a pretty comforting feeling to know you have insurance and you can depend on having that check coming for your family every other week," he said. "I feel really sorry for the young people." |
After reading this I understand why the bars and liquor stores in this area are so busy no one wants to face reality that our town is going the same way that many towns have Hoquiam, Aberdeen, Castle Rock and many more logging towns our ecnomy (SP) is Dying and no one wants to do anything about it...
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davecenter
Commander
Joined: 22 Oct 2003
Posts: 391
Location: The Bridge
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| Thu Nov 13, 2003 6:47 pm |
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That is a real bummer. I'm sorry to hear it.
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Some think they are great, some want to be great, but very few are truly great
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Jeff Miller
Fleet Admiral
Joined: 22 Nov 2001
Posts: 23947
Location: Mental Ward for the Mentaly Unstable 6th floor, Saint John's 1615 Delaware Longview Washington 98632
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| Fri Nov 14, 2003 5:16 pm |
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Heres the follow up story to that one
| Quote: | 'Papermaking is all I do'
By Staff
Nov 14, 2003 - 08:11:29 am PST
Dan Gallagher will play Santa at the company Christmas party one last time, but he may have a hard time getting into the holiday spirit.
Robin Spahn isn't too concerned about himself --- he says his security lies in his faith. But he's worried about how to support his family when he'll be looking for a new job -- knowing that other $25-an-hour jobs like his are scarce these days.
Mike Ward, 51, said he hasn't had time to develop a plan for when he loses his management job at Weyerhaeuser Co.'s Fine Paper mill in Longview. "I'm a papermaker. That's all I've ever done."
The day after the company announced it will close the 47-year old mill and lay off 119 workers, employees reacted Thursday with a mix of resignation, sadness, fear and a tinge of anger but little surprise.
Fifteen-year employee Butch Eldridge, an electrician who works in the same building as the Fine Paper machine, said the mood among workers is "very somber."
"With the maintenance crew, it's almost like someone died," said Eldridge, 50, of Longview.
Eldridge also said employees are worried about losing other jobs at the mill.
"We're curious as to how they can afford to keep running the whole mill without Fine Paper," he said. "Our pulp mill makes about 1,100 or 1,200 tons of paper every day, and we can't use that much."
"I gave it the best twenty-some years of my life, but it wasn't good enough," said Dan Gallagher, 48, a machine tender who has worked 28 years with the company and has played Santa at many Fine Paper Christmas parties.
Gallagher said "we all gave it our best shot" to keep the mill's remaining paper machine profitable.
Gallagher's wife, Susan, is a homemaker who also cared for grandchildren in her home. The Gallaghers' children are grown, though their youngest is finishing up college.
Now that's all up in the air.
"You have to figure out what to do the with the rest of your life," she said.
"What do you do now. Who wants an old papermaker?" Dan Gallagher asked.
Echoing what many other workers said, the couple said they're awaiting word about how much severance pay workers may get, what type of retraining opportunities might be available and whether some workers might be reassigned to other parts of the Longview operation or elsewhere. Although the paper machine shuts down Nov. 23, some workers will likely continue working into next year.
"I would prefer to stay here. But if we can't, we can't," said one worker, with more than 30 years at the Fine Paper plant, who asked not to be identified.
"It's kind of a shock. I have not had to worry about what I'm going to do for work for 33 years. Now I don't know. I'm too young to retire. I'm 53. ... I'm interested in retraining, but I don't know in what."
Despite the displacement, "I don't feel any bitterness. (The company) has been good to me. I would have liked to stay another six, seven years. But you have to roll with the punches."
Robin Spahn, who has worked 26 years at the Fine Paper plant, said he's heard that the Georgia-Pacific mill in Wauna, Ore., is hiring and that he might apply.
"I'm not worried about my future a bit. My security is in my Christian faith and not in Weyerhaeuser and big corporations. If that's where your security is, you're going to be disappointed, eventually," said Spahn, 45, a backtender.
Spahn acknowledged, though, that he's worried about how to support his wife, a teller at a local credit union, his three-month-old son and 13-year-old stepdaughter. He's never done any other work in his adult life.
"Workers are in a "state of shock" right now,'' said George Wilson, 59, president of the AWPPW Local 680. He said the union wants to provide jobs for the younger employees, meaning the ones who are retirement age are looking at retirement packages.
"We tried to stay positive," Wilson said.
The coming layoffs will include 17 salaried employees. Mike Ward, of Longview, who has 31 years with the company and supervises a crew of 20 paper machine and finishing workers, wonders whether he'll be among them. All salaries employees will be put in a pool and decisions about layoffs will be made early next year, he said.
"Hopefully, there's a spot for me." |
| Quote: | | Weyerhaeuser Co.'s Fine Paper mill, the large flat-roofed building in the center and adjoining building to its upper right, soon will be idled permanently. The mill is bordered by Industrial Way and company railroad tracks to its upper left and a mill access road that loops around the lower and right sides of the photo. Solvay Interox is at the far upper left. |
After reading this makes me wish for the good ole times when you could just walk into a building and get a job right off the bat now its like.......war you either get a job or your left behind.
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davecenter
Commander
Joined: 22 Oct 2003
Posts: 391
Location: The Bridge
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| Fri Nov 14, 2003 7:32 pm |
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I know. Its a shame the world has changed so much. But look at this way. At least now we have computers.
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Some think they are great, some want to be great, but very few are truly great
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