WV wood products company to cut wages to entice workers.... [View All]

[CrownPrinceBandar]

Columbia Flooring, a subsidiary of the Portland, OR-based Columbia Wood Products has decided that a wage cut would be an inducement for the good workers to step-up and compete for fewer high-paying jobs, all the while immigrant labor is brought in (supplied by a local immigrant labor headhunting firm) "to do the jobs Americans won't do".

http://www.wvpubcast.org/tv/outlook/wood-labor0824.pdf

The executive director of the West Virginia Forestry Association says many sawmills are looking to foreign workers to fill entry-level positions. They’re the hardest and lowest-paying jobs in the industry.
Dick Waybright: “I’ve heard it said that, well maybe we need to start looking to Mexicans to fill the labor supply, and what we see as one of the problems, is first of all it’s hard work. It requires stamina to get out there and work. You’re lifting, you’re pulling, you’re shoving. All these different things. Plus, summertime it’s hot and in the wintertime it’s cold.”

However, the executive director of the Affiliated Construction Trades Foundation, Steve White, disagrees:

"What they forget to add to that statement is yeah, West Virginians don’t want minimum wage jobs that should pay a living wage. And so, these corporations are so happy to be able find workers who work for $6 dollars an hour, below the poverty level, when the standard has always been twice that or more than that where people can raise a family.
And to say that West Virginians can’t or won’t do these jobs is outrageous. It’s not true.”

CWP plan in particular is to reward long-term workers with higher wages. But to do so, it is restructuring its payscale in such a way that current workers are not only feeling the pinch, but they are also worried about future employment security:

At Columbia Flooring, Shoemaker says the starting pay is $8.50 an hour. But that’s about to change. He says the company is restructuring its pay scale to retain more employees.
Others call it a pay cut.
Some of Columbia’s longest-serving employees told us off camera they will soon have their wages cut as part of the pay restructuring plan. One employee who’s been at Columbia since it open agreed to speak to us as long as we only used his voice, and didn’t use his name. “I’ve worked hard to get where I’m at. Now, they want to cut my pay $3 dollars and 20 some cents an hour, from $13.26 I make now to $10.06 or something like that. “We’re all afraid we’re being pushed out the door. Probably in a year or so, there will probably be all Hispanics working up here. That’s what I’m afraid of.”

Please don't mistake this as a screed against immigrant labor. I realize everyone has to work, and the notion of a better life is the foundation this country has been built upon. However, the notion of cutting wages to draw in workers that will remain with a company, while employing unskilled immigrants who push the wages down and the hours worked per week up, seems so ludicrous that it boggles my imagination.