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Comparing Conditions of Labor-IntensiveForestry and Fire Suppression WorkersCassandra Moseley a , Gerardo Sandoval b & Emily Jane Davis aa Institute for a Sustainable Environment, University of Oregon ,Eugene , Oregon , USAb Planning, Public Policy, and Management, University of Oregon ,Eugene , Oregon , USAPublished online: 28 Mar 2014.

To cite this article: Cassandra Moseley , Gerardo Sandoval & Emily Jane Davis (2014) ComparingConditions of Labor-Intensive Forestry and Fire Suppression Workers, Society & Natural Resources: AnInternational Journal, 27:5, 540-556, DOI: 10.1080/08941920.2014.888792

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Comparing Conditions of Labor-IntensiveForestry and Fire Suppression Workers

CASSANDRA MOSELEY

Institute for a Sustainable Environment, University of Oregon,Eugene, Oregon, USA

GERARDO SANDOVAL

Planning, Public Policy, and Management, University of Oregon,Eugene, Oregon, USA

EMILY JANE DAVIS

Institute for a Sustainable Environment, University of Oregon,Eugene, Oregon, USA

Since the late 1970s, labor-intensive forest workers in the Pacific Northwest havebeen mostly Latino. These workers and their Anglo counterparts plant and thin trees,perform other forestry services, and fight wildland fires. Poor job quality has beenpersistent, especially for Latino workers. We compare working conditions betweenfire suppression and nonsuppression forest work across Latino and non-Latino popu-lations in Oregon. We find that although both groups share some similar conditions,Latino workers often faced poorer conditions, including disrespectful treatment,uncompensated injuries, risk of being blackballed if they complained, and littleopportunity for advancement. However, there were some important job qualityimprovements for Latinos in fire suppression, including compensation for traveland training. Differences in contracting market structure and federal oversightbetween fire suppression and other forest work may contribute to improved job qual-ity. This suggests the potential for improving conditions by focusing on improvingcontracting markets and oversight.

Keywords fire suppression, Forest Service, forest workers, job quality, Latino,Oregon, pinero

Since federal land management in the Pacific Northwest shifted toward ecosystemrestoration and stewardship in the 1990s, much research has focused on planningand collaboration. Less attention has been paid to the people working on theground. Labor-intensive forest workers, sometimes called pineros, play a centralrole in hazardous fuels reduction, restoration, and wildfire suppression on federallands.

Received 1 July 2012; accepted 18 March 2013.Address correspondence to Cassandra Moseley, Institute for a Sustainable Environment,

University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97503, USA. E-mail: cmoseley@uoregon.edu

Society and Natural Resources, 27:540–556Copyright # 2014 Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 0894-1920 print=1521-0723 onlineDOI: 10.1080/08941920.2014.888792

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Pineros work for contractors who provide services to the federal government.The USDA Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) have a longhistory of contracting, particularly for seasonal activities such as thinning, tree plant-ing, and cone picking, and for heavy equipment work such as road building andmaintenance. These agencies also contract out fire suppression services, includingfire crews, engines and tenders, janitorial and commissary services, and aerialsupport (Ellison et al. 2012). With a declining internal workforce and growingproportion of their budgets spent on fire suppression, the agencies have contractedout an increasing proportion of their land management and fire suppression work(Moseley 2005).

Despite popular imaginaries of rugged rural loggers working the woods,Oregon’s forestry workforce has changed from primarily Anglo in the 1970s tolow-income Latino immigrants and predominantly undocumented workers (Sarathy2012; Sarathy 2006; see also Casanova and McDaniel 2005). Problems with workingconditions in this workforce have been remarkably persistent and include low orunpaid wages, dangerous environments, and a lack of training (Sarathy 2012). Overthree decades, newspaper exposes have sparked political controversies about theseworking conditions (Manano and Walden 1980; Bowman and Campopesco 1993;Knudson 2005; Chu 2010). Media attention has led to periods of congressionaloversight and increased enforcement of labor laws (U.S. Congress House 1993;U.S. Congress Senate 2006; U.S. Congress House 2008), but backsliding hasoccurred when political attention turned to other issues (U.S. Congress Senate 2006).

Forest worker advocates such as the Northwest Worker Justice Project andAlliance of Forest Workers and Harvesters have consistently argued that the keyto better working conditions for labor-intensive forest workers is improvedenforcement of federal labor and contracting laws (U.S. Congress Senate 2006;U.S. Congress House 2008). However, the continuation of poor conditions in theface of two decades of periodic political controversy and advocacy raises questionsabout how far labor laws alone can ensure job quality. Other factors, such as vulner-ability of immigrant workers or public lands policy and federal contracting regula-tions, may also influence working conditions (Moseley and Reyes 2007).

To shed light on the factors affecting job quality in forestry work, we comparedworking conditions in forestry services and fire suppression activities along twoaxes—ethnicity and type of work (non-fire suppression vs. suppression).

Literature and Background

Labor-Intensive Forest and Fire Suppression Work and Contracting

Forestry support work involves strenuous activities such as planting and maintainingtree seedlings, thinning trees, piling and burning brush, manual herbicide application,and cone harvesting (Moseley 2006). These activities might support industrial-scaletimber management, wildfire mitigation, or forest and watershed restoration.Wildland fire suppression can include manual tasks such as digging a fire line, as wellas heavy equipment operation. All of these activities are seasonal (Moseley 2006).Tree planting can only occur in late winter and early spring. Thinning is typicallyperformed in late spring, early summer, and late fall, when fire danger is low. Firesuppression work varies considerably from year to year. For most firms working inthe American West, the season is summer and fall.

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There has been limited and disconnected scholarship on working conditions inforestry support and fire suppression work. Accounts abound of the storied dangersof logging, but since the mechanization of this industry, the risk of injury is more con-centrated on workers who remain out on the ground, such as tree fellers (Bell 2002).Much of the forestry support work that began after the Northwest Forest Plan andthe shift toward ecosystem management has also been labor intensive (Moseley andReyes 2007), but there has been limited analysis of the working conditions of theserestoration activities and what determines job quality. Concerning wildfire sup-pression, the literature has largely examined physical effects of occupational hazardssuch as smoke inhalation (Liu et al. 1992, Reinhardt and Ottomar 2004). Broadanalysis of the policy, institutional, and environmental factors that together affectworking conditions for firefighters is lacking.

Different policies and regulations govern contracted forestry support work andfire suppression and affect working conditions. Congressional funding for forestrysupport activities such as thinning and other fuels reduction practices increased afterthe National Fire Plan of 2000 and the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003(Vaughn and Cortner 2005). Federal Acquisition Regulations and the ServiceContracting Act apply to service contracting. To perform these kinds of work, busi-nesses competitively bid on service contracts (Daly et al. 2006), and agencies selectbids based on best value to the government. Agencies can select the lowest price offerbut can also award contracts to businesses with better past performance or technicalcapabilities than the lowest price bidder. Worker advocates often argue that for theselabor-intensive contracts, the agency simply selects the lowest bidder (U.S. CongressSenate 2001). Moreover, as Sarathy (2012) suggests, there has been limited labor lawenforcement and little to no infrastructure such as unions to help forest workers seekrecourse.

Contractors operate under the similar labor laws when participating in wild-land fire suppression, but face more regulation, including specific equipment, com-munication and safety equipment, and training requirements. Workers mustparticipate in training and physical fitness requirements that do not exist in non-suppression work (National Wildfire Suppression Association 2012). There werenoted problems with the quality of contracted firefighting according to reportsand audits in the early 2000s, leading to the adoption of better methods to enforcestandards for skills, fitness, and communication abilities (Office of InspectorGeneral 2006). In addition, institutions such as the National Wildfire CoordinatingGroup and the National Wildfire Suppression Association help standardize andprovide resources for the implementation of fire training. Since the establishmentof the National Fire Plan in 2000, contractors who wish to provide suppressionservices bid to enter a pool of qualified businesses from which they can be drawnin the event of fire.

Although there has been no research comparing fire suppression and naturalresource contracting markets, anecdotal evidence suggests that labor-intensive forestmanagement activities are extremely competitive while the fire suppression contract-ing markets have limited price competition. Although nonsuppression work is con-strained by appropriated budgets and national forests are required to meet hightargets with these limited funds, the Forest Service generally treats fires suppressionas an emergency. In heavy fire years, the agency often borrows money from nonfireaccounts and asks Congress for additional resources, a system that limits downwardpressure on costs.

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The Latinization of Forestry Support Work

Forest workers in labor-intensive jobs in the Pacific Northwest have been predomi-nately Latino since the late 1970s (Brown 2000; Mackie 1994; McDaniel andCasanova 2003; Sarathy 2006). It is likely that the labor-intensive fire suppressionworkforce has more non-Hispanic workers than is the case with forest work, butthe proportions of each ethnic group are unknown. Sarathy (2012) argues that severalfactors contributed to this shift in Oregon. First, the Latinization of forest work fol-lowed the Latinization of agriculture work, especially in fruit orchards in the 1970s.Second, the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 provided amnestyfor undocumented workers and enabled older immigrants to become forest contrac-tors as they were legalized. Latinos were then able to move up to foremen positions,run their own crews, and become federal contractors. Immigration documentationalso allowed them to take advantage of the Small Business Administration’s 8(a) pro-gram, which reserves a proportion of federal contracts for minority-owned businesses.Further, recruitment by kinship networks is key to chain migration processes (Grieco1985), as labor recruiters rely on social networks to bring workers fromMexico to thePacific Northwest.

This Latinization of forestry support work has implications for working con-ditions. Scholarship on working conditions and ethnicity has shown that Latinoimmigrants are more likely to end up in poorer quality jobs than non-Latinos (mostlyAnglo) (Catanzarite 2000; Catanzarite and Trimble 2008). Some argue that thesedifferences are due to differences in education and language skills (Catanzarite andTrimble 2008). Others, however, have found that IRCA led to the deterioration ofworking conditions for both undocumented and documented immigrants by increas-ing the risk of prosecution of their employers and by increasing the immigrants’ legalvulnerability to deportation (Massey et al. 2002; Donato et al. 1992). Still othersargue that the structure of guest worker visa programs such as H-2B visas, whichlet employers hire temporary workers based on employment needs, also contributesto these differences (Seminara 2010; Martin and Teitelbaum 2001).

This scholarship outlines shifts in types of work occurring on federal forests andthe composition of the forest workforce. Taken together, it suggests that greaterunderstanding of this workforce’s conditions would require focus on the interplayof ethnicity, policy, and government oversight, and on how and why employmentin this sector differs for Latinos and non-Latinos. This then provides further insightsbeyond ethnicity’s effects on job quality in forestry support work. Although laborlaws are similar in both cases, there are different regulations and institutions sur-rounding nonsuppression and suppression work. To better understand this interplayin the Pacific Northwest forests where there is high reliance on pineros, we asked thefollowing questions: (1) How is job quality different for Latino and non-Latinoworkers in labor-intensive forestry jobs? (2) What are the differences in job qualityfor Latinos in fire suppression and Latinos in nonsuppression jobs where federaloversight, regulation, and policy context vary?

Methods

We conducted this research in Oregon using qualitative semistructured interviews ofworkers, field observations, and a focus group. We interviewed Latinos and non-Latinos who worked for forestry services businesses that contract with the federal

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government. In Oregon, the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM)manage 53% of the state’s lands. Initially, the project focused on western Oregon,where significant populations of Latino forest workers are settled (Moseley 2005;Moseley and Shankle 2001). Researchers used a snowball sampling technique to findworkers, which was appropriate as gaining forestry work often occurs via networksand social capital. Ultimately, 30 of the 46 Latino forest workers’ interviews occurredin southwestern Oregon because of willingness of Latino forest workers to participatethere. Interviewer conversations suggest that in other regions, workers feared reper-cussions from participation. Because of the concentration of interviews with Latinosin southern Oregon, we also conducted our non-Latino worker interviews there.

We targeted for participation workers who had performed labor-intensive workon federal lands at some time during the 12 months prior to the interview. Many hadalso worked on private lands. Finding forest workers to interview was difficult forseveral reasons. First, there is no central source of forest workers, such as unionrepresentation. Second, workers are not located, even seasonally, in a single placesuch as a factory or a field. Third, there is a lack of trust of outsiders, which makesaccess to these populations extremely difficult. This was an important issue research-ers had to deal with. Consequently, researchers used many different approaches toidentify forest workers, including posting notices, talking with contractors, and seek-ing recommendations from worker organizations (since they had access to workers),but relied primarily on suggestions from other forest workers.

Researchers interviewed Latino participants over a period of 21 months in 2003and 2004; interviews with non-Latino workers took place over 5 months in 2005.Ultimately, 94 interviews were conducted with 46 Latino forest workers and 40non-Latino workers. In addition, two Latino Forest Service employees and onenon-Latino OregonDepartment of Forestry employee were interviewed. Five contrac-tors were also interviewed, either because they had been workers for a long time orbecause interviewers believed they could identify additional workers. Of the 46 Latinocontract workers interviewed, 45 were born in Mexico and 1 in the United States.These interviewees came from various locations in Mexico: Tijuana, Queretaro,Guanajuato, Michoacan, and Oaxaca. Contractors who charged the pineros $500for the opportunity to work in the Pacific Northwest recruited many of them directlyin Mexico. All of the non-Latino workers were born in the United States or to U.S.military families abroad; all but one were White. Female forest workers were fairlyrare; the study includes one Latina and six Anglo women. To limit risk to workersand to increase candor, we did not ask about immigration status. Hence, the numbersof people who had legal permanent residency, guest worker visas, or were undocumen-ted were unknown. Some informants volunteered information from which one couldinfer their status or the status of the people they worked with. The researcher whointerviewed the Latino workers came to believe that the vast majority of forestworkers he encountered were undocumented, which resembles Sarathy’s experiencein her research (Sarathy 2008, 2012).

The undocumented status of many workers created challenges for recruitmentand interviewing pineros. Recruiting pineros for the study was difficult, but abilingual Latino man with experience providing legal assistance to Latino farm work-ers interviewed the Latino workers in Spanish, which helped in the recruitment pro-cess. A non-Latino female forest worker interviewed the non-Latino participants inEnglish. The interviews were conducted in a variety of places, including homes,vehicles, meeting places, and work sites. Interviewers wrote a detailed summary for

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each interview. Audio recordings were not used because pineros would be distrustfulof being recorded and we did not want to place them at risk due to their legal status.After each interviewer completed all of his=her interviews, a long, open-endeddebriefing session was conducted with each interviewer in which researchersasked the interviewers about patterns, impressions, and emerging themes that theydrew from the interviews as a whole. The debrief sessions were recorded andtranscribed.

After completing the interviews, a forest worker organization, the Alliance ofForest Workers and Harvesters (AFWH), convened a meeting of approximately 20Latino and non-Latino workers. At the meeting, we presented the preliminary resultsand gathered additional information on worker conditions. Workers who attendedthe AFWHmeeting were mostly interviewees. Discussion of participant reactions fol-lowed a short presentation of preliminary results. This qualitative approach helpedcreate a sense of safety where workers could be honest and forthcoming about theirexperiences.

There are several potential biases in the interview sample. First, because forestworkers are difficult to locate, people who worked longer periods in the woods weremore likely to be found than people who worked for only very short periods. Second,the Latino sample is likely biased toward people who work in less vulnerable situa-tions compared with the general Latino forest worker population. The interviewerscontacted dozens more people than they interviewed. This was particularly true forthe potential pool of Latino forest worker interviewees. Informal conversations withworkers who refused to be interviewed as well as information gathered in interviewssuggested that some who refused formal interviews were in more exploitative circum-stances than those who agreed to participate. Consequently, data may paint too rosya picture of working conditions. Finally, people who traveled widely to undertakeforest work may be missing from the study because they were less likely to be found.

Job Quality Measures

A significant literature exists on job quality measures (Rosenthal 1989). Some focuson objective measures such as wages and safety and others on subjective measures ofjob satisfaction (Green 2006). This study combines these objective and subjectivemeasures as well as additional factors identified as important in preliminary conversa-tions with forest workers and their advocates. Although quantitative studies of jobquality typically avoid measures of dimensions of job quality that are required bylaw (Moseley 2006; McGovern, Smeaton, and Hill 2004), our approach permittedsome probing about some elements of job quality that are legally prescribed. Withthese literatures and conversations in mind, we chose the following job quality mea-sures: wages and other compensation, workplace safety and accessibility of workers’compensation, opportunity for advancement, structured training, job choice, andrecourse if dissatisfied. We also discovered through interviews that respectful treat-ment was an important measure of job quality for many interviewees. Further, itbecame apparent that forest workers had different experiences when they were fight-ing fires than when they were performing nonsuppression activities. Consequently, wecompare fire suppression with other forest work. Because we did not set out to studydifferences between suppression and nonsuppression work, but discovered it as anemergent theme, we do not have information about differences between these twotypes of work across all job quality measures.

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Findings

We organize our findings by characterizing the types, duration, and seasonality offorestry work. We identify patterns in this industry and note when these characteris-tics varied by ethnicity, and between nonsuppression forestry support and firesuppression. We then delve into measures of job quality, again examining how thesevaried by ethnicity and work type.

Types of Work

As described earlier, we targeted for interviews workers who worked on federal lands,but many worked on both public and private lands. We found that Latino workersprimarily worked on a mixture of federal and private industrial lands, although theydid not always know who the landowner was. Non-Latino workers most frequentlyworked on private nonindustrial lands and secondarily on public lands. Often, thesenon-Latino workers conducted hazardous fuels reduction (thinning and brushing) onprivate, city, or county lands with federal grants funds.

The most common work activities among those interviewed were thinning (72%),piling (67%), fire suppression (62%), and tree planting (62%). Our interviews occurredduring a rapid expansion of the use of fire suppression contractors due to theNational Fire Plan. Southern Oregon contractors have supplied many of these firesuppression crews. Although some workers performed only one activity, more oftenthey performed several forest-related activities. For both groups, people who thinnedcommonly also piled trees and brush and were firefighters.

Work Structures

For both non-Latinos and Latinos, work was typically segregated by crew and oftenby work type. For example, we found that although many non-Latinos had experi-ence in tree planting, only a few had done any planting during the year prior to theirinterview. Latino tree planters also commonly performed tree seedling maintenanceand tree release, which involves bud capping, tubing, and brush cutting.

Latinos and non-Latinos often worked for companies with different labor struc-tures. Most of the Latino workers interviewed worked in large crews, typically 20people. In contrast, many of the non-Latino workers worked on smaller crews thatconsisted of 5 people. Some non-Latinos preferred to work on these smaller crewsand did not want to work for a larger contractor. Firefighting crews typically consistof 20 people, as required by the State of Oregon and Forest Service fire-suppressioncrew contracts. Consequently, when non-Latino workers are working on fires, theyalso work in large crews. Further, when a company employs workers from severalethnicities, they are unlikely to work on the same crew. For example, one non-Latinoman said that he had worked for 7 years for the same contractor and had neverplanted a tree because the company’s Latino crews were always used for this job.

Job Duration and Seasonality

Forest work is naturally seasonal and there was considerable variation from workerto worker in the amount of time spent in forestry work compared to other activities.We found that those who worked in the woods most of the year necessarily shifted

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activities as the seasons changed. If they could find work with a fire suppressioncontractor during fire season, they were likely to shift to fire suppression activitiesduring the summer months. After fire season was over, they returned to forestactivities. We also found that workers in another cluster were in the woods for afew months of the year, but they also had significant periods—typically severalmonths—when they worked in other industries, took care of their families, werestudents, or were unemployed.

All of the work we studied is ‘‘on call’’ in that people are only asked to come towork when there is a specific contract or project work available that day. There wereworkers who spent much of the season ‘‘on call’’ but rarely worked in the woods.Calls for fire suppression in particular were erratic and depended heavily on theseverity of the fire year. Some workers were on call but worked for contractorswho provided them with fairly regular work. Others had nonforest work that theycould leave at a moment’s notice to join a fire crew. But for others who found it moredifficult to find steady flexible work, on-call work meant considerable time withoutpaid employment.

Job Quality

This section reviews similarities and differences across ten dimensions of job qualityin nonsuppression and fire suppression activities (Table 1).

WagesInterviewees were asked how much they were paid, and most willingly offered thisinformation. Latino interviewees reported higher hourly wages than non-Latinos.This was especially true for thinning, as Latinos tended to do this work on publiclands where the Service Contract Act requires prevailing wages, whereasnon-Latinos mostly did this work on private or local government lands, which donot have prevailing wage requirements. However, Latinos were more likely to ident-ify times when they were not fully paid. Thirty-four percent of Latino intervieweeswho answered this question had been paid less than expected at least once, whereas13% of non-Latinos had been paid less than expected.

Compared to nonsuppression work, hourly wages for fire suppression were lessfor both Latinos and non-Latinos. However, workers were paid more consistentlyfor overtime on fires than other work. Many did not work overtime on nonsuppres-sion activities, so that contractors did not have to pay overtime. When they workedovertime hours, others—typically Latinos—were paid at the regular rate. Stillothers—also typically Latinos—were paid for 40 hours per week, even when theyworked more.

Some contractors employing Latino workers used subcontractors=recruiters,who played a mediating role between Latino workers and employers. Some recrui-ters charged workers an ongoing fee for employment, which appeared to rangebetween $1 and $4 per hour. This illegal practice further reduced wages for Latinoworkers.

Pay While TravelingExcept when they were the drivers, most forest workers were not paid for travel to andfrom the worksite when performing nonsuppression work, even when in a companyvehicle. Roughly 15% of Latinos and one-third of non-Latino interviewees were

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Table 1. Job quality

Job quality:Non-fire Latino Non-Latino

Wages Reported high, but actualwage unclear. Considerableuncompensated time,especially travel andovertime. Recruiter takingwages from some.

Reported lower thanHispanics, but rarely haveunpaid work.

Health insuranceor payments inlieu of benefits

Very few with benefits; manyapparently paid $ in lieu ofbenefits.

More offered healthinsurance; typically paid $in lieu of benefits.

Overtime pay Very infrequently SomePay while travelingto site

Very infrequently Some

Workplace safety Dangerous, pressure to movequickly; limited=no access toworkers compensation ifinjured.

Less dangerous—lesspressure to move quickly,and more access tocompensation if injured.

Opportunity foradvancement

Few, only forEnglish-speakingdocumented workers.

Some; difficult whenworking for small firms;can become owncontractors or work forgovernment.

Structured training(on the job)

None None

Job choice Chose because of high pay Chose because likedworking outside,improving theenvironment

Recourse Quit if bad; no appeals Quit if bad; opportunity todiscuss problems withboss or report togovernment

Respectfultreatment

Yelling, pressure to movefaster

Few complaints

Job quality:Fire Latino Non-Latino

Wages Lower than for thinning, butpaid overtime

Lower than for thinning,but paid overtime

Overtime andtravel time

Frequently paid Universally paid

(Continued )

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consistently paid for travel time. One-third of non-Latino interviewees were requiredto drive personal vehicles to the work locations in the forest and were not reimbursedfor mileage or travel time. Driving personal vehicles was uncommon for Latinos. Incontrast, for fire suppression all of the non-Latino firefighters said that they were paidfor travel time and about 65% of Latino interviewees were paid for travel time. Thiscould result in considerable additional income because firefighters might spend manyhours traveling.

For those who were not paid for travel time, pay began when they started work inthe forest. This is in contrast to federal and state land management employees, whosepaid workday begins when they reach their duty station and get into the governmentvehicle to head for the worksite. For those who worked at locations several hoursfrom home, the time spent in company vehicles might constitute significant unpaidtime. In a few cases, Latino workers reported days when the driver became lostand they never arrived at the worksite, or when they arrived at the site and therewas no work for them to do. In such cases, the entire day might be unpaid.

Health CareTwo Latino interviewees worked for contractors who offered health insurance,whereas eight non-Latinos did. The remaining workers should have been receivinghealth and welfare payments in lieu of health insurance when working on federal land,according to law. It was difficult to determine whether forest workers were beinggiven this payment. Most workers, especially Latinos, did not seem to know that theywere entitled to it and said that they did not receive it. Some, however, described‘‘bonuses’’ or ‘‘incentives’’ when working on federal land. Many others describedwage rates that equaled the prevailing wage plus the heath and welfare payment, sug-gesting that they did, in fact, receive this payment. We did not find any differencebetween nonsuppression and suppression work in terms of health care access.

Workplace Injuries and Workers’ CompensationForest work is inherently dangerous because it involves chain saws, steep slopes, fire,narrow winding roads, and heavy physical labor. It can occur in 100-degree heat andin snow and rain. We heard many stories of Latino workers who had been hurt onthe job or had close calls, such as this one from a man who lived in Woodburn, OR,and was from Guanajuato, Mexico.

Table 1. Continued

Job quality:Fire Latino Non-Latino

Opportunity foradvancement

Maybe, but only ifEnglish-speaking anddocumented; fire crewbosses of Hispanic crewsmust be bilingual

Possible, by putting inhours and getting training

Structured training(on the job)

Received required training Received required training

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I was planting trees in Roseburg, OR, in a very steep incline with lots ofshale rock. It had an incline of 70%. I suddenly slipped and down I camesliding on rocks. I tried to stop myself by using the [Hoedad] used toplant the trees, but since it was mostly rock, the ax [Hoedad] wouldnot grab hold. I finally stopped when I snagged a branch of a fallen tree,otherwise I would have probably been hurt badly. As it was I was scrapedup but kept on working.

Fire in particular posed risks for both Latino and non-Latino workers. Oneinterviewee reported these dangers:

One time I was doing mop-up when a new worker just started walkinglike it was a street or something. The place was covered with ash andhe stepped on a burning tree trunk that was hidden by the ash. He hadto be taken by helicopter to the hospital with severe burns to his lowerbody. The smoldering trunk torched him.

Interviewees also noted that working on a fire could be particularly dangerous ifworkers did not speak English and could not readily communicate with each otherand=or crew bosses.

Although both Latino and non-Latino workers had been injured and manydiscussed how dangerous the work was, few had ever used worker’s compensationinsurance or reported an injury. Most Latinos, such as the three quoted next, feltthat if they reported an injury they would be fired.

Employees should always do their best work and be very careful because,we all know that worker’s compensation is not an option.

No one in his right mind would ever use the worker’s compensationsystem. The contractors will make sure that you never work again ifyou use it.

You get hurt, you work or you lose your job. You complain and younever work again.

Further, some contractors employing Latino workers used subcontractors=recruiters. We heard that some recruiters would ensure that Latino workers whocomplained about conditions or were injured on the job were fired. Recruitersappeared to be networked, and workers who had complained received reputationsas ‘‘bad’’ workers sometimes could no longer obtain a job anywhere in the network(see also Sarathy 2006).

Nearly universally, non-Latinos did not have the same sense that they would notreceive assistance or would face consequences if they were injured. Those who hadbeen injured, however, did have mixed experiences with workers’ compensation.Some said that they had reported injuries and received compensation. Some also saidthat contractors had paid medical bills for minor injuries to keep their insurance pre-miums down and offered alternative work (with fewer hours or less pay) while theyrecovered. A few felt pressure not to use the workers’ compensation system becauseit would raise their employers’ insurance rates.

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Opportunity for AdvancementWe asked workers whether they saw opportunities for promotion or earning higherwages. Some interviewees were crew bosses or working to become crew bosses. Forthe most part, Latinos felt that the opportunity for more pay was limited to workerswho could speak English, were documented, and had connections.

There are too many Mexicans in _____ looking for the chance to come tothe United States and work. If you have a connection, you don’t messwith it. Promotions are only if you are legal and know how to readand write English.

Another Latino man commented on his decision to leave forestry.

In the past two years, he has seen manymore Latino workers in the area andcontractors are paying themmuch less than he gets paid. The workers do notcomplainbecause theyare newarrivals andarewilling towork for $8 anhour.He is now working at a restaurant. He cannot collect unemployment so hereally had no choice, even though he loves the work and was very good at it.

Another significant theme that emerged from the interviews was a tensionbetween the Latino workers and the Latino contractors. The Latino workers hadcomplete dependency on the Latino contractors, as recruitment was based on friend-ship and kinship networks that were often tied to the Mexican towns where workersoriginated. One Latino pinero, who lived in Eugene, OR, explained in an interviewhow he felt about other Latino contractors.

You complain, you never work again. Latino contractors are like that;they use you till you drop. They say, there are more of you out thereso I don’t need you, you need me.

In another example, one Latino man described his experience working on anon-Latino crew.

He was one of two Latinos on the crew doing herbicide application. Hewas paid from the moment he left the contractor’s office at 6:30 a.m.He worked 40 hours a week. The employer paid him $10 per hour no mat-ter what the work was. If they were somewhere that was not workable,they moved elsewhere. He said that the difference in treatment was over-whelming. He wished he could work there forever.

Among the non-Latinos, a central barrier to advancement was that they workedfor small companies with little opportunity to take management roles. Some of thefirefighters hoped that they could become crew or squad bosses and were taking stepsto become qualified. With fire suppression’s clear hierarchical structure, non-Latinosfelt that they could be promoted by putting in required hours and attending training,while Latinos who wanted to progress would need to speak English, as crew bossesare required to speak English. Some interviewees felt that opportunities for advance-ment existed only if they were employed in a federal job (which requires citizenship) orbecame an independent contractor.

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TrainingExcept for wildland firefighters, structured training was rare. All of the workersinterviewed in this study who were firefighters reported that they had received formalfire training. All firefighters are required to have annual instruction focused pri-marily on safety and to pass a physical fitness test. Fire crew and squad bossesare required to attend additional training. For other nonsuppression activities, mostinterviewees indicated they learned on the job and from informal instruction pro-vided by fellow workers and crew leaders.

RecourseMost interviewees said if they were treated poorly, they would just quit without say-ing anything. This was particularly true for Latino workers, but most non-Latinoworkers also said that they would quit. But, unlike Latinos, many said that theywould talk to their superiors to try to work out problems first. This sense that theycould work with employers to resolve disagreements was strikingly different fromLatino workers. Like Latinos, only two non-Latinos said that they would report toa labor agency, but one non-Latino did have a complaint pending with the state labordepartment.

Job Choice

Latinos and non-Latinos worked in the woods for different reasons. Latinos told us thatforest work promised higher wages than other employment open to them, but the workwas difficult and dangerous, and crew bosses frequently yelled at workers or otherwisetreated them disrespectfully. When asked what they would choose if they could haveanother job with the same wage, 73% of Latino interviewees responded that they wouldprefer to work in another field. The type of work that they would rather be doing variedbut included construction, masonry, carpentry, sawmilling, and farm work.

In contrast, only 30% of non-Latino interviewees would work in a different fieldif they could earn the same money. Some pointed out that they could be earning moremoney doing other work, but chose forest work because they loved working outdoorsor believed that they were improving the environment.

Respectful Treatment

Workers were asked how the government and employers could make their job better.Latinos and non-Latinos offered markedly different recommendations. By far, themost common Latino recommendation was that employers treat workers withrespect, with less verbal abuse from crew bosses. Some felt that more oversight ofcrew bosses and training about how to treat workers would help. The second mostcommon request from Latino workers was fair wages that reflected experience andwillingness to work hard. Non-Latinos were most often interested in higher wagesand more continuous work. The second most common recommendation fromnon-Latinos was benefits, such as medical insurance, and new equipment.

Discussion

We found that Latino and non-Latino forest workers had some similar working con-ditions in terms of physically demanding work, lack of structured training on the job

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while performing nonsuppression activities, and infrequent pay while traveling tononsuppression worksites. Despite the similarities, there were also stark differences.Particularly striking were Latino reports of being constantly yelled at by crew bosseswho demanded faster work and stories of uncompensated injuries, particularly whileperforming non-suppression work. Many Latinos feared that if they complainedthey would not only be fired but also blacklisted. Latinos worked in forestry largelybecause it seemed to pay better than other available alternatives, but many statedthat they would not continue in this work if they had a choice. Some of the lowerlabor and quality of work exploitation that Latino interviewees mentioned wasdue to kinship networks and intraethnic exploitation via Latino contractors (Sarathy2012). Further, most Latino workers had little hope of advancement unless theycould learn English or somehow obtain legal status in the United States. By contrast,non-Latino workers told interviewers that they chose forest work because theywanted to work outside or do good for the environment; many could have workedelsewhere for higher pay. Rather than fearing being fired if they complained, theysaid they would attempt to work out differences with their employers before quitting.

From this evidence, we can conclude that ethnicity, immigration status, andassociated legal vulnerability played a role in differences between job quality forLatinos and non-Latinos in nonsuppression forestry support work. We did notaim to isolate whether education, language skills, or immigration status were mostimportant for these differences. However, a second key finding was that fire sup-pression appeared to have better working conditions, and the differences betweenLatino and non-Latino experiences declined. In particular, both groups consistentlyreceived firefighting training; Latinos seemed to receive required wages and pay forovertime and travel. The pressure for Latinos to work at a dangerously fast paceseemed also to diminish.

The findings suggest two central questions: Why did job quality change betweensuppression and nonsuppression activities, and why did the differences betweenLatinos and non-Latino workers decline when participating in suppression activities?This question is particularly vexing because labor laws apply equally to both sup-pression and nonsuppression activities. There are numerous federal laws governingworking conditions in general and federal contracting specifically. However, theselaws have not led to equal protection for nonsuppression work. For example, theService Contract Act seemed to be boosting wage rates and providing payments inlieu of benefits when working on public lands, but we learned of frequent violationsthat affected Latinos more than non-Latinos. Similarly, although workers’ compen-sation laws are supposed to guarantee access to medical care and compensation forall workers injured on the job, access to worker compensation was unequal.

However, the administrative and political context of fire suppression differsfrom other forest work in several ways. Although there has been no research onthe systematic differences in the contracting systems and political environment ofthese two arenas, it is worth considering some of the most obvious differences inan effort to shed light on why workers may experience different conditions.

First, fire suppression can be quite profitable for contractors. Because of howfire contracts have been structured historically, there has been relatively little pricecompetition between contractors. By contrast, federal forestry service work has longbeen fiercely competitive and contractors have faced considerable pressure to cutcosts. Second, the federal land management agencies have made fire fighter safetyand preparation (such as in the National Fire Plan) high priority, while the working

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conditions for other work have received less consistent attention and prioritization.A culture of firefighter safety is integrated into the incident command structure, andcontractors working with federal firefighters operate under that structure. But laborand safety law enforcement on nonsuppression contracts is scattered across multiplestate and federal labor and land management agencies. Finally, contract firefightersoperate in close proximity to federal employees, making worker abuse more difficultto hide than in nonfire circumstances, where workers are relatively isolated andinvisible from oversight. Moreover, the media are at every large wildfire, puttingfirefighting practices into the spotlight. Unlike nonsuppression forest work, whichSarathy has described as ‘‘marginal’’ and ’’ invisible,’’ fire suppression work is highlyvisible, and Latino and non-Latino workers alike encounter more standardized andregulated conditions. Although it is difficult to know without additional research, itappears that these differences in federal contracting markets and managerial over-sight may be influencing working conditions beyond what labor laws cover.

Conclusions

In labor-intensive forestry work in Oregon, Latinos and non-Latinos face differentworking conditions. However, our work also suggests that federal oversight in firesuppression crews made a positive difference for working conditions. It is importantto identify why these patterns may have emerged to illuminate possible strategies forimproving working conditions. Although our research has shown that ethnicity andits correlates are key to job quality differences, oversight and regulations also mediateconditions. Improving these conditions is undoubtedly difficult. To some extent, jobquality for forest workers mirrors the conditions in other sectors with nonstandardemployment and high proportions of immigrants. However, the difference in workingconditions on fire suppression contracts suggests that it may be possible to improvejob quality by changing contract structures and incentives for businesses, increasingenforcement, and creating a culture focused on safety of contract and federal workersalike. None of these are trivial tasks, but the fact that conditions when working onfires are more equal suggests they are possible.

Acknowledgments

This project was made possible through the efforts of Enrique Santos and Erin Hal-comb, who worked tirelessly to find and interview forest workers. The authors alsothank Cece Headley, Denise Smith, Bradley Porterfield, Kimberly Barker, M. KayMansfield, Jillian Nichols, and anonymous reviewers for assistance with this project.The authors especially appreciate the forest workers who were willing to tell theirstories. Errors remain the authors’.

Funding

This study was funded by the USDA National Research Initiative Rural Devel-opment Program, award number 2003-35401-12891, the Sociological InitiativesFoundation, the Ford Foundation, Alliance of Forest Workers and Harvesters,and the University of Oregon.

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