Downsizing Nature: Managing Risk and Knowledge Economies through Production Subcontracting in the Oregon Logging Sector

Abstract

Oregon's logging sector is characterized by extensive subcontracting between wood commodity manufacturing firms and independent logging contractors. Why is this so? Considerable recent scholarship has examined the dynamics of flexible production systems, including regional contractor networks, as prominent aspects of late capitalism. Although useful, existing accounts of flexibility are inadequate to explain why logging in particular would be subject to contract production relations. A second literature emphasizes the "difference" of nature-centered sectors, particularly industrial agriculture. I argue that a similar logic applies to logging. That is, natural sources of unpredictable variation and extensive, inconstant geographies restrict the predictability and calculability of production, and the imposition of labor monitoring and discipline. Contracts are a strategy for firms to displace resulting risks and costs onto contractors, while at the same time inducing expert-based rationalization of production. Repeat contracting provides a means of capturing expert knowledge among reliable contractors with knowledge of the parent firm's lands and mills. This is a particularly appealing strategy for vertically and horizontally integrated firms with complex operational portfolios. However, though contracting is one flexibility strategy, Weyerhaeuser's Competitive Logging Program featuring restructured wage relations provides an alternate path to more flexible production, one that further illuminates some of the problems of nature-based production.Key words: production subcontracting, logging, nature, organized labor, flexible specialization "Bring me Some Whistle Punks…."In the state of Oregon, most logging is accomplished via the practice of subcontracting. This involves wood commodity manufacturing firms tendering contracts to quasi-independent logging contractors -referred to in the industry as "gyppos"-to secure logging services. Although some wood products mills continue to run their own logging crews (referred to in the industry as logging "sides"), subcontracting has increasingly become the dominant form of industrial relation linking the factory floor to the woods during the post-World War II period. Given that the industry is not otherwise characterized by the existence of contract production networks (reforestation notwithstanding), why is contract logging so prevalent?In this paper, I explore why many wood products firms undertake logging by means of relatively arms-length industrial relations. I explain the incentive to contract out and to pursue other alternatives to fixed hourly wage relations as strategies for achieving production flexibilities in response to the nature-centered character of production in the logging sector. Specifically, I argue that variability, risk and uncertainty associated with the "in situ" character of logging production -i.e. the intimate engagement of social and natural production -creates an incentive for firms to minimize their exposure to these risks and uncertain...

“The War in the Woods”: Post-Fordist Restructuring, Globalization, and the Contested Remapping of British Columbia's Forest Economy

“…Resource peripheries must confront and negotiate these imperatives, however, from vulnerable spaces on geographic margins, spaces rooted in remoteness, high levels of export-dependence, specialization, and external control. Simultaneously, resource peripheries are resource regions, deeply affected by the peculiar characteristics of resource-cycle dynamics (Freudenburg 1992;Clapp 1998b;Prudham 2002). Resources are also culturally defined, valued both as factor inputs for industrialization and for wide-ranging ecological and cultural-including aesthetic and spiritual (''nonindustrial'')-benefits (Zimmerman 1956;Hanink 2000).…”

Work and life in the clear‐cut: communities of practice in the northern Ontario tree planting industry

“…The seasonal nature of tree planting is common across the network of practice. The remote and shifting worksites render the direct supervision and monitoring of tree planting work difficult and costly (Braxton-Little 2001;Prudham 2005). The sheer physicality of the work influences the composition of the labour force and, in turn, the network of practice.…”

“…In his analysis of relationships amongst logging and reforestation contractors and parent firms in Oregon, Prudham (2002Prudham ( , 2005 found that increased levels of trust developed through repeat contracting between parent firms and specialized contractors. Such relationships were beneficial since they ultimately reduced transaction costs.…”

“…In most comprehensive studies of the forest products industry, there are only passing references to tree planting (see Armson 2001;Brown 2000;Armson et al 2001;Mann 2001;Prudham 2005). One exception is the recent work by Casanova and McDaniel (2005;Casanova 2003, 2005) and Sarathy (2007) who analyze the nature of the contract tree planting industry in the southeastern and western US, respectively, focusing on the networks through 1 While Beynon and Hudson's work focuses on more longterm and permanent communities, their concept of place is nonetheless applicable to the more ephemeral communities formed by tree planters.…”

“…(Anthonisen, in Cyr 1998, p. 138) Tree planting is the last step in the process of industrial forestry, and the first step in its renewal (Braxton-Little 2001). Although the most expensive, manual tree planting is the most reliable method of forest regeneration when compared with natural regeneration or seeding by aerial or mechanical methods, one important aspect of tree planting is that, like logging, the labour process occurs in the woods rather than the mill or factory (Prudham 2005). This has important consequences for production relations and the organization and management of work in the industry.…”