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

Abstract

Based on ethnography, interviews with tree planters and a survey of tree planting contractors, this article focuses on work cultures in northernIf you can plant trees, you can do anything. (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. In the case of tree planting, labour demands are seasonal and discontinuous, the work sites are not spatially fixed, there is a dispersed deployment of workers at the site and both the weather and the terrain on which trees are planted can be highly variable. All these factors present challenges for labour supervision and 'impede the predictability and rationalization of production' (Prudham 2005, p. 31). Furthermore, the compressed planting season and the relatively high yearly turnover in the workforce means that new workers must quickly learn how to plant efficiently. They must also become accepted and integral members of their tree planting crews. These imperatives have resulted in the development of distinctive work cultures and practices that facilitate learning and the sharing of tacit knowledge between planters. In this article, we use the concept of communities of practice to analyze how these work cultures are produced and reproduced in the tree planting industry in northern Ontario.Recognizing the importance of social relations in producing (and reproducing), spaces of production is central to our study and to the broader discipline of economic geography (Harvey 1989;Peck 1996;Herod 2001;Hudson 2001;Castree et al. 2004). Beynon and Hudson (1993) differentiate capital's use of space from labour's use of place. They see space as the domain of capital, 'a domain which capital is constantly searching in pursuit of greater profits' (p. 182), while place comprises the 'meaningful situations established by labour' (ibid.). In these places, workers are not simply reproduced as bearers of the commodity labour power, but socialized as human beings in distinct and diverse communities. In our context, Ontario's boreal forests are both the space where forest products companies and tree planting contractors pursue profits, and the places (campsites, worksites, travel Figure 6s), and it is estimated that there are over 2,000 tree planting jobs in Ontario every year, held primarily by post-secondary students from Southern Ontario (Sweeney 2005). Tree planting work is both physically and mentally taxing. Quit rates are high, especially during the early stages of a contract. Those who survive for a whole planting season, however,...

Planting the Nation: Tree Planting Art and the Endurance of Canadian Nationalism

“…In fact, little has been written about the tree planting industry in Canada. A recent article by Sweeney and Holmes (2008) has examined the transfer of tacit knowledge within Ontario tree planting communities. Sweeney and Holmes effectively demonstrate how workers learn to labor in the tree planting sector and detail the everyday practices through which this occurs.…”