Modern mills need educated employees
Thursday, October 27, 2005 8:53 AM PDT
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E-mail this articleWeyerhaeuser Co.'s announcement Tuesday that it will spend millions of dollars upgrading its Longview mill was welcome news for this area. Many in the community may have felt somewhat reassured, having learned only a few days before that the company is closing two mills in Grays Harbor County.
But as welcome as Weyerhaeuser's investment in its Longview operations is, the plight of the struggling Grays Harbor communities of Aberdeen and Cosmopolis offers a sobering perspective on the long-term outlook for manufacturing jobs in this area.
The pulp and paper industry is not growing jobs. To the contrary, the industry is downsizing its labor force, using technological advances to increase production with fewer employees.
Aberdeen's 81-year-old sawmill and Cosmopolis' 50-year-old pulp mill fell victim to this process. They were no longer profitable. Together, the closures will cost the Grays Harbor communities 342 hourly and salaried jobs --- 245 of them with an average annual wage of about $50,000.
Longview's mill is among the beneficiaries in Weyerhaeuser's move to modernize and make operations more efficient. The company is rebuilding a boiler that powers the mill's liquid packaging division, according to Daily News reporter Courtney Sherwood. It's part of an $850-million upgrade of facilities company-wide.
But this capital-improvement investment isn't expected to add to the some 1,800 existing positions in the company's five Longview-based divisions, Courtney reports. That number is almost 700 fewer Weyerhaeuser jobs than existed just seven years ago.
Indeed, the disappearance of well-paying manufacturing jobs in recent years has been staggering. Cowlitz County has seen almost 1,800 manufacturing jobs vanish since August 2001. Most, if not all, of those jobs are gone for good, if we can believe analysts.
But this is not to diminish the importance of Tuesday's good news. The value of maintaining and strengthening Weyerhaeuser's Longview mill should be obvious. And the economic outlook for this city and the county as a whole remains good.
This community, in fact, would seem to be uniquely capable of meeting the economic challenges posed by the downward trend in manufacturing jobs. It has the resources it needs to both affect positive change in employment opportunities. Chief among those resources is Lower Columbia College and its continuing education and Workforce programs.
Education is key. It's essential to filling jobs in mills that are becoming more efficient through technological advances. It will be critical to attracting new employers. Educational opportunities are many in and nearby this community. We have only to take advantage of them.
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