Plum Creek trims 68 plywood jobs

By NANCY KIMBALL/Daily Inter Lake

Plum Creek Timber Co. announced Friday that declining national demand forced the layoffs of 68 people from its plywood plants in Evergreen and Columbia Falls.

The company said 64 of those jobs, two of them salaried and 62 hourly, came from its Evergreen plant. Four more, one of them salaried and three hourly, came from Columbia Falls.

Plywood production in the Flathead is being cut by 20 percent to match a drop in demand. The company said Evergreen will cut back from three shifts to two; the Columbia Falls plant already had scaled back to two shifts.

Both plants will run two shifts beginning Dec. 1, Evergreen with 212 employees and Columbia Falls with 186. Evergreen workers will be scheduled for 10-hour shifts four days a week, and Columbia Falls will run eight-hour shifts five days a week.

Plum Creek said waning demand from plywood customers hit by the nation's economic downturn prompted the move.

The plywood that the Evergreen and Columbia Falls plants produce is used primarily in high-grade and specialty industrial applications such as boats, recreational vehicles, transportation, concrete forming and other construction industries.

As those customers' business slowed nationwide, their need for plywood dropped.

"We are not seeing any improvement in the national economy in the fourth quarter, and our customers are continuing to feel the effects of these challenging conditions," Vice President for Northern Resources and Manufacturing Hank Ricklefs said in a news release.

Ricklefs said the outlook does not show any new strength until 2010.

"We had at least hoped to keep operating three shifts through the year at the Kalispell facility, but the demand for specialty plywood is just not there."

Workers were told of the layoffs during two meetings Friday.

Employees being laid off will not go back to work now, but their termination date is Nov. 30, according to Kathy Budinick, director of communications for Plum Creek in the Seattle headquarters

They will receive holiday pay and a severance package. She said that severance pay is a 1 percent payment on Dec. 22, 2008, for wages earned between Dec. 1, 2007, and Nov. 30, 2008.

Employees who are keeping their jobs will receive the same 1 percent lump-sum payment, Budinick said, and another 1 percent raise in their base pay effective Jan. 1, 2009. Combined with their 1 percent pay raise last August, she pointed out, those workers are getting a 3 percent total increase.

But health insurance premium increases will eat up a portion of that raise.

"While we have been able to avoid an increase in the employee cost of monthly premiums for the past two years," Budinick said, "we are at a point where a modest increase is necessary in 2009. The percentage of increase for each employee varies based on a number of factors."