Page 30 - Flathead Beacon // 6.29.16

LIKE I WAS SAYIN’
TWO FOR THOUGHT SAME TOPIC, DIFFERENT VIEWS LEAVING THE EUROPEAN UNION
KELLYN BROWN
WHAT CHANGED?
THERE WAS UNDERSTANDABLE ANXIETY when news broke last November that Weyerhae- user Company was merging with Plum Creek. The former competitors would create a new timber giant and word soon spread that overlapping jobs would be eliminated. The question was how many.
Company o cials said they wanted to save at least $100 million. At the time, Plum Creek employed 750 employees in the Flathead Valley and, while cuts loomed for administration jobs, Weyerhaeuser said local mills would remain open.
“Once the merger is complete, Weyerhaeuser plans to continue manufacturing operations as they are in Montana right now. That’s the good news,” Tom Ray, vice president for Northwest resources and manufac- turing at Plum Creek, said at the time. “It will remain business as usual for all of the mills.”
Cedar Palace, Plum Creek’s headquarters where about 100 people work in administrative positions, wouldn’t be so lucky. Those jobs would be cut or transi- tioned to Seattle. Still, Plum Creek’s plywood plant and stud mill in Evergreen and its board mill, plywood plant and medium density berboard plant in Columbia Falls would remain humming. Or, so many of us thought.
A lot happened between then, when Weyerhaeuser spent $8.4 billion on Plum Creek, and now.
For one, Weyerhaeuser began shedding parts of itself. Last month it sold its pulp business to International Paper Co. for $2.2 billion. This month, the company agreed to sell its liquid packaging unit to Nippon Paper Industries for $285 million.
As Seeking Alpha pointed out, these moves were just the latest in a string of changes at the company since 2012, when it owned 6 million acres, but less than 50 percent of its assets were devoted to timberlands. Today, it controls 13 million acres and it is mostly a timber company.
Following its recent pulp company sale, Doyle R. Simons, president and chief executive o cer of Weyer- haeuser, acknowledged his goal concentrating the busi- ness’ holdings.
“This transaction delivers compelling value for Wey- erhaeuser shareholders and further focuses our port- folio as we work to be the world’s premier timber, land, and forest products company,” Simons said at the time.
So why bank on timberland and permanently shut down mills it just acquired? Simons pointed to the shortage of logs, saying, “For some time now our opera- tions in Montana have been running below capacity as a result of an ongoing shortage of logs in the region.”
Other regional mills back him up, and none in the state are running at full capacity. But demand for and supply of logs has waned before.
In 2009, Plum Creek Timber Company, already run- ning with a skeleton crew, laid o its remaining sta and shut down its Evergreen plant. The recession lingered long after and the mill remained quiet for years.
When it reopened in 2013, there was a level of opti- mism in the industry as the proud timber tradition in the Flathead began to regain its footing. Housing starts were up, and so were lumber prices. The ebb gave way to the ow.
Now this. Instead of lack of demand, the company says it’s the lack of logs. And instead of temporarily shutting down a mill, the new owner will permanently shutter two of them. Perhaps it’s a lack of logs. Perhaps this was inevitable and just another way to save money. Perhaps we should be thankful hundreds of people still have jobs at the mills.
Nonetheless, it’s sad all around.
BY TIM BALDWIN
The British people voted to leave the European
Union. Their exit will take time but will be peaceful. Some have criticized UK’s exit, pointing to disadvan- tages it will cause, but the bigger focus should be the people’s will.
The American colonies’ exit from Britain also had disadvantages. They lost Britain’s military protec- tion and economic bene ts and were vulnerable to foreign in uence. But these disadvantages were not the primary concern to them. Independence was, and history proved that their separation was good for them and us.
No union lasts forever in one state: human nature doesn’t allow it. America’s founders knew this. Nota- bly, Thomas Je erson preferred a constitutional convention be held in a union every generation so the people can often inject their will into the political state. Ultimately, the Constitution’s rati ers did not input an automatic convention process. Rather, Arti- cle V allows the states to propose and adopt amend- ments to the Constitution, which could include leav- ing the union itself. Or just as the states did in 1787, the states could call a constitutional convention for the purpose of leaving the current union and forming a new one with the exiting states.
Unions are a means not an end to political success. Separation is prudent at times. However, the peo- ple must use proper channels for the separation to be deemed legitimate by fellow citizens and foreign nations and to avoid another 1860 civil war.
BY JOE CARBONARI
Brexit is a warning. We are leaving too many
people behind. As the who-makes-what, where, and with whom in the world changes, some ben- e t and some lose. Many of those whose lives are not improving have lost faith in the performance of the experts and professionals who are running the show, especially in the political realm. They want something positive done. Soon.
Many of those in Britain who voted to leave the European Union and its common market were dis- proportionally older, more rural, and less formally educated than those who voted to continue the European experiment. The weakness in the world economy has made it di cult to absorb the ood of immigrants seeking work in Britain. The possibility of others being added to the Union was additionally disquieting. Boris Johnson, former mayor of Lon- don, did an about face to support the Brexit issue and used it to advance his career. He’s now being spoken of as the new prime minster. He is a am- boyant type, a bit of a showman, a bit like Donald Trump. They are crowd pleasers. They entertain. They get votes, some votes of hope, some of protest.
Other European countries have strong anti- Union, nationalistic movements. This is not a time to put showmen in charge. We need steady, experi- enced hands ... our best and our brightest.
AMERICAN RURAL DIANE SMITH
BREXIT AND COLUMBIA FALLS?
W
remain in or leave the European Union. In a surprise outcome, Britain voted to leave. Early analysis indi- cates that the vote appears to have broken down along increasingly familiar lines: older, less educated, rural and small town voters were more likely to have voted to “Leave” while younger, urban voters and those with more schooling voted to “Remain.”
Richard Cohen of the New York Times summed it up this way, “A majority of Britons had no time for the politicians that brought the world a disastrous war in Iraq, the 2008 nancial meltdown, European auster- ity, stagnant working-class wages, high immigration and tax havens for the super-rich.”
There’s a lot to unpack here and it will take time to do so. I have no doubt that Columbia Falls will rally and that its future is bright. Columbia Falls’ folks are smart, resilient, and hardworking – a winning com- bination that I’m proud to be part of. As for Great Britain, well let’s hope that its independent future is bright, too.
But whether you’re in a small town or one of the world’s most distinguished countries, this overprom- ising/under-delivering thing ... well, it’s proving to be a pretty bad strategy.
HAT DO WEYERHAEUSER COMPANY’S closing of two mills in Columbia Falls and
Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, (better known as Brexit) have in common? Both are examples of the consequences of overpromising but under-delivering.
Just a few months ago, right before the merger was approved by the shareholders, a senior executive for Plum Creek said about the Weyerhaeuser acquisition, “Once the merger is complete, Weyerhaeuser plans to continue manufacturing operations as they are in Montana right now ... It will remain business as usual for all the mills.”
There’s lots of ngerpointing now about whether the mill closures are because of federal/EPA policies regarding timber harvesting, weakened demand for timber, or other reasons. But, if you’re one of the 200 folks about to lose your job because of a multi-billion dollar merger of two industry giants headquartered in Seattle, you probably don’t care too much. You proba- bly care that someone else got richer at your expense and deceived you, for whatever reason, by saying you could expect business as usual.
A day after the announcement of the mill closings in Columbia Falls, Great Britain voted on whether to
Diane Smith is the founder and CEO of American Rural where she works to create greater awareness of the growing opportunities for those who choose to live, work and prosper in rural and small town America. Learn more about Diane by following her column here or visit American Rural at AmericanRural.org.
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JUNE 29, 2016 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM