Examining Camp Costs within the BC Tree Planting Industry

This is a very long read, probably around fifteen minutes for the average reader.

For years, we've heard discussions about the value of charging “camp costs” within the tree planting industry.  This is a very complex topic, and one which many planters have not been properly informed about, so I’m going to try to point out some of the nuances of the current camp cost system.  I’ll preface by stating that I’m neither strongly for nor strongly against the long-term continuation of the current system.  I’m simply trying to look at camp costs from all points of view, to try to figure out what will ultimately be best for all planters.

 

Tl;dr:  I think that if we were to adopt a psychological mindset, it makes sense to eliminate camp costs.  If we were to simply analyze the net economic benefits, eliminating camp costs [in the absence of new revenue] doesn't provide a net gain to planters as a whole.  But these assessments will make more sense when you read everything below.

How Do Camp Costs Work?

For any readers who don’t know what camp costs are, it’s a daily charge levied by an employer to all workers to help subsidize the cost of running a bush camp operation, and of feeding the workers within this camp.  In most companies, camp costs are charged on a “per work day” basis, ie. planters have to pay this cost for each planting day, but if the camp is on a day off with no work available, no camp costs are charged.  Some variations do exist; a few companies charge camp costs on days off (often at a reduced rate) and some link camp costs to meals provided, ie. if the planters work for a full day, but no dinner is available, then that day’s camp costs are reduced significantly.

In BC, legislation is in place to cap the maximum amount allowed to be charged for camp costs at $25.00 per day, plus GST.^1  No such legislation exists in Alberta, and camp costs there are frequently higher than in BC, sometimes as high as $34.00 per day.  The higher camp costs can be somewhat justified because food costs are generally higher in Alberta than in BC.

Camp costs are not restricted solely to camp-based operations.  Employers also charge camp costs when tree planters are staying in motels (when the contractor/employer pays for the motel charges).  In such a situation, when operating in BC, the camp costs are still generally capped at $25.00 per day, but there are exceptions.  The exact rule, as taken from the BC Silviculture Workers’ Fact Sheet, states that, ”If a silviculture worker agrees in writing, the employer may charge for camp costs or other accommodation. The amount charged cannot exceed $25 per day for camp costs, or if the worker is lodged in a motel, the actual cost for the motel room.”  The problem is that the “actual cost” for the room is hard to determine.  If a planter is in a 2-person room, and one of the planters goes away for a few days (perhaps to attend a funeral), is the employer allowed to charge the full room rate to the remaining planter during that period?  Even more vague, if you read “motel accommodations” as being a separate situation, then when motel costs are LESS than $25/day, the employer probably should not be allowed to charge $25/day.  Yet companies often charge $25/day per person even when they are getting a cheaper rate by paying for the room per month.  It’s all in the interpretation of the rule.  This is a minor argument; what is significant is that when a planter is being charged camp costs in a motel, only their room is paid for.  Their food is not paid for, which means that it is different than a mobile camp situation.

Free Lunch

In a perfect world (for planters and planting companies), there would be no such thing as camp costs.  However, a common saying comes to mind:  “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”  In order to eliminate camp costs, someone needs to find a way to pay for the expense.  Currently, planters pay this.  Can the expense be shifted onto the employer?  Sure, but it means that there is less money for wages.  Can the expense be shifted onto the licensees?  In theory, but what forester is going to accept that kind of hit to his/her budget simply because they feel sorry for the planters?  Grocery stores won’t donate free food.  Motels won’t offer free rooms.  The government isn’t about to step in and volunteer to open the public coffers.  If a decision is made that the planters no longer pay camp costs, the money inevitably will add to a company’s operating costs.  This means that they have to reduce money somewhere else (wages or profits), or else suffer financial losses.  Operating at a loss (or foregoing any profit) can be sustained for a short time, but not in perpetuity.  Therefore, the only long term solution for a company to compensate for the loss of camp costs charges is to reduce wages.

If a planting contractor reduces wages, and tries to perfectly offset the loss of camp cost charges, then the AVERAGE employee will lose exactly what they would have previously lost as a camp cost charge.  So taking a simple example, if camp costs were $25, and a planting company no longer charged the workers that $25, they could simply pay $25/day less in wages, and the company would be able to sustain operations on an ongoing basis, exactly as before.  This is what's known as a "zero-sum solution":  the planter would not really benefit from the elimination of camp costs, because their take-home pay (gross wages less camp costs fees) would be the same as it was before.

This is where things get tricky.  In any other industry, a systemic change could happen, and all employees would be affected equitably.  It would be fair to everyone, with everyone’s net pay changing equally.  And to be fair, IF compensation for tree planting was determined the same way as any other industry (ie. hourly pay or day rates), this change would have happened decades ago, with full support from all planting companies and all employees.

 

It’s important to remember that camp costs are not charged in any other camp-based industry.  If you work in a logging camp, or mining camp, or oil & gas camp, the company that employs you also covers your camp costs.  So why do those industries not have camp costs, yet the planting industry keeps them?  It’s quite simple really.  It’s because our compensation system is completely different.  In all of the other industries, workers get hourly pay, and get treated equally (if performing the same duties, and having the same skills and qualifications and seniority).  This is not the case in tree planting.  Planters are paid via a piece-rate compensation system, earning a certain amount per tree planted.  The harder one works, the higher the compensation.  And here’s where the whole problem lies.

Let’s say that a company needs to “recover” $25.00 per day per person to offset camp cost expenses.  To do that, the company reduces the tree price.  The company only needs to figure out the average production per person per day, in order to determine how much the tree prices need to be reduced to cover that $25.00.  I’ll try to keep the math simple, and say that in our hypothetical company, the average planter is able to plant 2500 trees per day.  Therefore, if the average planter got paid one penny less per tree, than would be 2500 fewer pennies paid out in wages.  In other words, each worker would get a $25.00 reduction in wages, and this money would make up for the lack of a $25.00 camp cost fee deduction.  Simple, right?

No.  The problem is that everyone produces a different amount, depending on their skill, experience, motivation, intelligence, sleep deprivation, the day’s temperature and precipitation, the difficulty of the piece they’re in, how much coffee they drank at breakfast, and hundreds of other factors.  In general though, more experienced planters are faster planters, and plant more trees in a day.  So let’s compare two planters:  One, whom we’ll call “Johnny Highballer,” usually plants 3500 trees per day.  Another, whom we’ll call “Sammy Slowpoke,” usually plants 1500 trees per day.

If these two planters were working on a contract where trees were 11 cents apiece, and $25.00 camp costs were charged, their daily earnings would normally be:

   Johnny = (3500*$0.11) - $25.00 = $360.00

               Sammy = (1500*$0.11) - $25.00 = $140.00

Under the hypothetical new system, where no camp costs were charged (and tree prices were adjusted downward to exactly offset the money), the daily earnings would change as follows:

               Johnny = (3500*$0.10) - $0.00 = $350.00

               Sammy = (1500*$0.10) - $0.00 = $150.00

So you can see that under both systems, the total amount that the planting company pays out is the exact same ($500), but there has been a shift, or wealth redistribution, that hurts Johnny Highballer and benefits Sammy Slowpoke.

Anyone who has studied camp costs in any depth in the past should already know how this works, so it shouldn’t come as any surprise.  Eliminating camp costs, in the absence of any other magical source of new funding to offset the lost fees, will hurt high-production workers, and help low-production workers.  The net overall effect to the system will be a wash, ie. no overall financial difference.

Should We Eliminate Camp Costs?

Why then, if there is no adverse financial effect to planting companies of eliminating camp costs and compensating by lowering prices, has no company been bold enough to do this yet?  There are two main reasons.  First, the people who make decisions (company owners) don’t want to make a systemic change that is detrimental to the very people whom they value the most: the highest producers.  Second, unless the entire industry moves to eliminate camp costs in lock-step, it could create perceived inequalities (lower tree prices at a company without camp costs might cause workers to migrate to companies with higher prices).  [Note that some companies did eliminate camp costs in 2019, but after a few years opted to return to the previous economic model, presumably due to planters at those companies complaining about tree prices being too low compared to industry peers and employee retention suffered].

What are companies striving for?  If you’re going to champion financial equality for your work force, a much better change would be to simply start paying everyone an hourly rate.  Of course, if someone tried that, it would destroy the modern planting industry.  Certainly, there are situations where equal hourly or daily pay is appropriate.  We see it in hourly rates or day-rates for some checkers, trees runners, support staff, supervisory staff, and also on certain projects where it just makes sense for everyone to earn a set amount per day (used in some types of specialty planting, such as reclamation projects or oil lease planting, etc.).  But is the industry ready for a broad-scale shift to general hourly wages?  I don't think so.

The entire planting industry was built upon a piece-rate mentality, and that’s what initially made it so appealing to so many people.  An individual could work harder than their co-workers, and would be recognized for this hard work in the form of increased financial compensation.  Motivation and work ethic was rewarded, and forced people to push themselves harder than they ever thought capable.  If planters were paid by hourly rates, almost nobody would exert themselves as hard as they do for piece-rate wages.  The industry as a whole would be less efficient, and overall earnings would be diminished as per capita production decreased.

My first take-away lesson is that eliminating camp costs, and indirectly penalizing high production workers, would run completely contrary to the entire mindset of piece-rate compensation, and to the ethos of the western Canadian tree planting industry.

Having said that, I’m not saying that it shouldn’t be done.  All I’ve done so far is to try to help planters understand the shift in compensation that would need to accompany the elimination of camp costs.  Let’s look at some nuances next.

Does the negative impact on high-production workers, and the positive impact on low-production workers, occur solely within each company, or does it occur between companies?  The answer is:  both.  We’ll call the impact “within any given company” the micro impact, and “between companies in the industry” the macro impact.

In terms of the macro impact, one would expect that companies who attract a high level of highly experienced planters (presumably coastal and some southern Interior companies) would be reluctant to eliminate camp costs.  At the same time, one would expect that companies who have lower average experience levels (northern “rookie mills”) would embrace an industry-wide elimination of camp costs.  However, I haven’t seen any evidence to support this.  Many owners seem to be either undecided about whether such a move would be a good idea, or are acting contrary to expectations.  Some owners of large northern companies are currently reluctant to endorse such a change, whereas other smaller company owners down south would support it.  Camp-based operators have to swallow much larger subsidies to workers than motel-based operators, which may offer some rationale behind the dichotomy.

In terms of the micro impact, however, real-world results mirror expectations.  Most company owners want to do what is best for their most experienced workers.  Why is this?  In a word:  retention.  They want to retain their best people.  And this brings up a key point:  Even though individual companies want to retain their best workers, what does the industry as an abstract whole want?  They want overall retention too.  However, perhaps increasing the retention of less skilled workers is a goal that is too often ignored.

My second take-away lesson is that eliminating camp costs should theoretically improve retention of new and inexperienced workers (giving the greatest benefits to companies who hire large numbers of inexperienced planters).  However, keeping the existing camp cost system in place will theoretically maximize retention of skilled employees (giving the greatest benefits to vet-heavy companies).  Considering these theories, and ignoring the short-term and medium-term horizon, which approach will be best for the industry as a whole when we think ten years ahead?

Camp Operations vs. Motel Shows

Let’s examine another divide now:  the difference between camp costs and motel costs.  At the moment, it is FAR cheaper for a planter to work in a camp-based environment (from the planter’s point-of-view).  Let’s quickly look at a 3&1 shift rotation, with camp costs (or motel costs) at $25/day, and the planters being able to feed themselves for approximately $20/day (regardless of whether this is long-term grocery shopping and cooking for oneself in a motel, or eating snacks & fast food on a day off).  Unfortunately, it's becoming increasingly impossible to feed oneself for $20/day, but let's stick with that number for now.  These numbers will all presented from the perspective of the planters, not from the perspective of the planting company.

Scenario 1:  Camp

3 days of camp costs ($25/day) plus 1 day of buying food in town on day off ($20) = $95 in 4 days.

This works out to $23.75 per calendar day, or $31.67 total cost to live per work day.

Scenario 2:  Motel

4 days of motel costs ($25/day, remember that you still pay for the motel on the day off) plus 4 days of buying groceries and cooking for yourself ($20/day) = $180 in 4 days.

This works out to $45.00 per calendar day, or $60.00 total cost to live per work day.

As you can see, there is absolutely no question that earnings need to be higher in a motel-based accommodation situation, simply to be able to cover the higher cost of living.

What happens if camp costs are eliminated?  How do the above scenarios change?

Scenario 1:  Camp

3 days of free living plus 1 day of buying food in town on day off ($20) = $20 in 4 days.

This works out to $5.00 per calendar day, or $6.67 total cost to live per work day.

Scenario 2:  Motel

No motel costs but you still have 4 days of buying groceries & cooking = $80.00 in 4 days.

This works out to $20.00 per calendar day, or $26.67 total cost to live per work day.

In either situation, with or without camp costs, it is cheaper for a planter to stay in a planting camp.  The advantage would be slightly reduced with the elimination of camp costs, but it would not be eliminated.  Of course, if companies using motel accommodation began to provide their planters’ food, then the industry would be able to start having a conversation that started with a more consistent baseline between companies.

At this point, I should also remind planters that camp cost expenses for a company are much higher than what planters pay.  For camp-based operations, it would depend on the complexity of the camp and equipment therein, and for motel-based operations, it would depend on the establishment that workers are lodged in.  Either way, my guess is that most motel operations cost companies at least $40 per day, and most camp operations cost significantly more than that, so in both cases, the planters are only subsidizing a portion of the true costs of housing and/or feeding the planters.

Minor Nuances

There are other nuances to consider, when looking hypothetically about what would happen with the elimination of camp costs.  Let’s look at some of those:

Minimum Wage Top-Up

Assuming a closed economic system, such that if camp costs were eliminated, 100% of that change would be offset by a decrease in overall wages within the system, what happens with regard to low earners?  In BC, according to employment standards legislation, anyone who does not earn minimum wage during any given pay period (by virtue of their piece-rate earnings) must be topped up to the amount that they would have earned if paid minimum wage for the hours worked.  Of course, some companies still shirk this regulation regularly, but let’s for a moment assume that they will get caught eventually, and in the long term, the system will start to work as originally intended.  Minimum wage top-up is calculated on gross wages, not on gross wages less camp costs.  Therefore, if tree prices went down slightly to offset an elimination of camp costs, the companies that pay minimum wage top-up legitimately would end up paying greater amounts of top-up.

Income Taxes

If workers’ wages are reduced slightly, then their tax obligation is also reduced, so there is something of a claw-back for anyone who actually earns enough to pay income taxes.  Eliminating camp costs might be considered a taxable benefit, if meals and/or lodging are provided at no cost to workers, so the income tax obligation to workers might remain unchanged.  Of course, if companies didn’t recognize this obligation immediately, and it was caught a few years later during an audit, the workers might get a nasty tax bill that they weren’t expecting.

RWA/T2200’s

These are related to income taxes, as noted above.  Some companies issue either a Remote Worksite Allowance (RWA) or a T2200 (Declaration of Conditions of Employment) form.  Either of these may reduce a planter’s income tax obligations.  There are some limitations (which are best suited for a different post), such as the requirement under RWA to maintain a separate self-contained domicile elsewhere during the period of employment.  Either way, the elimination of camp cost fees would possibly affect eligibility for either of these forms, and certainly would affect total eligible deductions.  Incidentally, you may eventually have some questions about taxes.  If so, bookmark this link:  www.replant.ca/taxes

Employment Insurance

A fairly significant number of tree planters draw employment insurance (EI) benefits when not planting.  This is the nature of seasonal work.  If gross wages drop slightly when camp costs are eliminated, this would hurt anyone who draws EI because it would also reduce their weekly benefits.  Of course, this is a complicated situation because of weekly maximums and other rules for EI claimants.  The number of EI claimants in the large northern companies is quite low, probably less than ten percent in my experience (many of these people attend college or university from September to April and therefore don’t open EI claims).  However, the number of seasonal EI claimants at the coastal and southern Interior companies that I have worked at is quite high, often exceeding two-thirds of the workforce.  Therefore, eliminating camp costs would have much more of a negative impact on the workers in the smaller coastal & southern companies, with respect to this specific issue.

Loans

Anyone seeking a loan or a mortgage generally has to show the bank some sort of verification of recent historical income.  If your annual income is reduced by a couple thousand dollars due to the elimination of eighty days’ worth of camp costs, it will reduce the amount of any loan you’ll be allowed to carry.

Student Loans

A lower gross income that would accompany lower wages would be of benefit to many workers at northern companies who rely on student loans to get them through college/university.

Management Pay

At some companies, crew bosses and camp supervisors are paid by commission, rather than by day rates or salaries.  In those companies, if camp costs were eliminated and wages went down, that would have a negative impact on commission earnings for the foremen and supervisors.  They might ask for slightly higher commission percentages to offset their pay cut.

Inflation
Some people were paying camp costs of close to $25 per day back in the early 1990's.  Just as the impact of inflation has slowly eroded earnings, inflation has also made the negative impact of camp costs less severe for planters every year (thanks to BC's $25.00/day cap).  If inflation continues and tree prices double over the next two decades, but camp costs remain capped at $25.00, their impact will be even less severe.  By the way, if I'm still planting in twenty years, somebody please shoot me and put me out of my misery.

Psychological Impact

Planters who don’t understand camp costs (the majority of the workforce) don’t like camp costs.  Eliminating them would make a lot of people think they’re in a better situation, regardless of whether or not that is truly the case.

Fewer Camps?

When considering the true costs of running a camp operation vs. motel lodging, it is unquestionably more expensive to run a camp (despite the recovery of camp cost charges to planters).  There are many expenses that planters don’t often think about.  Above and beyond the cost of the cooks’ wages and the food consumed, there is the purchasing/repairs/maintenance to camp structures and equipment, capital investment, fuel consumption (the generators in my camp alone burn 120 litres of gasoline per day), propane, water deliveries, fees and permitting, and much more.  Lodging is also expensive for motel-based operations, but not as expensive as running a camp, and motel operations have the advantage (to the company) of not providing food.  If camp costs were eliminated, would some companies shift away from camp operations to motel operations?  If so, this would unquestionably hurt the planters in terms of longer drives to the blocks (and therefore reduced earnings).  It would also lead to less healthy planters in situations where young workers have no real understanding of their own nutritional requirements.  Unfortunately, many young planters lack basic life skills, such as cooking properly for themselves.  Planters are high-performance athletes.  Inadequate nutrition leads to lower production, which means lower earnings.  I’ve seen this directly when my camp has temporarily moved into motels for special circumstances, and some planters foolishly move to a diet of chips, pizza, and Mr. Noodles.  Within three or four days, the production numbers for those planters inevitably dropped by 15% to 20%.

Going It Alone
What would happen if one company decided to eliminate camp costs, but the rest of the industry didn't follow suit?  Would that company have an advantage in recruiting planters?  Or would it suffer cost disadvantages that would be reflected in tree prices, and those "lower" tree prices would offset any goodwill generated by lack of camp costs?  I believe that one company in Ontario tried to operate without camp costs a few years ago.  I'm not sure what happened in that experiment.  I do know that at least one other large company in Alberta tried to remove camp costs a few years ago, but subsequently changed reinstated camp costs a few years later.

Bottom Line

The bottom line is that I can’t give anyone any advice about whether or not the elimination of camp costs would be good or bad for any specific person.  As you can see from the many points already covered, an individual planter’s unique personal situation will determine whether or not the elimination of camp costs would ultimately be of long-term benefit.

Another significant area of imbalance is the fact that motel-based operations rarely provide food for planters.  If owners of companies that work out of motels are in favor of radical changes to benefit their workers, maybe they should start paying for their employees’ food (the same way that camp-based operators do).  I’ve seen at least one occasion where a coastal operator rented a kitchen and hired a cook and fed his planters.  Why doesn’t this happen more frequently?

When I started planting, I was very annoyed with having to pay camp costs.  After a few years, I began to realize that I spent the same amount of money on food in town on a day off.  I also spend more than $25 per day to eat in the real world when I’m not working, but I don’t have the luxury of someone preparing my meals.  I eat very well in planting camps, and I no longer begrudge the camp costs.

I think the core argument boils down to this:  If it comes down to an industry-wide vote, company owners need to stop worrying about what is best for their own companies individually, relative to their competitors, and decide what is truly best for the industry.  That decision may boil down to a philosophical choice between psychological impact (which favors elimination of camp costs) versus doing what is consistent with the piece-rate economics of the planting industry (which favors keeping camp costs in place).

 

Eliminating the current camp cost framework, with the intent of improving the industry, has a major weakness.  Ultimately, the financial benefits would not be consistent for all planters.  Although some workers would be better off if camp costs were eliminated, other workers would be shortchanged (even though they might not realize it).  The overall result to the workforce would be a zero-sum change.

 

TL/DR;

1.  Eliminating camp costs would be a benefit to slow planters and would penalize fast planters.  Our estimate is that the average planter in western Canada plants approximately 1650 trees per day, industry-wide.  Camp costs could therefore be eliminating at no cost to companies by dropping tree prices by 1.5 cents per tree.  But do any experienced planters want to see that happen?  If I'm a vet that averages 2200 trees per day, I'd rather pay a flat rate of $25 for camp costs instead of losing 1.5 cents per tree on 2200 trees ($33).

2.  A lot of people say that companies should just "build it into the bid price."  That's easy to say, until you're bidding against other companies.  If you raise your bid price and your competitors don't, you're not going to win any low-bid contracts and you won't have any work.  Don't hate the player; hate the game.

3.  Some people brag that their company doesn't charge camp costs.  In such a situation, one needs to ask whether the company runs bush camps.  If there's no camp, and the company is not feeding employees, I would hope that there wouldn't be any camp costs.  You need to pay to eat, and there isn't much difference between spending money to buy groceries on a motel contracts versus paying camp costs when you're being fed in camp.  Well, there's one minor difference ... you don't spend an hour or more preparing food if you're being fed in a camp.

4.  A lot of people complain that we're the only industry that charges camp costs.  In other industries (oil & gas, logging), employees get paid to stay in camps.  Well, tree planting is also the only significant industry that compensates people via a piece-rate reward system (at least when it comes to operating remote bush camps). That's the key distinction which underpins the entire economic basis for our compensation system, and is the only real reason why camp costs can and do exist.  Again, eliminating camp costs would ultimately rob from the rich (the highballers) to give to the poor (the slow planters).  While that may seem "fair," any fast planter is going to prefer to look out for their own self-interest.  If you like the idea of getting paid more based on how hard you work, you should also be in favour of keeping the current camp-cost system.

They say that a person should pick their battles.  Overall, I'm fairly indifferent.  I can think of a lot of things that I'd like to improve within the industry.  I wouldn't be upset if camp costs were eliminated.  But instead of trying to eliminate camp costs, I'd rather focus on any of the many things that would ultimately benefit ALL planters.

 

 - Scooter

Footnotes:

^1:  In the past, there has been some disagreement about whether or not GST can be included in camp cost charges.  This document clarifies:

http://www.replant.ca/docs/BC_Silviculture_Guidlines_ESB_Sept2018.pdf

 

Assessment and Mitigation of Fire-Damaged Stands

The 2017 wildfire year was a devastating one for British Columbia.  Although 2018 has ultimately turned out to be even worse, it is the results of the 2017 fires that are currently starting to impact BC's tree planting industry.

In 2017, approximately 1.2 million hectares burned.  The majority of the ground that burned did so in July and August.  Although projects began to be tendered in September and October of 2017, for planting projects that would take place in the spring/summer of 2018, those projects generally did not address ground that was burned in 2017.  Certainly, a few contractors saw some burned ground, but that was only because ground that had already been prescribed for 2018 planting happened to burn.  The projects were not yet intended to target the 2017 devastation in a general sense.

Fast forward to this year, and there are significant projects coming down the pipeline right now which will cover ground burned in 2017.  In some cases, foresters are re-planting blocks that were planted in 2016 and 2017, as those are often the easiest to start with (for a number of reasons that I won't list here).  An example of a contract such as this can be found in BCTS Williams Lake district.  Many of the blocks in the northern part of that region (south of the Clisbako River, up the 4600 road) are ones that my camp originally planted in 2016.  For the most part, that series of blocks burned completely, and not a tree survived.  Nor did the duff and upper organic layers of the soil.

In other cases, foresters are targeting blocks that have become fairly well established, and are close to their free growing date (ie. around twenty years old).  In these blocks, the plantations have reached heights of twelve to twenty feet or greater, and were becoming very healthy stands until the fire hit them.  An example of a contract such as this would be either of the pair of MOF Kamloops projects up the Scottie Creek FSR (north of Cache Creek), and up the Battle FSR (north of Big Sky).  Incidentally, Evergreen is planting one of those MOF contracts, and A&G Reforestation is planting the other.


The contracts that I've mentioned above are probably just the very tip of the iceberg with respect to what's coming later this fall, and what we'll be seeing for the next several years.  As if the 2017 fire wasn't bad enough (with some government estimates suggesting that the industry would have to plant 200,000 hectares over the next decade just to mitigate 2017 damage), this year turned out to be another record-breaking year, which is simply going to make matters far worse for the next several years.  To be honest, I don't think BC has the capacity to ever repair all of the wildfire damage from last year and this year, but that's another story which needs to consider nursery capacities, labour supply/demand shortfalls, and other issues.


The reason that I'm bringing all of this up is due to the safety issues relating to fire-damaged stands.  There exists a danger to any workers within such stands, due to unstable burned trees (danger trees).  Now to be perfectly clear (in case my mother reads this), I think there are more serious dangers out there.  I believe that the risk to any tree planter of sustaining serious injuries or a fatality is many times more likely to be the result of a vehicular incident, not having a tree fall on you.  But having said that, it doesn't mean that we should disregard the issue of danger trees in wildfire stands.  We are not completely free of risk.

In my mind, the problem with these stands lays in determining how to assess the danger trees within the stands.  Within BC, there is a specific certification that forestry workers can obtain, called the Danger Tree Assessor certification.  To obtain this certification, the participant must attend a two-day training course and pass both a written exam and a field exam.  I've received this certification twice (the certificate expires after four years), and I found that it was a fairly comprehensive course.  You have to be quite intelligent and be paying close attention in order to pass the course.  In other words, it's not a superficial course.  I should also point out that there are different varieties of Danger Tree Assessor certification, aimed at either forest harvesting and silviculture, wildland fire safety, or parks and recreation personnel.


When a certified Danger Tree Assessor enters a stand to assess problems within the stand, there are going to be a lot of questions about how dangerous a given tree must be in order to be considered "dangerous."  Some trees will be found to be unquestionably of no significant risk to workers in the stand.  Other trees will be found to pose definite problems, and will have to be addressed through methods such as flagging off a no-work-zone, or having a professional faller come into to drop the tree.  Trees in either of those categories are not a problem, in my mind, because their status is clear.  However, there may be many other trees within the same stand that fall into the "grey zone" between those two extremes.  Trying to decide if those trees are dangerous enough to require further mitigation is the issue that many people will be trying to grapple with.

On the one hand, looking at things from the point-of-view of a planting contractor, the preferred situation would be to be told that most of the trees are not dangerous.  If the trees are considered to be dangerous and have to be dropped, two problems are created:  Fallers need to be hired to come into the stand with chain saws, to fall all of the problem trees.  Planters then have a harder time planting the stand, because they have to crawl across all the dropped trees (and there may be additional eye-poke hazards).  This slows them down and reduces their earnings.  Both of these problems ultimately turn out to be expensive for a planting contractor.  Of course, there are also problems if the trees are not dropped.  What happens if one actually falls over and injuries a worker while the planting is taking place?  The odds may be very low, but it's not a negligible risk.

Looking at the situation from a different point of view, one wonders if cutting down hundreds of thousands of potentially dangerous burned mature trees could pose a safety risk to the fallers.  Of course it would!  It would be terrible to ask a faller to go into a stand to cut thousands of burned trees, and then to have the faller be injured or killed because a falling tree acted unexpectedly and caused a crush injury.


My understanding of the situation is that the abiding principle to follow is that of "imminent danger." Tree planting is considered to be a low "level of disturbance" (LOD-1) activity in terms of danger tree assessment criteria.  This would be opposed to a high LOD activity such as running machines through the stand for harvesting.  With a low LOD, mitigation efforts are not required to be as strict.

For planting, it may be possible to implement standard working protocols for the stand that depend on external measurement criteria.  For example, it may be possible for workers to plant within the stand as long as the wind does not reach a speed equal to or greater than 40 km/hr.  If the wind speed does get that high, then workers would be required to cease work and evacuate the stand.  I should point out to casual readers that if this seems like a lot of wind, these wildfire stands don't have leaves or needles on the trees anymore (and in many cases, even the branches have burned off), therefore there is less surface area on each tree to catch the wind.  So in other words, it takes a pretty strong wind to really move these burned stick trees.

The principle of imminent danger is intended to avoid cutting too many trees unnecessarily, and therefore reducing the exposure to risk of the workers who are falling the "danger trees."  Ultimately, this means that there is a balance between the risk of a tree falling spontaneously on a planter, versus the risk that the same tree falls on a certified faller during the process of cutting the tree down.

I should point out that the concept of imminent danger may apply to most wildfire stands, but this doesn't mean the same approach can be taken with dealing with danger trees around a temporary planting camp.  In that situation, the exposure is much longer (a period of perhaps weeks under potentially dangerous trees, rather than minutes) and there is more chance during this time period of adverse external events occurring without prior warning (ie. a wind storm that arises in the middle of the night).  The "imminent danger" protocol would therefore not be useful for saying that it's ok for planters to set tents up under potential danger trees.  And by the way, planters should have the common sense not to set tents up under ANY trees that look like they could blown down in a windstorm, regardless of whether or not there was wildfire damage to the tree.  However, common sense can sometimes be anything but common in a planting camp.

To directly quote an associate with whom I conversed about this topic, "It is incumbent on the Clients to make it clear at the viewings what the standards are for assessment, to live up to their due diligence obligation to make bidders aware of the hazards involved in the work."  Of course, in my experience at viewing meetings, the level of due diligence demonstrated by some clients is highly variable.  Some firms are very specific about this topic.  For example, Forsite Forestry Consultants tend to be quite clear about what the hazards are, and what their expectations are pertaining to how the site should be dealt with.  Other clients offer less clarity.

Incidentally, I've heard rumours that in some areas, DTA personnel may be required to wear tracking devices that will show their trails through the block, to ensure that the block was checked thoroughly, and that WorkSafe will then come in to do a follow-up inspection of what was assessed and/or cut.  I'm looking forward to learning more about this new practice.

My personal advice is that if a bidder is not satisfied with the clarity of the information that they have received, they should ask the client specific questions, in writing.  Clear guidance is an important part of the process of due diligence.



My final concern is that some bidders may try to win contracts by "cutting corners" when it comes to stand assessment and, even more particularly, with mitigation of potential dangers.  It would be a shame if such a contractor won a job someday because they didn't budget for proper assessment and treatment of potential danger trees, and a worker was subsequently injured or killed by a falling tree.  In my mind, that would make the both the contractor AND the client complicit in responsibility for the accident.

It would be easy to come up with a solution to this problem, and to level the field for planting contractors:  the client should deal with the stand assessment and mitigation separately, rather than passing the responsibility on to the planting contractor.  In a low-bid system, it simply doesn't make sense for contracts to be set up this way.  If clients ensured that a separate firm took care of DTA assessment and danger tree mitigation from a separate funding source, there would be no risk of cost-cutting contractors gaining a competitive advantage to the detriment of the long-term safety of their employees.


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Here's a link to a WorkSafeBC publication about Danger Tree Management:
http://www.replant.ca/docs/Danger_Tree_Management_Worksafe.pdf

State of the Industry (2018): British Columbia Tree Planting

I believe that the reforestation industry in BC, and particularly the tree-planting side of the industry, is currently approaching an important historical point.  I'd be hesitant to call it a crossroads, but I'm not sure what I actually could call it.  Let me try to explain.

Tree planters are almost always paid on a piece-rate basis, ie. varying rates per tree planted.  The more trees they plant, the more money they earn.  Unfortunately, the industry has been under severe pricing pressure over the past decade.  Right now, in a lot of segments of the industry, especially in northern BC and Alberta, prices are equal to or lower than they were in 2006/2007.  That's a terrible situation, since inflation has eroded our purchasing power over the years.

According to one website that I looked at, inflation from 2006 to 2018 (measured by the CPI) has increased by approximately 21.85% overall.  This means that if earnings have remained stagnant during the same period, the "value" of the money that planters have earned has decreased by more than 20% during these twelve years.  Interestingly, according to another website I looked at, average wages in Canada (across all industries) have increased by approximately 24% during the same time period.  That data was based on all industries nationally, and is supported by minimum wage increases in all provinces during that time period.

I'm not sure if my understanding about why this has happened is completely valid, but I can think of some possible or probable reasons:

- The economic downturn of late 2007 and 2008 (the Great Recession) did tremendous damage to the planting industry.  Prices in the 2007 season, when viewed in a historical context, were great.  But then, in many areas, prices dropped by 15-30% from 2007 to 2009.  There was a slight recovery (in my personal experience) starting in 2011, but never to the previous levels.

- If I remember correctly, I believe that industry volumes dropped from 2006 to 2007, immediately before the Great Recession.  This meant that industry participants were chasing lower volumes.

- There was an oversupply of labour at the time, and too many companies were competing for a limited volume of work (many companies had expanded their operations from 2003-2007).

All of the above is my personal understanding of the state of the industry at that time, but there is probably a lot more to the picture than what I've explained.  As I mentioned, my understanding may not be 100% accurate.


Let's look ahead now.  For planters, I believe that there is a "perfect storm" coming.  Here are some reasons:

1.  Less and less people are interested in pursuing summer jobs as tree planters.  Do I have any hard empirical evidence of this?  No.  However, I do have anecdotal evidence.  The number of job applications that were received in 2018 by a number of owners/senior management at various planting companies dropped to about one third of 2017 levels.  This is a staggering decline, and it is noteworthy that it seemed to happen at several large companies.

2.  The attrition rates during the 2018 season seemed to be high for the industry as a whole.  Now to be honest, the attrition rate in my own camp (the only area where I am 100% confident about the data I'm examining) was low, which contradicts this point.  However, I heard rumours from a large number of planters about high dropout rates at many large planting companies.  We also saw a very significant number of mid-season and late-season "still hiring" ads on Facebook and other forms of social media, which would seem to confirm either that attrition rates during the season WERE high, OR that companies went into the season understaffed.

3.  The industry is projected to need to plant a "historically strong" number of trees again in 2019, and then in 2020, even greater volumes (record-breaking numbers).  Some of this is due to the record-breaking wildfire year in 2017, and it's pretty obvious that this year's wildfires (which eclipsed even 2017 damage) will make things even worse.

Source:  https://wfca.ca/2018/06/western-forestry-contractors-association-rumour-mill-roundupdate-volume-18-issue-08/


In general economic terms, when labour is in diminishing supply, and demand for that labour is increasing, prices need to increase in order to address the situation.  However, the big question is this:  Will contractors (planting companies) recognize and accept this?  Or is the industry too short-sighted and competitive to allow worker prices to rise?

Complicating the issue is the fact that companies are facing increasing costs in many areas, not just in their labour expense.  For example:

- Fuel prices are significantly higher now than they were up to 2006 (with the exception of post-Katrina fuel pricing surges).  In fact, in the past twelve months alone, average fuel prices have increased by over 20%.  Vehicles and transportation costs are the second-largest expense for planting companies, after labour.

- WorkSafe contribution costs have gone up significantly over the past decade.  Even companies with good individual ratings/discounts are affected initially by the industry-wide rate.

- There is a new Employer Health Tax in BC which is scheduled to come into effect on January 1st, 2019.  This will increase payroll costs, even though it is the companies rather than the employees that will be paying this to the BC government.

- The price of most goods and services (pretty much everything else that planting companies have to spend money on, ie. everything from costs of flagging tape to mechanics' labour rates to truck rentals, etc.) has gone up 20% or more in the past decade.

- Although tuition is not something that every planter needs to budget for, and tuition increases may not be as noticeable for long term planters who only go to school for a handful of years during their planting career, the fact remains that tuition fees have increased very significantly over the past decade (fee increases averaged forty percent from 2006 to 2016).

- And most importantly, minimum wage rates are rising across Canada.  Rapidly.  When minimum wage was under $10/hr, the "differential" between minimum wage and making say $17/hr in a planting camp was enough to convince some people that the hardships of planting were worth the extra earnings.  If minimum wage is $15/hr, why would someone want to make only $2/hr more as a planter, when they could instead work a much less demanding job in the city?  Note:  That $17/hr is a random number, but it has some validity, as a survey by the WFCA a year or two ago seemed to indicate that respondents earned approximately that much, industry wide.  And incidentally, that's a terrible hourly wage for the work required, and considering the fact that planting slowly tears your body apart.

On the note of minimum wage, Ontario's minimum wage increased to $14.00/hr in 2018, and increases to $15.00/hr in 2019.  The jump in early 2018 was a huge jump from 2017 levels (which had been $11.40/hr).  Normally, BC planting companies hire a large number of people from Ontario, and I believe that the increases to minimum wage in Ontario are part of the reason why so many companies have been quietly talking about the huge drop in applications this past season.


I look at the current situation as being akin to a frog in a boiling pot of water.  If you were to put a frog into a boiling pot of water, it would try to escape immediately (not that I would do this to a frog).  However, if you put that same frog in a pot of water that is at a normal temperature, and then increase the temperature slowly, the frog doesn't realize that it's slowly getting boiled alive.  It doesn't realize the danger that it's in.  Planters (and planting companies) have been suffering more and more with each passing year, and unfortunately, nobody has been bold enough to scream "enough is enough!"


My hope is that this year, ALL planting contractors realize that there is more work available in 2019 than can be done with the existing labour supply, and they can and should bid higher on all contracts.  Much higher.  If they don't happen to win a particular contract, who cares?  There is almost certainly more work than the industry can handle, and if contractors are patient, work will eventually come to them at favorable prices.


How much do prices need to rise right now?  In my opinion, almost twenty percent.  Will that happen?  Probably not, but it could happen if contractors are disciplined during the upcoming viewing/bidding season (which runs over the next two months).


To be clear, even if bid prices did rise by 20% this fall, planters would still not see that same increase in their wages.  Companies need to be able to cover their increased WorkSafe premiums and EHT taxes and everything else, and if they don't, they'll go out of business.  But it's safe to say that at least part of the bid price increases can be [and need to be] passed along to planters.  Without adequate workforces, companies will fail.  I've already heard of numerous examples of inability to complete projects in 2018.  I've even been to a landfill that was literally green with tree bundles, where one planting company (whom I will leave unnamed) was unable to finish a project and the forester had to pull the plug and destroy hundreds of thousands of seedlings.  This was not a unique situation.  And the problem may be much worse next year, unless there is a greater financial incentive for people to accept planting jobs, and less reason for them to quit part-way through the season.

I talked to about a dozen forest nurseries this year, and the consistent story was that 98% of contractors were delaying tree deliveries, because they didn't have the workforce to complete their work according to projected timelines.  Most companies blamed the late snow melt for this problem, but the truth is that the melt was only part of the problem, and simply a convenient excuse for some companies.  If any foresters don't believe me, try calling several nurseries for verification.

In addition to increasing planter prices, higher bid prices could be used by companies to "do things right."  Many contractors, large or small, are cutting corners in various ways.  Some of these are minor penny-pinching, but in other cases, contractors are blatantly contravening various government regulations and employment standards.  Just think, if you're a large contractor that is NOT currently paying minimum wage top-up properly to your new workers, higher bid prices this year could offer you an opportunity to fix that deficiency.  There are certain benefits to compliance, other than no longer having to hope that your rookies don't file employment standards complaints against you.

To be more explicit, let me tell you something that some of you may not realize.  Companies in BC are required to top workers up to minimum wage, if they don't earn the equivalent of minimum wage through their piece-rate earnings.  Even though paying minimum wage top-up properly can be quite costly for a company, it should be thought of as an investment in your people, not as an expense.

My own camp has paid a tremendous amount of top-up some years, often exceeding $20,000 in a single season.  And do you know what?  I've also had only four first-year planters quit out of the 52 that I've hired over the past four seasons (2015-2018 inclusive).  So for any of you discount contractors out there that had problems finishing contracts this year because lots of people quit, you should think carefully about this.  Would you rather pay $20,000 to $30,000 in top-up in May, or lose out on much more than that because you were defeated in August and weren't able to complete work that you had committed to?  My thirteen first-year planters this season planted an average of 94,818 trees apiece, for a total of 1.23m trees (out of the 6.50m trees that my full camp planted during the regular season).  And every one of them got paid some top-up at the start of the season, sometimes significant amounts.  Yet without them, our camp wouldn't have been able to accept and plant the extra three-quarters of a million trees that were offered to us by other contractors who were behind schedule.  The minimum wage top-up subsidization, when paid properly and legally, allows a company to slash attrition rates of first-year planters to a fraction of what the dropout rate would be without top-ups.  But some BC planting contractors continue to break that rule to this day, because "the bid prices are too low to be able to afford to pay top-up."  Part of the reason for the low attrition rates and high production of my first-year planters is also attributable to the training regimen that I put them through, based on the information in Step By Step.


I should clarify that there is some variation between geographic regions throughout BC.  My understanding is that the small companies in the southern Interior, and some of the coastal companies, were not hit as hard by the Great Recession as the larger companies operating north of Merritt and Kamloops.  Also, in some cases, smaller companies have been somewhat insulated from bids where "the lowest price was the law" by virtue of their skilled workforces, and by working for foresters who understood the value of good workmanship.  Of course, when you pay and treat your workers well, your year-to-year retention levels are much higher, and your company benefits.


The funny thing about this whole situation is the question of who ultimately gets hurt if prices don't go up significantly.  Is it the planters?  Nope.  They'll just quit and move on to other jobs/careers/vocations.  The majority of the tree planting workforce is only in the industry for 1-4 years, then they move on to a new chapter in their life.  The people who are always left behind to deal with the long-term financial pressures are the company owners.  The owners are the ones who are ultimately going to be hurt the most if the industry situation doesn't change.  And they are the only ones who can effect a change, by exercising discipline when putting bids together this year.

For a lot of company owners, their entire life has been invested into their company.  I mean this on many levels, including their time, financial, and emotional commitments.  Blood, sweat, and tears.  Many of these owners are in a position where they are hoping to sell or retire within the next five years.  But who will want to buy a planting company if the planting industry can't recruit workers, or if the company is losing money?  For many of these owners, their company IS their retirement nest egg, and this becomes a do-or-die financial situation.  Even if planters don't understand or don't care about the long-term financial health of the planting industry, the owners must.

Some of the blame for current pricing levels can probably be blamed upon full-time upper-level management at the large companies, rather than upon the owners.  If there isn't enough work, they may lose their jobs.  Some of the people in these positions realize that their company needs a certain amount of work to be able to keep them on the payroll.  They may pull the wool over the eyes of owners on some bids.  Shame, shame.

Today's workforce is very different from the workforce of a decade ago.  They are connected.  There has never been as much shared information between planters of different companies as there is today, thanks to social media.  Information is empowerment.  All BC government bids are public information, paid for by the taxpayers.  This information gets published and shared widely (not just on BC Bid and Replant.ca).  Any individual companies that bid low on 2019 contracts will be judged in the court of public opinion, and the information will be re-shared on social media during the spring recruitment season.


Some people believe that there is a dichotomy between tree planters and company owners.  They believe that when one side gains, the other side necessarily loses.  I don't believe that this is the case.  I believe that this is a very symbiotic industry.  When planters do well, it is good for the companies they work for.


So I'll end this post with a message to any company owners who are reading this: It's time for you to stop "sharpening the pencils" and trying to cut corners on bid prices.  It's time for you to think about the long-term health of your work force, and the long-term financial health of your company.  Both of these things can improve in tandem if everyone exercises discipline while bidding this year.  You need to submit bids for what the jobs should truly be valued at, not for the lowest amount you can suffer through.  The ball is in your court...


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If you'd like to see results of public tree planting bids for 2019 contracts in BC, here's a link:
www.replant.ca/publicbids


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Late edit:  There are a few subjects that I didn't really cover in this post, which I should have talked about:

- Nursery Capacity:  The western Canadian forest nurseries have the capacity to increase production slightly for 2020, and they already had a bit of spare capacity for 2018.  But is it enough to meet demand?

- Direct Award Contracts:  If low-bid contracts do happen to increase in value this fall, AND the industry has more work than it can easily handle, then which contracts will be dropped?  There's a good chance that low-priced direct award work will be the first to dropped, as planting contractors no longer need the security blanket of guaranteed work.  Some foresters at private mills may need to prepare themselves for requests for pricing adjustments.  Some contractors may soon be in a position to be able to walk away from low-margin work.