After 14 years at the sawmill, she's considering a career as a radiology technician.
"It's scary because it's a whole different direction, said Tollefson, 52. But it's also an opportunity to advance."
Production supervisor
Richard Anthony has been at the Bonner plant for 38 years. He planned to talk
with a career counselor after listening to brief overviews of available programs
during a recent information session for Stimson workers at the University of
Montana's College of Technology.
"I don't have a clue," Anthony said.
"I
don't know what I'll do."
Electrician Jeff Runyan, 46, said he's in
“panic mode, trying to figure out how to earn the same wages and pay his bills
without leaving Missoula, where his family has relatives.
"It is really
stressing me out," he said. "I've never been somebody that's wanted to take any
kind of assistance. I've always wanted to make it on my own."
Tollefson,
Runyan and Anthony are among the final 100 workers at the Bonner mill, one of
the country's oldest mills, where the first log was cut in
1886.
Millworkers, foresters, loggers and truckers are directly affected
by the mothballed plant, but there also is spillover into the regional economy
for equipment retailers, grocery stores and ancillary businesses.
"There
is definitely a ripple effect," said Tom Morgan, director of forest industry
research at the University of Montana's Bureau of Business and Economic
Research. "The Bonner mill was one of the 15 largest ones in Montana. It will
definitely be a loss. There is a sizeable outlet for logs that will be going
away."
The Bonner mill's heyday was in the early 1980s, when it employed
nearly 1,000 workers. Stimson, a privately held forest products company based in
Portland, Ore., bought the mill from Champion International in 1993. Stimson
owns about 400,000 acres of timberland and has assets and operations in Idaho,
Montana, Oregon and Washington.
Stimson officials cite the slumping
housing market, foreign competition and availability of timber as reasons for
their decision.
While millworkers scramble to figure out their next step,
several related businesses have readjusted their prospects, too.
Dyrk
Krueger, who runs a small logging outfit from Corvallis, said without the Bonner
mill, he'll have to deliver to mills farther away in St. Regis, Deer Lodge and
elsewhere. But that means taking a hit with higher fuel costs.
"I don't
want to make it sound like that logging in the Bitterroot is economically
impossible, but it is hitting home now," Krueger said. "I don't know what we're
going to do, honestly. We're small, we're flexible and we will make it, but it
is not easy."
Scott Kuehn is one of two foresters recently laid off by
Stimson, where he's worked for the past 3 1/2 years buying timber from private
and public lands. After several jobs with timber companies in the region, he
landed a position last week as a procurement forester at Tricon Timber in St.
Regis.
"It's really the end of an era. I'm not waiting to see if Stimson
will reopen. I have bills to pay," Kuehn said. "I've still got forestry in my
blood, still get up at 5 a.m. and have to go do something. Old habits are hard
to break."
Joe Fraser, 56, who has run the logging outfit of Salmon River
Wood Inc. in Missoula for about 24 years, said Stimson accounted for about 25
percent to 30 percent of his business last year. His outfit employs about 40
people and runs 10 trucks.
In the absence of the Bonner mill, Fraser said
they'll have to expand their radius, which will be hard on
families.
"It's a crying shame they've shut down that mill. They should
have been able to keep it running with a steady supply of federal timber," he
said. "It is forcing us to scramble a little more to find work. But good outfits
will find good work."
Leroy Christofferson, 67, who owns a trucking
business, said he hauled his first load of logs to the Bonner mill in 1964.
He'll now run up to Kalispell, St. Regis, Bozeman and elsewhere.
"We'll
have to cowboy up and go to where the mills can handle the timber," he said.
"I
think it is real sad the Bonner mill has to go down. It's for internal reasons
that we don't really know about yet."
Weaknesses in the housing industry
directly affected mills tied into construction, such as the stud mill in Bonner.
Prices for lumber have dropped to about $239 per thousand board feet, roughly
half of what lumber fetched in 2004 and 2005 when the housing market was
robust.
"Industrywide, demand fell off to such a degree that it brought
prices down below historical lows and below profitability for many mills," said
Shawn Church, an editor at Random Lengths Publications, which reports on the
forest products market from Eugene, Ore. "When downturns persist, companies have
to make tough decisions on what they'll do to survive, which facilities fit best
and which don't."
Larry Swanson, director of the O'Connor Center for the
Rocky Mountain West, said the overall impact of the Bonner mill's closure today
is less than it would have been 25 years ago. The wood products industry
amounted to about 14 percent of Missoula County's economy in the 1980s as
compared with about 1.5 percent in 2006.
"One of the more significant
things about the Bonner mill closing is it grew out of the consolidation in the
industry, and now you're at the point that one of the giants is closing,"
Swanson said. "It is a pretty big deal and is pretty significant."
Many
of the last workers at the Bonner mill are people with the most seniority. Some
will move from the region. Others will need retraining before they can start new
jobs and others will attend school, said Wolf Ametsbichler, manager of the
Missoula Job Service, which helps the displaced workers with the
transition.
At the College of Technology session, Tollefson said it's
been 35 years since she last stepped into a classroom. She plans on brushing up
her skills this summer before applying to the radiology program.
She and
her husband, Greg, another millworker at the Bonner plant since 1975, have been
filling out paperwork since they were notified in March of the layoff. Greg will
support her with his promised job at Montana Rail Link.
"Every now and
again, you get this wave of panic," she said. "When you've been doing something
for a long time, the prospect of something new takes you out of your comfort
zone."
About a third of the millworkers are in their mid-50s and they're
hunting for jobs for the "gap years" until they retire, said Mike Woodworth,
business manager for the United Brotherhood of Carpenters Local
3038.
"The majority of Stimson's workers are ready and relieved,"
Woodworth said. "They want to go on with their lives and on to bigger and better
things."
He said Stimson agreed in early May to a "meager" severance
package, offering one week's pay for every two years of service at Stimson,
which acquired the Bonner plant in 1993. That means the maximum amount possible
for current workers is 7 1/2 weeks of severance pay.
Stimson offered
wages from about $15 to $22 an hour, Woodworth said, along with health
insurance, a pension and an option to participate in a 401(k).
Many
workers will apply for unemployment insurance to tide them over until the next
job, Woodworth said.
"When they start living on unemployment, it is going
to be hard," Woodworth said. "A car breakdown or an illness can wipe out all
their savings."
Evan Barrett, head of the governor's office of economic
development, said state officials are searching for other manufacturers who
might be interested in acquiring the Bonner mill site.
"We've got feelers
out in both the wood products industry and other industries," Barrett said.
"But
we don't have any immediately hot prospects. In general, we have to nursemaid
these opportunities."
Locals hope the Bonner mill, with its proximity to
the rail line and interstate, will remain in some type of manufacturing. But
they also acknowledge the pressure to develop the land into housing, given the
recreational prospects of Bonner's location at the confluence of the Clark Fork
and Blackfoot rivers.
"It's not like the mill is going out and Bonner
will turn into a ghost town," Kuehn said. "It'll change, but it'll be a
different chapter in its career."
Reporter Pamela J. Podger can be
reached at 523-5241 or at pamela.podger@missoulian.com