The Northwest Hardwoods mill is seen from Galvin Road in Centralia on Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2014.
A major lumber mill in Centralia has announced plans to temporarily curtail its production, possibly to half its operating capacity, due to the ongoing West Coast port slowdown.
Northwest Hardwoods will begin reducing hours of employees at the Centralia plant on Galvin Road this coming Monday, according to company vice president of human resources Brian Narramore.
The curtailment comes as negotiations between longshoremen and port association officials on a new dockworkers’ contract continue, in the face of a slowdown at several ports including Seattle and Tacoma — where Northwest ships internationally-bound products from.
“Centralia is one of our mills that’s closely situated near these ports,” Narramore said Wednesday afternoon. “Unfortunately it’s impacting our employees. It will be this way until this improves.”
Narramore said the ongoing port dispute has crippled the company’s ability to export its product. As a result, several employees will see their hours cut in half, with production employees at the mill’s sawmill and sander affected the worst; however, all employees will feel the effects of the curtailment somehow.
“Almost the entire mill population will be impacted in one way or another,” Narramore said.
Northwest Hardwoods employs just over 100 people at its Centralia plant. It primarily deals with alder and maple, exporting the product to both international and domestic markets.
Narramore didn’t immediately have figures Wednesday afternoon on how much total product the company can’t ship due to the port slowdown, but did call it “a significant volume.”
Northwest Hardwoods has also chosen to curtail production at facilities in Longview and Garibaldi, Oregon. Narramore said the three mills combine to represent 50 percent of the company’s operating capacity in the American west.
The company hopes to be able to offer employees a way to sign up for unemployment benefits through the state Employment Security Department’s Shared Work program, which offers partial unemployment benefits as an alternative to layoffs. That program requires companies who participate to have reduced participating employees’ work hours by at least 10 percent and no more than 50 percent. Employees have to be hired on a permanent, hourly basis, eligible for regular benefits and available to work all hours offered by their employer.
Northwest Hardwoods joins National Frozen Foods as two major employers in Lewis County that have been hit by the port slowdown.
National plant manager Pat Sauter told The Chronicle recently that the slowdown hampered the facility’s ability to export 18 to 20 percent of its product, but it had not seen a need to lay off workers or curtail production as their domestic shipments were still strong.
The slowdown, which included a complete shutdown of several ports over the weekend as the Pacific Maritime Association locked out longshoremen, has shown no major recent signs of improvement.
The association has basically called the slowdown a negotiation tactic, while the union says changes in operations and other pressures have led to the current state of affairs.
Narramore said Northwest Hardwoods had felt the economic pain of the slowdown for the past few months and had tried to stave off impacts to employees, but the company ultimately decided on the production curtailment to begin in a matter of days until the situation at the ports turns around.
“We’re monitoring the negotiations the best we can,” Narramore said.
