We all hear a lot about the need to significantly scale up our forest adaptation and resilience work—that is, thinning, replanting, prescribed burning and other tasks that are essential in preparing for and recovering from wildfire. But what's often lost in this conversation is *who* is doing this work, and the future of that—at times, fraught—workforce in the face of increasing ecosystem needs in the West. It's one thing to say we need to get something done, but another thing entirely to know where that work is coming from, and how those workers are being treated. How can we ensure these folks are supported and being treated equitably in often unsafe, fast-paced and high-exposure jobs? In the Pacific Northwest, a not-insignificant portion of forestry sector workers are Latino, many on H2B visas, which are temporary, non-agricultural working visas. Today's guest Emily Jane (E.J) Davis—along with co-authors Carl Wilmse, Manuel Machado and Gianna Alessi—aimed to learn more about these workers in a paper published in 2023 called Multiple Stories, Multiple Marginalities: The Labor Intensive Forest and Fire Stewardship Workforce in Oregon (link in episode notes). What they found is that this type of employment leaves workers vulnerable to exploitative labor practices and working conditions, a lack of training and resources that result in critical leadership and safety gaps on site, and a lack of power or ability to organize or unionize to improve conditions.
We all hear a lot about the need to significantly scale up our forest adaptation and resilience work—that is, thinning, replanting, prescribed burning and other tasks that are essential in preparing for and recovering from wildfire.
But what's often lost in this conversation is *who* is doing this work, and the future of that—at times, fraught—workforce in the face of increasing ecosystem needs in the West. It's one thing to say we need to get something done, but another thing entirely to know where that work is coming from, and the conditions those workers are facing. How can we ensure these folks are supported and being treated equitably in often unsafe, fast-paced and high-exposure jobs?
In the Pacific Northwest, a not-insignificant portion of forestry sector workers are Latino, many on H2B visas, which are temporary, non-agricultural working visas. Today's guest Emily Jane (E.J) Davis—along with co-authors Carl Wilmse, Manuel Machado and Gianna Alessi—aimed to learn more about these workers in a paper published in 2023 called Multiple Stories, Multiple Marginalities: The Labor Intensive Forest and Fire Stewardship Workforce in Oregon.
What they found is that this type of employment leaves workers vulnerable to exploitative labor practices and working conditions, a lack of training and resources that result in critical leadership and safety gaps on site, and a lack of power or ability to organize or unionize to improve conditions. Recent ramping up of immigration enforcement is also having an impact on this workforce, as evidenced by the DHS raid on a fire in Washington State this summer. Rigoberto Hernandez Hernandez, one of the two firefighters who were detained, was released four weeks later. The other—José Bertín Cruz-Estrada, who'd worked in fire since 2019 but was undocumented—was deported to Mexico after two months of detainment. Both worked on Oregon-based contract fire crews.
In this episode, EJ—who is an associate professor at Oregon State University and the fire program director for the OSU extension—and I dive more deeply into some of the key takeaways of her research, some of the practical applications of that research through her extension position, and what the future of this research looks like. We discussed labor issues more broadly in the forestry and fire workforces, and how these challenges are often amplified considerably for marginalized communities in these positions, and particularly for the Latino workforce.
E.J.'s biggest takeaway? If we truly hope to increase forest treatments and recovery work to the scale needed to make a meaningful difference, we need to not only acknowledge the challenges of the folks who are actually doing that work, but do everything we can to address those challenges and develop a more sustainable forest sector workforce for the work that awaits us.