16 



counties to develop a stable and sustainable economic base. Thank 

 you very much. 



[The statement of Mr. Lee may be found at end of hearing.] 



Mr. Hansen. Thank you, Doctor. 



Mr. Bob Olson? 



STATEMENT OF BOB OLSON, PRESIDENT, LOCAL 78, ASSOCLV- 

 TION OF WESTERN PULP AND PAPER WORKERS, PORTLAND, 

 OREGON 



Mr. Olson. Good morning. My name is Bob Olson. I am a ma- 

 chine operator at the James River Corporation in Portland, Oregon. 

 I am also President of Local 78 of the Association of Western Pulp 

 and Paper Workers, AFL-CIO, and am an active member of the 

 Pulp and Paper Resource Council, 



It is on behalf of the more than 200,000 members of the AWPPW 

 and the PPRC that I appear before you today, and it is on behalf 

 of these men and women that I tell you today that Option 9, the 

 Clinton administration's forest management plan for the Pacific 

 Northwest and Northern California, is an unmitigated failure for 

 the working men and women of the forest products industry, our 

 communities, and our families. 



I have worked in the pulp and paper industry for more than 28 

 years. When I first started as an employee of Crown Zellerbach 

 Corporation, I thought I had a pretty secure future. I thought I had 

 a job that would allow me to provide for my family and help my 

 kids have the things that I could not have when I was their age. 

 Sure, we had our scrapes with management, some of them pretty 

 bad, but together, we learned how to take care of our forests so 

 that we would be able to harvest trees for generations to come and 

 protect wildlife at the same time. 



Then everjrthing went horribly wrong. All around us, mills are 

 closing, good men and women are losing their jobs, and commu- 

 nities are dying, and why? Simply because some men, or some peo- 

 ple — excuse me— do not like or understand what we do. They do 

 not believe in balance. They do not see that we understand the im- 

 portance of protecting wildlife and our environment, and they do 

 not see that we know we can balance these concerns with the eco- 

 nomic needs of working people and communities. 



When President Clinton announced Option 9, most of us thought, 

 well, it does not provide much volume of timber only roughly 20 

 percent of what we harvested a few years before, but at least it is 

 something. The truth is, the volume promised has not come 

 through and it is good working men and women who have suffered 

 for it. 



Since 1989, we have lost more than 23,000 jobs in our industry 

 as more than 280 mills have closed due to a lack of the timber sup- 

 ply throughout the Pacific Northwest, Northern California, Mon- 

 tana, and Idaho. Now that number, 23,000, may just be a figure 

 to you, but to me, it represents people I know, friends of mine who 

 thought they had a secure future one day, only to wake up the next 

 and find themselves on the unemployment line. 



I am lucky. Our plant is not directly impacted by the timber har- 

 vest reductions that have resulted from Option 9, but I can see the 

 storm on the horizon. Our brothers and sisters at the James River 



