538 



Mr. RoppEL. Well, I will tell you off the top that Admiralty 

 Island has close to one million acres of the best timber available 

 and there may only be 80,000 acres, 50,000 board foot to the acre 

 plus, but there are several hundred thousand acres over there that 

 are very commercial timberland and it does not necessarily have to 

 be a 50,000 board foot per acre. I think our timber sales for this 

 last four or five years have been something on the average of 

 around 29,000. 



Senator Wirth. The cutoff point the Forest Service uses is 30 for 

 what is the high-grade, commercially most desirable timber. 



Let me jump, if I might, to a couple of other points. Yesterday 

 we heard from at least employees of the other company that dis- 

 agreed with that company's policy and felt that there should be 

 dramatic changes on the legislation. I thought that that was kind 

 of remarkable that that kind of statement was made by those em- 

 ployees exercising their freedom of expression and freedom of 

 speech, and I hope without fear of retaliation. Will Alaska Pulp 

 provide the same opportunity to its employee groups to express 

 themselves if they believe the policy that ought to be carried by the 

 Federal Government was different from that espoused by manage- 

 ment? 



Mr. RoppEL. You bet. 



Senator Wirth. Let me then — I hope that that is the case, and 

 what I want to get to is your answer to the allegations made about 

 the treatment of one of your employees who testified before the 

 Congress in May of 1987. The Subcommittee on General Oversight 

 Investigations of the Interior Committee, the House of Representa- 

 tives, on September, 1988 said, "We conclude that the Alaska Pulp 

 Corporation terminated Mr. Florian Sever in large part due to his 

 Congressional testimony on May 19, 1987 on H.R. 1516, the Tongass 

 Timber Reform Act." And then they went on to say, "The termina- 

 tion of Mr. Sever for his Congressional testimony constitutes the 

 obstruction of proceedings before the Congressional Committee. 

 The subcommittee will refer this matter to the Department of Jus- 

 tice for criminal prosecution." That information in part came from 

 the testimony of a Mr. Kline, with whom you are familiar. He is 

 the Industrial Relations and Personnel Manager for Alaska Pulp. 

 The information available through the National Labor Relations 

 Board interview said, "Kline also stated that he discharged Sever 

 for damaging the image of product of the company which was one 

 of the points that the employer wanted to add to the new contract 

 when the parties met for negotiations in November. Kline states 

 that obviously Sever had no interest in continuing to work for the 

 company. Kline based this on testimony that Sever gave before the 

 U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Tongass Wilderness Bill and 

 three letters to the editor, two of which were public." 



Now, those are pretty serious allegations or serious statements, 

 as you know. One of things that we want to do, agreed or not, is to 

 make sure that there is consistent freedom of expression available 

 to individuals, and that people can express themselves without fear 

 of retaliation. And I know that those have all been made part of 

 the record. I do not think that you all had the opportunity since 

 then to respond to that, and I wanted to give you that opportunity 



