Reduction affects both sawmill, planer mill

PHILOMATH - Georgia-Pacific cut 30 jobs at its Philomath lumber mills this week as the housing slump continued to batter the wood products industry.

"It's strictly a matter of the current market we're operating in," said Julie Davis, a spokeswoman at company headquarters in Atlanta. "Unfortunately, that meant we had to reduce some staff."

Georgia-Pacific operates a sawmill and a planer mill in Philomath, and the cuts are spread across both plants, Davis said. The mills make dimensional lumber from Douglas fir and hemlock. Current production runs range from 2-by-4 to 2-by-12 and 4-by-4 to 4-by-6 in random lengths up to 24 feet.

About 75 people remain on the job at G-P's Philomath mills, where operations have been cut back from two shifts to one until demand picks back up, Davis said.

"We hope that the market will turn around, and we'll be able to bring folks back," she added.

The news comes on the heels of an announcement Wednesday by International Paper that it was cutting 40 jobs at its Albany kraft paper mill. That layoff was attributed to falling demand caused by the weak economy. Kraft paper is used in making cardboard boxes, and demand for them is down as fewer goods are being shipped.

Wood products manufacturing statewide has fallen significantly over the past two years as the real estate boom tapered off.

According to the most recent statistics from the Oregon Employment Department, the industry employed 27,600 workers in Oregon as of August, down 2,400 jobs from the previous year and down 5,500 jobs from August of 2006.

In the small community of Philomath, the loss of 30 jobs will have some impact, said City Manager Randy Kugler.

But the lumber industry's current woes won't pack nearly the same wallop here that they would have 10 or 12 years ago, when timber was still this Coast Range town's dominant employer. Several hundred wood products jobs have disappeared forever since those days, and the local economy has been forced to diversify.

"At one point in time, a downturn like this would have had a much more dramatic effect," Kugler said. "We're really not a timber town anymore."