In Our Back Yard: Ainsworth Workers Forced to Change Paths

by Kathleen Preece

Question:
What do you get when you mix together the knowledge that make you a harvester of Minnesota’s timberlands, credentials that give you status as supervisor in the log yard of a major forest products company, and skills that enable you to serve for over 17 years as controller of driers for a company that manufactures oriented strand board?

Answer:
A nurse.

Did the answer surprise you? It surprised Gary Kallstrom. His 28-year career with Ainsworth Lumber Ltd. ended abruptly when the Canadian-based company announced closure of its Bemidji facility January 27, 2009. The announcement also included closure notice of the Ainsworth plant in Cook; that plant had been under an “indefinitely curtailed operations” status for a year. The permanent closure of the two plants followed on the heels of their sister company in Grand Rapids, which closed its doors in August of 2008.

Even upon hearing of the closure of Ainsworth’s sister company in Cook, a year ago, Bemidji area resident Gary Kallstrom did not anticipate that his near lifetime career was in jeopardy. He admits he is afflicted with the “Not in My Back Yard,” or “NIMBY” syndrome (a common affliction of those in longtime and seemingly stable careers). “I knew it might be tough, but I never expected it to go real bad,” Kallstrom admits.

According to Ainsworth president and CEO, Rick Hugg, the “very difficult decision to permanently close these plants” was made following a review of the company’s ability (or lack of) - to be competitive over the “longer term.”

The three mill closures affect the lives and incomes of over 500 direct employees and the potential procurement of over a million cords of woods. The Bemidji Joint Development Commission approximates that its community, alone, will lose over $90 million in revenues related to the Ainsworth closure in its community.

Many former employees continue to search for familiar paths that will allow them to use the skills they have acquired over lifetimes of employment. Others, like Kallstrom, contemplate a return to a path toward an ambition never pursued in younger years.

David Olson, carrying on the tradition of logging for Bemidji area mills that goes back a generation to his father, the late Daryl Olson, recently spoke from the lowlands of a tamarack swamp on a sleet-coated February morning.

“It feels like there is no way out. The banks don’t want our equipment back; and we can’t afford to make payments on them.” Olson, who bought stumpage close to the Ainsworth plant, is “stuck” with wood that, if he can even sell it, will have to be hauled a longer distance than he anticipated, on order to deliver it to a market that will buy it.

With uncertainty about having markets for stumpage he has already purchased, and increased costs to deliver to new markets, Olson admits the “write-offs are not a big issue anymore” when it comes to filing income tax returns.

Olson repeats a story circulating the Bemidji area in which an area logger drove his feller buncher “on the scales” to determine its weight, then sold the equipment at scrap iron prices to try to recoup his costs on the machinery.

Kent Jacobs, manager of Ainsworth Bemidji procurement, explains that the Oriented Strand Board (OSB) product of Ainsworth is a family of products developed for the construction and the home building industries, with markets in North America and export markets in Europe and Asia. Ainsworth’s three OSB mills in Canada (located at 100 Mile House, British Columbia, Grand Prairie, Alberta and Barwick, Ontario) that have a combined capacity of approximately 1.6 billion square feet, continue to run at full capacity. Production of an OSB mill in the community of High Level, Alberta, for which the company has a 50 percent interest, has been indefinitely curtailed.

Kallstrom said he has “no bitterness.” He explains that Ainsworth “treated him well,” with a severance package that allowed him to stay on his feet while charting a new direction with his professional life.

“The tough part of all of this change is meeting my own expectations of myself, for learning. And I am not quite there. I am struggling to get my brain going again.”

Microbiology, physiology, and psychology never popped into his vocabulary, nor demanded his job skills while controlling the driers in the Ainsworth OSB plant. Kallstrom’s weekdays now require carrying a 16-credit load at college, and then returning home, where his wife operates a daycare center, to study for eventual certification as a Licensed Practical Nurse. His long-term goal upon graduation is to pursue his Registered Nurse degree, “before I retire!”

Kallstrom’s short term goal? To beat one of his four daughters through the nursing program at Northwest Technical College in Bemidji.