At 51, Kerry Chivers does not want to go back to school.
But it might be the only option for the forklift driver at the Australian Sustainable Hardwoods sawmill, after the Labor government announced the snap decision to bring forward the end to native forest logging in 2024 – six years earlier than planned.
Environmentalists have celebrated the decision, saying it’s not just important for the planet but for the future of the industry.
The number of jobs impacted is contested, with the Victorian Association of Forestry Industries estimating it would be around 4,000 while a report commissioned by the Forest and Wood Products Association in 2018 found there were 1,639.
Inside the state’s sawmills on Wednesday, the mood was sombre.
Chivers lives in Heyfield, in East Gippsland, one of the regions expected to be hit hardest by the announcement. As native forestry logging has all but ground to a halt, she has already lost shifts.
“There are no jobs around,” Chivers says. “So there’s no use going to Tafe to do a course if there are no jobs at the end of it.”
“I’ll just wait now. I’ll wait a couple of weeks and see what [my boss] has to offer. And whether he thinks he can survive.”
As part of a $200m transition package, workers will be offered up to $8,000 to retrain at Tafe and can apply for redundancy top-up payments of up to $120,000 and relocation reimbursements of $45,000.
The mayor of Wellington shire, Ian Bye, says more than 600 families will be directly impacted in his shire alone.
“When you look at it, it’s the transport operators, the people in the mills, the people that are in the co-ops,” he says.
“There are over 600 families just directly in the timber industry without the subsidiaries – the mechanics, the cafes or others that are affected. The direct impact is over 600 families.
“The community is frustrated, disappointed and pissed off.
“There were a few problems with VicForests, [but] they could work through those and better it.”
The writing has been on the wall for some time – the industry has been beset by bushfires, environmental no-logging zones and a supreme court ruling that found VicForests breached Victorian law in three separate litigations.
Chivers has been a forklift driver at the sawmill for six years – she says the court battles have meant only 3% of the timber they have processed this year has been local hardwood.
Their boss has diversified, bringing in timber from Tasmania, New South Wales and the US, but less supply means fewer shifts.
“We used to work two shifts, and now we only work one,” Chivers says, “because basically we haven’t had a timber supply for the last three years.”
She lives off $300 a week after she pays her mortgage – and, similar to many Australians, she worries about rising interest rates, the cost of food and, now, what she will do if she loses more shifts.
Cam Walker, a campaign coordinator at Friends of the Earth, says his heart goes out to the workers affected, but this week’s decision was less about environmental factors than it was about economics.
“There is simply not enough timber to see us through until 2030, which was the existing timeline,” he says.
“That’s as a result of the black summer fires, which, as we know, burned more than a million hectares of forests in eastern Victoria.
“That transition was coming, whether we wanted it or not. And it was much better for the government to intervene, guide that transition and support people rather than leave it until the timber had actually run out.”
He says it is well documented that the forests that would be logged, especially the alpine ash, had failed to regenerate properly and VicForests left a “legacy of denuded and destroyed” systems.
“It’s simply not sustainable. The regeneration isn’t at a scale that’s required,” Walker says.
The snap decision has caused a falling out between the government and the CFMEU, with the national secretary for manufacturing, Michael O’Connor, resigning from Victoria’s forestry advisory committee, brandishing it a sham as he walked out the door.
He says the sector had been blindsided by the decision, with no consultation.
“People should hang their heads in shame when workers find out they’re going to be sacked by listening to the ABC radio,” he says.
“That’s how the employers and the worker’s industry found out about it.
A spokesperson for the state government would not answer questions about why workers were not consulted beforehand, but the government defended the decision, saying that “forestry workers, their families and communities are their top priority”.
“We do not take the decision around an early transition out of native timber harvesting lightly, but the uncertainty from ongoing litigation and severe bushfires cannot continue,” the spokesperson said.
• This story was amended on 26 May 2023 to reflect that the number of potential job losses is contested. An earlier version said “between 2,000 and 4,500 workers” could be affected.
