RECRUITMENT DRIVE
A newspaper article in New Brunswick’s Telegraph-Journal last week says J.D. Irving, Limited is working hard to bring new people into the forest industry.
The paper ran a story last week saying the Atlantic Canada wood products producer is looking for 200 contractors and operators for trucks and forest harvesting machines.
The company and the town of St. Stephen in southwest New Brunswick held an open house recently, which was the pilot for a series of similar events. Jim Ketterling, who is responsible for J.D. Irving’s recruiting initiative, expects to attend about 20 similar events and school career days in the fall.
Ketterling estimates that in southwest New Brunswick, about half of the forest industry workforce of 2,000 are over 45 years old. "A lot of the people who started with chainsaws and skidders with us were the first generation to go into harvesters, and now they are retiring," he said.
The high number of employees hitting retirement age and a lack of young people going into the industry is creating the human resources shortage. Ketterling told the Telegraph-Journal that just in the southwest part of the province, they have an immediate need for three harvesting machine contractors and eight operators, also nine trucking contractors and 11 drivers - 31 openings in total.
According to Ketterling, the operators and drivers would work for contractors who cut and deliver wood for J.D. Irving. "We start them out. We help them get in the business," Ketterling said. "It's an owner/operator model, which we find the best. We're in business to bring them along and make them good contractors, and that helps us make money," he added.
J.D. Irving pays its contractors by the tonne for wood cut and delivered. The contractors in turn, pay operators and drivers by the hour, sometimes with a production incentive. According to Ketterling, the drivers and operators can make $16 to $21 per hour.
"For the next several years we're going to keep this recruiting drive up," Ketterling said. "Every day we are going strong. We are cutting wood. We are trucking wood. We are operating. We are hiring."
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