By Staff - Industrial Worker, September 1990
Logging was set to begin Monday morning July 23 in Osprey Grove, a ten acre biological area of old-growth redwood located in Mendocino County California. However, after finding spotted owls in the area, the Redwood Summer Coalition managed to get a temporary restraining order from a local judge to halt the logging. The California Department of Forestry and Fish and Game have been charged with evaluating the spotted owls claim before the judge makes a final decision on Tuesday, July 31. Redwood Summer demonstrators showed up at the site to stop any possible logging during the week of July 22.
(Robert) Pardini and his son (Dan) were the two loggers who won the subcontract from Louisiana Pacific (L-P) to cut down Osprey Grove.[1] Pardini and his son run what is called a “gyppo” logging operations. They buy or make payments, often to the large companies like L-P, on logging equipment and are sent out on the front lines to make the cuts. “Gyppo” loggers are paid, not by the hour; but by how much they cut. Often, they are caught in the middle between the need to make their equipment payments and support their families, and fulfilling the company’s contract which calls for the devastating old-growth clearcut. For the most part, they are not unionized.
Despite the restraining order, the demon-strations, and the spotted owls, Louisiana Pacific sent the Pardinis and their crew out to cut on Monday morning. According to Redwood Summer Coalition activist Meridian Green, “L-P knew they weren’t going to cut.” They were just putting pressure on the demonstrators and maintaining a presence at the loggers’ expenses. Each day, Pardini and his crew have to show up at the grove to fulfill their contract, and then they have to go right back home. L-P won’t let Pardini move his equipment out of there. L-P’s treatment of the Pardinis reveals their strategy to pit loggers against the Redwood Summer Coalition.
In this case, however, L-P is not succeeding. Coalition activists are supporting Pardini and his crew in the face of L-P’s treatment. Meridian Green explains that an Osprey Grove Loggers Relief Group has sprung up overnight and that Redwood supporters are contributing to help Pardini keep up his payments while IWW members have focused on raising funds to buy groceries and provide other support to the workers in Pardini’s crew. Green believes that this is “a breakthrough” in bringing the loggers and the Redwood Summer Coalition together. Green and other activists have called upon lumber owners’ divisive “Yellow Ribbon Committee”, set up to pit workers against activists using counter-Redwood Summer demonstrations and other methods, to match the contributions made by Wobblies and others to the workers in the gyppo logging crew.
Notes:
[1] The Industrial Worker misidentifies them as “Dan” Pardini and his son “John”.