WILLOW CREEK — The Willow Creek Hardwood Flooring Company announced a twenty percent wage reduction across all positions this week, and in a development that surprised observers on both sides of the negotiation, the workforce accepted the cut without a strike after being given access to the company’s financial ledgers.
The wage cut, which took effect Monday, reduces the average mill worker’s weekly pay from approximately $18 to $14.40. The highest-paid skilled positions — sawyers and planer operators — see their wages fall from $26 to $20.80. The lowest-paid workers on the green chain drop from $12 to $9.60.
When the cut was first announced at a meeting in the mill yard last Friday, the mood was angry. Several men shouted at the management. There was talk of a strike. But Mill Manager Frank Bouchard did something unusual: he invited the workers to send three representatives to examine the company’s books.
“We have nothing to hide,” Bouchard told the assembled men. “If you think we are cutting wages to pad profits, come and see for yourselves. The books are open.”
The three representatives — Ezra Homan, now a foreman in the planing department; Lucien Girard, a sawyer with 20 years’ seniority; and Harold Fisher, the mill’s senior foreman — spent the better part of Saturday in the company office, reviewing ledgers, order books, and bank statements.
What they found, according to Homan, was a company losing money.
“The orders have dropped by more than half since last year,” Homan told the Gazette. “The cash on hand will cover payroll for another six weeks at the old rates. At the new rates, it will cover ten weeks. The manager showed us everything. There was no deception.”
Girard, who had been among the loudest voices for a strike, was subdued after seeing the books. “I have been in that mill for twenty years,” he said. “I thought I knew the business. I did not. The company is bleeding, and the only way to stop the bleeding is for everyone — management included — to take less. Mr. Bouchard is cutting his own salary by thirty percent. I cannot argue with a man who does that.”
The workers voted to accept the wage cut, 98 to 7. The seven holdouts, all young men with less than three years at the mill, were given the option of resigning with two weeks’ severance. Two accepted; five chose to stay at the reduced rate.
“The men of Willow Creek have shown that they understand the situation better than the men of many other towns,” Arthur Whitcomb writes in his editorial this week. “They have accepted a bitter medicine because they recognize that the alternative — a closed mill and no wages at all — would be far worse. The Gazette salutes their wisdom and their sacrifice.”