Cut & run

Tairāwhiti forestry workers fear they will become collateral damage as the industry's harvesting practices come under fierce public scrutiny.

- REBECCA MACFIE

Paul's typical workday starts at midnight. He gets up, has a coffee, and is on the road at lam for an hour-long drive to the site. By 2.15am, he's ready to load up the first logging trucks of the day.

By the time he gets home at about 5pm, he's too exhausted to do anything more than greet his wife and children, have a shower and eat his meal. He's in bed asleep by 7pm, ready to get up at midnight to do it all again.

This is Paul's life as a forestry worker in Tairāwhiti - five and sometimes six days a week. With three decades of experience in the sector, he's paid about $35 an hour, excluding travel time to site.

When there's work, the money isn't bad. But when there's no work - for instance, if the log price drops and logging crews are stood down - there's no pay.

Worker insecurity is a core part of the forestry industry's business model, as is clearfell logging and the abandonment of huge volumes of slash - harvest debris - on hillsides. It's a business model that has enabled plantation owners to profit from the remote, steep, erosion-prone East Coast.

After Cyclone Gabrielle hit, Paul went without work and pay for a fortnight, apart from a $200 civil defence payment. With mouths to feed and $420 a week in rent to pay, anxiety in his household was acute, as always when work and wages are halted. "In previous times we've always got by, but the stress levels go through the roof," he says.

In the last week of February, the contractor he's employed by put him back to work clearing forest roads. But most of his workmates were not so fortunate: three weeks after the cyclone, they were still without wages.