Why this tree planter is organizing from the ground up

Stewart Mior has spent more than a decade in silviculture, working as both a tree planter and camp manager in provinces across Canada. Today, he’s part of the Tree Workers’ Industrial Group (TWIG), a non-hierarchical advocacy organization founded in 2018 that seeks to empower tree-planting gig workers and curb exploitation in the Canadian industry.

Education There are plenty of good tree-planting companies, but many others are always looking for subtle ways to rip off workers — some of whom barely make minimum wage. Educating the workforce about their rights is our biggest priority. Through our magazine Fireweed, we try to print a lot of educational material and resources that are useful to tree planters. And if you come to TWIG needing help, we will do whatever we can. In our 2019 season alone, we recovered over $30,000 in stolen wages to planters.

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Protection A tree-planting company usually gets a contract by being the lowest possible bidder on a lumber mill’s batch of trees. A challenge that every company in the industry faces is how to pay workers well while bidding low enough to get any work at all. The bid includes the price of picking up the trees, paying the planters, the staff, feeding them and transportation. Instead of bidding higher to capture the cost of feeding the planters, most employers will charge you anywhere from $25 to $35 a day for camp costs as if it’s a service, which is crazy because we’re hundreds of miles into the wilderness and our only option is our camp.

Representation The places that need our help the most are what we call rookie mills. These tend to be larger companies where the proportion of the bid price that goes to the planter is smaller. Most TWIG members are people who think a lot about tree planting and do their research, so they’ve moved on from their rookie mills.

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Transformation Most camps are friendly toward queer people and people of colour, but not all. Some camps have a very bro-y, almost frat culture, and we would really like to move the industry away from this, toward a culture of safety and respect.

Participation Tree-planting companies try to stamp out so-called tree huggers in the hiring process. The only correct answer to “Why do you want to go tree planting?” is “To make a lot of money,” not that you want to save the environment. This breeds a culture of cynicism about what we do, and many tree planters feel alienated from the product of their labour. We want tree planters to have a more active role in governing the industry, whether that be in the form of co-ops or a union.

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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Ghazal Azizi is a fact-checker and journalist in Montreal.