See you this weekend, we are doing a benefit Friday evening at Daybreak.
See you their?
Pass on my supprt for the Kaiser strikers. Wish I could help more.

--Bob

>From Times Standard 11/12/98

"PL workers worry about surviving"

...A E Ammons, who's been a logger 29 years, said Wednesday he's worried
about making ends meet. Ammons, 52, said while he's upset about the
layoffs, he's in a better position financially than many others.

"I don't have a whole lot of debt," he said. "I'm one of the lucky
ones."

Ammons is the logger who cut the tree that killed Earth First activist
David Chain in September. He declined to comment on the death
investigatioin. Earth First claims Ammons felled the trees in the
direction of protesters at Grizzly Creek Redwoods State Park. PL
officials say he didn't know the activists were there when he cut the
tree.

Despite his lack of debt, Ammons has child support payments for his two
children and must wait a week before he can collect unemployment.

"That doesn't even pay half my child support, " he said.

"I've had to support myself since I was four years old," he said.

His father committed suicide at that time, Ammons said, and he would do
whatever work he could to help out his mother.

He considered going to Washington as a replacement worker in a
MAxxam-owned aluminum mill, but he grew up as a union person and said he
couldn't do that.

"It was just the way I was brought up," Ammons said.

Wednesday morning, he had breakfast with some fellow loggers when they
went to get their tools from their job sites. Nobody's in a good
financial situation, he said, and everybone was disheartened.

"I love falling timber. I enjoy the outdoors," he said.

Ammons said that while environmentalists are concerned, they don't know
everything that is goes on. Pl and parent company Maxxam have unfairly
gotten a bad reputation, he said.

Maxxam Chief Executive Officer Charles Hurwitz had a good business
sense, Ammons said, and he is paying for a company he bought like
someone would make payments on a car. Hurwitz has done nothing wrong, he
said, but a lot of people are angry at the company.

The company had numerous violations, but Ammons said some were as minor
as a chewing gum wrapper found on the ground. The loggers don't throw
anything on the ground -- their supervisors would yell at them if they
did, he said.
....



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