In my last column I wrote about what state government can do to help private industry create good jobs in Maine.

While the Maine Legislature deals with statewide issues, many people are primarily familiar with their locality and do not hear about legislation impacting other parts of the state. There is an issue brewing at the statehouse that will ultimately have a great impact across all of Maine, but particularly in rural parts of northern Maine. Believe it or not, it may just determine whether Maine people will be able to participate in our state’s forestry industry.

Here is the issue: For decades, Maine loggers were displaced from work because of the federal H2 program that allows contractors to hire Canadian labor. Canadian loggers are an attractive hire because they have nationalized healthcare and government-subsidized equipment. This made them much cheaper to hire than their equally hard-working Maine counterparts.

Perhaps most shockingly, Canadian contractors were incorporating as American businesses in Maine, applying for H2 workers, and then actually bonding themselves and their forestry equipment into the U.S. In fact, Maine businesses were being put out of work by Canadian contractors just as often as Maine workers were being displaced. While our Canadian neighbors cut wood on the American side of the border, and most often trucked it back to mills in Canada, Maine loggers went without work.

To add insult to injury, during the April-June “mud season,” a period when the forest is too wet to effectively operate logging equipment, Canadian loggers were receiving Maine unemployment. The last year this was allowed, in the middle of the last decade, the amount of unemployment received by foreign loggers equaled roughly $600,000. That year, there were roughly 180 bonded workers; in the 1990s there were sometimes as many as 700, meaning the sum had to have been much greater than $600,000.

Consider the magnitude of all this: while Maine businesses paid into the unemployment trust fund, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of dollars some years, was being annually collected by Canadian loggers while Maine woods workers often went without employment and had to sell their equipment. To make matters worse the Maine Department of Labor had no way to verify if these Canadians were working in Canada and collecting Maine unemployment. This was potentially fraud at its worst.

All of this was unfair, detrimental to our economy, and belittling to Maine’s workforce. That’s why the Legislature stepped up and between 2005 and 2009 passed a series of bills that sought to level the playing field for American workers and restore sanity to this unemployment compensation policy, and ultimately strengthen our forest products industry. Spearheaded by my colleague, Sen. Troy Jackson (D-Allagash), laws were passed that prevented Canadian firms from bonding their equipment and leaving Maine contractors with nowhere to go.

Maine also passed legislation that made it illegal to give preference to foreign workers over Mainers. And we also changed the law to make sure that Maine loggers would be the only woods workers eligible for unemployment during the mud season.

All of this progress is currently threatened by LD 1383, a bill that is pending this session. This legislation would repeal the laws that ensure that workers, not businesses, enter Maine through the H2 program. It would take away the state’s ability to enforce fair labor practices in the woods. Most egregious of all, it would restore Maine unemployment compensation to Canadian loggers. This bill will flood the market with cheaper Canadian labor and has the potential to permanently damage one of our greatest, most celebrated, and most commonly-shared industries. I fear this legislation will pass. This is bad policy in a bad bill. We need to build up Maine’s workforce; we need to make sure every last job is available for every last Mainer. If we don’t effectively utilize the jobs that can be created from our abundant natural resources, we can never maximize the potential of our economy. I’m choosing to stand with Maine loggers and Maine workers. I’ll side with jobs on this side of the border any day. I strongly believe that these jobs belong to Maine people first.

State Rep. Mike Shaw, a Democrat, represents Standish.