Gyppo logger

The gyppo system is one of two main patterns of historical organization of logging labor in the Pacific Northwest United States, the other being the "company logger".

After the founding of a government-sponsored company union, the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen, weakened the influence of the IWW on the logging industry, attitudes towards gyppos changed, and they came to be seen by the victorious bosses and scabs as a normal component of the timber business in a less ideologically charged context.

[1] The word was introduced by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) to disparage[2] strikebreakers and other loggers who thwarted their organizing efforts.

[9] Gyppos of this era also took advantage of the increased affordability of light industrial equipment, such as trucks and Caterpillar tractors, and typically employed family labor in order to keep their operations economically viable.

[10] According to William Robbins, writing on the postwar timber boom in the Coos Bay region of Oregon: The immediate postwar years in southwestern Oregon were the heyday of the storied gyppo logging and sawmill operator—the hardy individual who worked on marginal capital, usually through subcontracts with a major company or broker, and whose equipment was invariably pieced together with baling wire.