Georgia-Pacific Corp.’s Coos Bay lumber mill laid off almost one-third of its workforce this week.

Thirty of the company’s 100 employees — one entire shift — were laid off due to the housing slump, according to company spokeswoman Julie Davis, speaking from the company’s Atlanta headquarters.

“We reduced operations to one shift to match production to current demands,” Davis said. The employees held a variety of positions.

The reduction in workforce was not limited to just the company’s Coos Bay facility. Each of Georgia-Pacific’s 60 facilities throughout the United States is experiencing similar cuts, but Davis didn’t have specifics on the number of employees laid off.

“The whole industry has been impacted over the last couple of years, as we’ve seen a slump in the housing industry,” Davis said.

She said this week’s layoffs weren’t related to the closure of the Central Oregon & Pacific Railroad line between Eugene and Coquille. The mill was affected by the rail line closure in September 2007, when it closed for more than two weeks so the company could find transportation alternatives. At that time, the company employed 120 employees.

Davis didn’t have specifics on the personnel history at the Coos Bay mill, which Georgia-Pacific acquired in 1956, but she said there had been employee cutbacks before.

“Housing has always been cyclical, so it will come back,” Davis said. “Unfortunately, at this point, we don’t know when.”

Georgia-Pacific employed 50,000 people in 2007, at 300 locations in North American, South America and Europe, according to the company Web site, http://www.gp.com. Of these, 2,400 worked at 13 Oregon facilities.