More than 200 Off The Job Today in Mackenzie

Monday, January 14, 2008 09:28 AM

There are 200 to 250 people off the job in Mackenzie today. They put in their last shift at Abitibi on Friday as Abitibi shut down its two planer mills and two saw mills.

“At 8am on Friday we were told to clean out our lockers and that was it” says one worker.

Workers are saying there may be some hope if the pulp mill sale at Pope and Talbot, goes through that at least one of the saw mills will reopen to provide pulp logs.

Meantime Frank Everitt of the United Steel Workers has written the company seeking severance packages for the employees. The company has yet to respond.

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Posted on Monday, January 14, 2008 09:28 AM in News by 250 News

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Comments

Posted by: northman on January 14 2008 10:08 AM

The party is over Nov 18th!! -Good one!

Posted by: Andyfreeze on January 14 2008 11:01 AM

My condoleneces to all concerned.
Mackenzie has good people working to resolve this issue and hopefully,all will turn out well.
Keep your fingers crossed!

Posted by: mackbc on January 14 2008 11:51 AM

As one of the people affected by the mills going down on Friday I can say i was furious by the way this company handled things ,The best thing for Mackenzie is for Abitibi Bowater to leave this community. Our only hope is for a local company such as the Sinclair group or Dunkley lumber to buy us

Posted by: vulcan on January 14 2008 1:17 PM

I have to agree with mackbc. Since the Merge of Abitibi and Bowater, all they have done is caused grief and hardship to our community, as well as many others across canada. The way they conduct business is not acceptable, and the federal government can be held responsible for this. Allowing such a merge of two big forestry giants, was not a very wise thing to do, knowing full well, that Canadian jobs would be lost, while the US fills there pockets, once again our government bows to the US. Our Community may not mean much to Abitibowater, but for the us the citizens of Mackenzie it means alot.

Posted by: Palopu on January 14 2008 8:25 PM

I can see Canfor buying up the Mills in Mackenzie for the timber etc;, however I can also see them closing down a couple of mills in the greater Prince George area if they do.

So in the final analysis Prince George may be hit while Mackenzie dodges a bullet.

Posted by: Palopu on January 14 2008 8:27 PM

The Sinclar group looked at buying the Mackenzie mills year ago, but at the end of the day they decided not to. One partner was opposed to the proposal and sold his shares to Canfor.

Posted by: turbocat on January 15 2008 6:06 PM

If the former employees see the mill as viable, why not offer to buy it and run it.
With a few hundred people, they should have no reason to not be able to.

And if they cannot see it as a viable venture, then surely they understand why the operators had to close it, and cut their losses.