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HSPP union warns of more cuts to come

Industry

Unifor Local 1119, which covers Howe Sound Pulp and Paper (HSPP) workers, has   released a bulletin that claims HSPP’s parent company Paper Excellence is attacking their own employees and intends to further reduce the workforce at the mill.

“What’s wrong with Paper Excellence? And why are they attacking their employees? If we had the answer to that question we might be able to make some sense out of this nightmarish mess,” a bulletin from union president Don Rheaume said.

“Comments will be brief as the arbitrations are ongoing, other than to say, it’s very disheartening to see the company hiring three different lawyers to fight us, because they don’t want to recall ‘their’ employees before relying on overtime, staff or contractors to get the work done at the mill.”

The bulletin alleges Paper Excellence intends to lay off more workers at the mill (171 were let go when HSPP’s paper production operation was shut down last July) to reduce the current number of employees from 335 to “280, and maybe lower.”

“It is very clear, Paper Excellence wants to replace us with contractors, and work whoever is left over to death,” the bulletin from Rheaume states.

Unifor took out a full-page ad in last week’s Coast Reporter saying that Paper Excellence is making mill workers in B.C. work under appalling conditions. The ad encourages the public to tell the company to engage respectfully with its workers.

Reached for comment this week, Kathy Cloutier, director of corporate communications with Paper Excellence Canada, said the ad painted Paper Excellence in a very negative way.

She said it’s imperative for her company to be able to operate “with reasonable labour and production costs.”

“In the majority of our operations, we are within this realm, however at two of our NBSK (northern bleached softwood kraft) mills in British Columbia, we have very high labour costs and have recently announced reductions in the workforce at both sites,” Cloutier said.

“Paper Excellence continues to follow its negotiated collective agreements and processes already agreed, to settle our differences. This is the case currently, and there are several arbitrations ongoing to resolve the matters.”

She did not comment on specific concerns raised by Rheaume in the bulletin but said job elimination is never an easy or pleasant subject.

“However we have to put this in the context of positioning our mills with a more reasonable overall labour cost that allows us to compete longer term as this in essence, provides better job security for those remaining employees,” Cloutier said.