PRINCE GEORGE, B.C. — The 235 unionized and salaried workers at the AbitibiBowater Inc. newsprint mill in Mackenzie, B.C., have been given their termination and severance pay notices, all but eroding any hope the mill will reopen, union officials said Wednesday.
While the company is still sticking with its position the mill has been indefinitely idled, it has not been Abitibi's practice in the past to restart mills it shuts down, said Pat Crook of local 402 of the Communication, Energy and Paperworkers of Canada.
''The managers are telling us the mill is shutting down, your are losing your jobs, move on,'' said Crook, who met with other forestry union officials and NDP forestry critic Bob Simpson in Prince George.
Unionized workers have been told the plan is to shut down the plant at the end of January, clean it up and keep on a skeleton crew to keep the plant warm during the winter.
The closure came as a surprise as $10 million was spent last January on new paper equipment at the mill. Production and newsprint quality were also up, said Crook.
The union officials say they are looking for some signal from the provincial or federal governments that they are concerned about what's happening to forestry-based communities in northern B.C.
There was no answer Wednesday at AbitibiBowater's main number in Mackenzie, and company officials in Montreal could not be reached for comment.
More than 1,900 forest manufacturing workers in the North have lost their jobs in the past year through indefinite shutdowns and shift reductions.
Most of those have been at sawmills and a few at panel mills, a reaction to weak lumber prices, a high Canadian dollar and a 15-per-cent export tax on lumber shipments to the U.S.
The permanent closure at the newsprint mill in Mackenzie, a community of about 5,000, would put a new face on the nature of the other job losses, which are mostly expected to be temporary.
The United Steelworkers Union, which represents the 300 workers at two AbitibiBowater sawmills that are being closed indefinitely in Mackenzie, said it is looking for a date from the company when the mills will reopen to give workers a better understanding of the situation.
United Steelworkers local 1-424 president Frank Everitt said, however, that he doesn't expect any.
Forest industry analyst Kevin Mason said he expects most of AbitibiBowater's paper mill closure announcements to be permanent.
He said there may be some technical reason to call the Mackenzie newsprint mill shutdown indefinite, perhaps indicating they will continue to evaluate the situation.
''But if Mackenzie was to restart, it just means a mill somewhere else in North American will have to shut,'' said Mason, a managing director with Equity Research Associates.
Mason figures there's a good chance the Mackenzie mill will end up as scrap metal. There is little history of selling mills like this because the new buyer would simply become a competitor and no capacity would be taken out of the market, he noted.
It's possible the mill could be sold for another use — making packaging, for example — but that would require investing more money and that doesn't seem likely, he said.
Simpson said the province isn't doing enough to help communities that have been hit with job losses in northern B.C. He is also concerned some of the sawmill closures could become permanent as fallout from the pine beetle epidemic kicks in.
The spinoffs from the job losses are far-ranging in the economy, said the MLA. ''I'm particularly concerned with Mackenzie and Fort St. James.''
Prince George North Liberal MLA Pat Bell denies the B.C. government is not engaged. He has meetings set up Friday with community leaders, mill management and union officials, and is meeting next week with Prince George-Peace River Conservative MP Jay Hill to discuss the situation.
''It's a big problem and we're not taking this lightly,'' said Bell. ''We're not going to let people in Mackenzie down.''