Gibsons Mayor Wayne Rowe says a “transition” meeting on the closure of the paper division at the Howe Sound Mill is a good start, but there’s a lot of work ahead.
Officials from the federal and provincial governments met with Sunshine Coast local governments, Unifor, Paper Excellence and others Wednesday afternoon.
Rowe says it gave everyone a good sense of who’s going to be at the table in the coming weeks, but they didn’t map out any specific strategies.
Paper Excellence and Unifor are, however, already looking into finding people jobs at the company’s other facilities
“Going forward, they’re looking at an information for the affected employees in early September and some of these agencies will be there to provide information about Employment Insurance, pensions the implications for taxation on payouts and this sort of thing,” Rowe says.
Rowe says they also heard some firmer numbers on the job losses. There are 171 layoffs coming, 139 are Unifor members, the others are non-union staff. The average salary is around $100-thousand/yr
He says when you do the math, “…you end up with close to 17-million dollars that may no longer be circulating in our community”
