Interesting. I guess they were lucky here, in a way. My details were actually wrong- Pope & Talbot did go bankrupt, but they actually sold the mill for 10 million to "Asia Pulp & Paper", which of course is, well, in Asia. Not only were they far away- but in order to get the mill running again (the workers had been laid off some time before the mill was sold) it was supposed to cost 100 Million. a little sketchy on the details, but iirc the deal fell through and they changed their minds at the last minute. they were bought eventually by NFP (Nanaimo Forest Products, which was the mills laid off workers and managers) and a few partner companies whose support they had garnered. I found an article here.
Also, seems I really have an awful memory... the Harmac mill in question is right here in Nanaimo, which certainly falls as "nearby".
That's interesting as well. And, Pulp and Paper Mills are almost nonexistent in my general area. There were two fairly large employers Tembec; (Papertown)MB, and Abitibi ,Kenora,ON. But I suppose that's progress?
In my (our)case, I can't help but think if they had come flat out and said they were shutting us down period, that would have been better than keeping us wondering. It didn't make sense to many as our facility was actually making money. And,we actually went through many hoops and our local management (though not their fault) had given us hope that we would survive.. But at the last minute the owners said no.
Many employees were left with the thought had we not been unionized we probably would have been OK??
Personally I never took that view, but who knows? This was their speculation because they only had one unionized plant in the US and guess what? shut down. Anyway, that was then, this is now.
