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| MPP Cindy Forster |
On April 25, 2013 at
Queen’s Park, Welland New Democratic Party (NDP) Member of Provincial
Parliament (MPP) Cindy Forster held a news conference with a handful of
ex-workers from the closed Vertis Communications plant in Fort Erie, Ontario. Their goal was to publicize the problems
faced by employees of foreign-owned companies that go out of business.
Although the unionized ex-workers have stopped picketing the closed plant, they are still fighting to
get over $2 million in pension plans, benefits, and severance packages they
were denied when the U.S.-based parent company abruptly closed the plant in
January.
Vertis was granted
bankruptcy status in the United States and sold its assets to Quad/Graphics,
another U.S.-based company, but the deal excluded the Fort Erie plant (Vertis’s
only Canadian operation) and several of its other U.S. facilities.
Because of the circumstances of
Vertis’s bankruptcy, Vertis has been successful in circumventing Canadian labour laws protecting the ex-workers' right to compensation. The ex-workers have also been denied access to the
federal Wage Income Protection Fund that pays a small amount of financial
compensation to terminated employees of a Canadian company that closes without
paying severance. Appeals to the
federal government from Ms. Forster, Niagara Falls Liberal MPP Kim Craitor, and
Liberal Ontario Labour Minister Yasir Naqvi have failed to gain the Vertis
ex-workers access to the fund.
Ms. Forster believes the
provincial government should do more to prevent this kind of situation
from recurring in Ontario.
Accordingly, she plans to table legislation, probably in the form of a
private members’ bill, that would better protect the province's workers when a foreign-owned
company closes. She says that the law might provide for the province to pay the
terminated employees what they are owed, then use its powers to retrieve the
money from the company.
She says such
legislation existed when the NDP were last in power (from 1990 to 1995), but that
the Conservative Party under former Premier Mike Harris repealed it. Since then, one subsequent effort by the
NDP to reinstate a similar law failed to gain government support.
“As foreign ownership
of Canadian manufacturers continues to grow, and global financial markets
continue to struggle, more and more Ontarians could be exposed to similar
situations,” Ms. Forster said in a press release. “We need to take a serious
look at these loopholes, and figure out the best way to protect the rights of
Ontario workers.”
Recent news stories & videos:
http://vicg8.blogspot.ca/2013/05/ex-vertis-workers-end-fort-erie-picket.html
http://vicg8.blogspot.ca/2013/01/sudden-closure-of-canadas-only-vertis.html
