Transcontinental's Boucherville Plant Closes

Plant management met with workers this morning to announce the closure of the facility, citing a restructuring….

LAVAL, QC, Oct. 27 /CNW Telbec/ - Some 150 employees at the Transcontinental plant in Boucherville were greeted with bad news this morning when company management announced the closure of the South Shore printing facility. Management explained the decision was due to a restructuring.

This plant printed such publications as Air Canada's En Route magazine, as well as the federal government's tax return forms. The new reality within the communications industry is that Canadians are making greater and greater use of the Internet to file their tax returns. This was one of the various factors that forced the company to decide to shut the Boucherville plant.

"Our members are all in shock and so are we," underlined Serge Bérubé, President of local 1999 of the Teamsters union, which represents Transcontinental workers. "But some of our members noted that the plant had been on artificial life support for some years now."

Plant workers had agreed in the last collective agreement to reorganize their work so as to strictly limit the number of eventual layoffs subsequent to the implementation of major rationalization measures announced in February 2009.

The Teamsters union intends to create a crisis team within the next few hours. This unit will be mandated to form a reclassification committee in order to find new jobs for the workers affected by the closure.

"This is a very sad day indeed," concluded Serge Bérubé.

The Teamsters Union represents 125,000 members in Canada in all trades. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, with which Teamsters Canada is affiliated, has 1.4 million members in North America.

For further information:

Stéphane Lacroix, Director of Communications, Teamsters Canada
Mobile: [phone]
Office: 450-682-5521, ext. 236
E-mail: sla[email protected]