By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

Geneviève Carter was on vacation in the Laurentians when the life she knew was ripped out from under her. The Plastube plastic tubing plant in Granby, where she had worked as a machine operator for 23 years, had closed overnight after a sudden bankruptcy. “People showed up for work and saw a sign saying the plant had ceased its activity,” Carter said. As the union president, she began fielding calls and emails from frantic colleagues, while trying to reconcile with the impact of the closure on her own life.

“There had been highs and lows [over the last few months], we saw a dip in orders, but we’d been through that before, so we didn’t ask ourselves all that many questions,” she said, recalling that as late as July 18, she had been told at a company dinner that there were major projects in the pipeline, but by the second week of August, her colleagues were meeting with bankruptcy trustees. About 100 people, including 77 unionized staff, knew each other.

“There were people with 44 years of seniority, and we were very united. It was a hard pill to swallow, a wildcat closure (fermeture sauvage) like that.”

Julie Bolduc is president of the CSN union federation, of which the Plastube union was a member, for the Estrie region. She said overnight closures like that of Plastube are “fortunately not that common.”

“In my experience, Plastube is the first time this kind of closure has happened. There was a lack of transparency about how things were going before they declared bankruptcy, which is why it was a surprise,” Bolduc said. The company’s books are now being handled by Raymond Chabot, and the province’s bankruptcy register indicates it had debts of more than $12 million at the time it closed.

The union is now helping former employees sign up for the federal Employment Insurance (EI) and Wage Earner Protection (WEP) programs. Bolduc said employees are eligible for a minimum payout of about $8,900 under WEP, but she has no idea when the money might be distributed. “In the interim, some employees have turned to food banks. The workers have not received anything since their last paycheque in early August,” she said. “Fortunately, the federal government has suspended the weeklong waiting period for EI, and we have a Service Canada contact helping make sure everything is going correctly. There’s not only the financial aspect, there’s also the psychological aspect – a period of mourning you have to go through – and we can’t neglect that. We don’t want people to just scatter everywhere.”

The union is also working with Emploi Québec to help employees – many of whom have not had to fill out a job application for decades – find new jobs. “We’re helping people redo their CVs, decide if they want to go back to school, if they want to retire,” said Bolduc. “If you’re over 50, it won’t be easy [to find something new].” About ten temporary foreign workers with closed work permits have been left in the lurch by the closure of the plant and may have to return to their home countries. 

Carter, for her part, said she hasn’t had time to sit down and think about her own future. “I thought I would finish my career at Plastube, but now I have to go back to doing CVs… and I have to keep helping my members. It will be hard, but I think everyone will find something.”