Try golden handshakes to soften job losses, mayor tells Abitibi

Newsprint giant AbitibiBowater could alleviate some woes at a central Newfoundland mill by being generous with early retirement packages, a mayor said.

Abitibi laid off 13 managers earlier this week at its Grand Falls-Windsor mill, and Kathy Dunderdale, Newfoundland and Labrador's natural resources minister, said she has been warned that layoffs among the unionized workforce could come in May.

Grand Falls-Windsor Mayor Rex Barnes would like to see the company use options that would keep younger workers in the community.

"Look at people who can retire, look at giving packages so that they can move people out, so that they can keep a reasonably young workforce that will sustain the mill for long-term," Barnes said.

Describing this week's layoffs as disappointing but understandable, Barnes said he is now focused on what will happen if subsequent cuts force younger employees out the door.

"These people will probably leave the province and go elsewhere to work. Will they take their families with them? We don't know," Barnes said.

Barnes said he is hopeful that the job cuts will protect the mill — which has survived previous Abitibi closure — from shutting down altogether.

David Peddle, a 41-year veteran in the unionized workforce of about 400, said he would move on if the company offered him an early retirement package.

"It's been a family life [at the mill]. I've spent more time with the fellas in there than I did with my immediate family, sometimes," he said.

Peddle suspects his days at the mill are numbered, but added that he is all right with that.

"The company should look at trying to make this as easy, in a difficult time, as easy as they can, to make it for people to say, 'Yeah, this will help me get over that hump to get out that door,' " Peddle said.

"Because I do probably want to help that other fella…. If we can go away sometime knowing that you did help somebody else, I think that takes away the sting of it."