Marathon Pulp

[princess]

This site is a great forum for current and ex Tembec workers to express and compare their experiences. I have taken the time to read the various posts, and not surprisingly...we all have much in common. I will not bore you with a litany of details and numbers, however, the following is an extreme simplified time line of events at the Marathon mill:

2000 - Tembec and Kruger purchase Marathon Pulp Inc.
Employees of this mill hold their collective breath...Tembec has a reputation of purchasing mills and running on a "shoe string " budget until closure.

May 2004-2009 - Union employees accepted a Concessionary. Upon settlement of this agreement, top management of the local mill receive bonuses. Meanwhile, the preventative maintenance program is almost non-existent.

Nov 2008 - Union employees were approached (note that the contract signed in May of 2004 is NOT yet open to negotiation) to take a 12.5% wage concession, reduce holiday allotment by one week, give up shift differential etc.. Oh yeah, if we don't accept this the mill will most likely close. I wish to note here that there was approx. 30% of the employees who felt that this was a means to an end and voted against yet another concession.

Feb. 2009 - Employees attempt to cash in banked time and were told they could not. Some of these "cashing in" efforts were done BEFORE the announcement of indefinite shut. The announcement of the mill's indefinite shut...Feb 13/09 (Friday)

March 17/09 Marathon Pulp is bankrupt! Employees will not be paid the following:
Severance
Holiday pay
Banked Time (although a lot of this banked time was Worked time, some how it is being deemed a benefit and therefore an unsecured status...how??)
Pension...well it will take about two (2) years for the government appointed pension administrator to determine how much our pension is underfunded. Whatever the amount...the impact will be "across the board". Those who have already retired, those who are about to retire, and those that will retire in future will suffer the loss equally. Bridging payments are NOT made from the pension fund, but rather by Marathon Pulp Inc. The question was raised whether or not Retirees could hope to get their Bridging payments....the response from the Pension Administrator was that MPI is bankrupt and and this falls under the category of Unsecured Creditor.

There is much more that can be added to this, hopefully other Marathon Pulp employees will take the time to contribute. As I stated earlier...this is all too familiar a/o similar to other posts on this discussion board. There should be a way to get what is DUE us!

[princess]

I would like to add to the previous post that in The Sault Star it was reported that Marathon Pulp became unable to repay it's bank loans as early as February 2005. Marathon Pulp was, however, able to repay hugh portions of the debt it owed to Tembec and Kruger!!!!

Although we were owned by Tembec/Kruger we were a separate entity...our own little Corporation. Which would indicate that operating decisions and or policies would be local...the exact opposite was the case:

where we purchased our chips (no discounts were given us, even though Tembec owned the mill that supplied the chips)
who we sold our product to (you guessed it...we gave a discount to the Tembec or Kruger mill that purchased our pulp)

Tembec even took one of our bigger customers and had one of their other mills supply our customer with pulp.

Capital expenses were posted as operating expenses....

Which creditor was priority (we may have opted to repay bank loans rather then the debt deemed due to Tembec and Kruger)

Any Corporation operating under those circumstances is doomed...although Tembec and Kruger dictated the Revenue and Expenses of our mill, they have skillfully and legally(much sarcasm here) removed themselves from having any financial responsibility to the mills employees and have even managed to list themselves as creditors on the bankruptcy...unbelieveable!!!!!!

I believe that if we were indeed left to operate as a Corporation, independent and free from Tembec (as they claim we were), Marathon Pulp would have had a much different ending to their story. There is no doubt that these economic times would pose a challenge, but as quoted earlier... the inability to repay our bank loans started as early as Feb 2005...years before this current economic recession or depression.

[formeremployee]

Former workers of Marathon Pulp may see deep pension cuts
Aug 18, 2009 | In Mill Closures & Layoffs | 1 feedback »

The former workers and retirees of Marathon Pulp in Ontario are now finding out how steep the cuts may be to their pension benefits.

The provincial court appointed administrator for the bankrupt company is overseeing the company pension plan and sent letters last week to mention how much retirees could receive by the time the plan is put to bed at the end of this year. Another letter later in the year will confirm the final reduced amount.

Some retirees could receive hundreds of dollars less in monthly benefits.

The proposed reductions are based on a preliminary “valuation” of the plan's assets. Once the valuation is complete, the remaining funds will be invested in an annuity and the plan's members – a few hundred – will be paid out of that.

Marathon Pulp's pension plan was a good one until the economy went sour and negatively affected several company pensions, not just this one.

Former workers who have been retired from the mill for many years are also impacted by benefit reductions, because the fund has to be used to pay retirees and those who were working at the mill before it went bankrupt in March.

Marathon Pulp's management was making its required contributions to the plan before bankruptcy, but because the company is no longer contributing, there is a finite amount of money in the plan.

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