All Tony MacDonald knows is the deal he signed up for: Make paper at Point Tupper for 32 years. Make a decent paycheque. Make Stora Enso North America a bunch of money. Retire with dignity.
The 67-year-old former mill worker now knows over the past year his promised pension has been cut $700 a month. Including Canada Pension Plan payments, he has to survive on $1,200 a month. “I was just coming to terms with that, thinking that I’ve got to accept it and deal with it,” MacDonald said Tuesday. “Then I picked up the paper this morning and it was a kick in the arse with a frozen boot if I ever got one.” What MacDonald read in the newspaper Tuesday is that the province will cover the nearly $100-million unfunded liability of the former Bowater Mersey pulp and paper plant in Brooklyn as part of a deal that will see the province buy the company for a dollar from Resolute Forest Products and take ownership of its 220,000 hectares of forest land. Meanwhile, nearly 1,000 pensioners from the Point Tupper plant will see their pensions cut from 31 to 42 per cent because the previous mill owners, Stora Enso North America and NewPage, didn’t pay their share. That allowed an unfunded liability of $200 million to accumulate from the plant’s four pension plans.
