The shutdown of the Vale smelter and refinery in Thompson moved closer last week.
A total of 169 hourly employees with the smelter and refinery have received layoff notices as of April 25.
Vale plans to shut down the city’s nickel smelter and refinery on July 31. The planned layoffs will go into effect on the same day.
Vale first publicly announced that the smelter and refinery would shut down in 2015.
Other Vale properties in Thompson, including the mine and mill, will remain open and will operate as normal. It is still unclear whether how many employees will take an offered retirement incentive package or resign. USW Local 6166 president Les Ellsworth said 109 employees have been offered buyout packages.
Two more phases of layoffs are expected this year, taking the company from around 1,450 full-time workers in January 2017 to between 800 and 900 workers by 2019.
It is a move that has earned consternation from Flin Flon MLA Tom Lindsey, who spoke about the shutdown of the smelter and refinery during Question Period at the Manitoba Legislature last week.
“This is a massive blow to the people of Thompson and mining in the north,” he said.
– with files from Ian Graham, Thompson Citizen
