Atlantic Packaging Products Ltd., Scarborough, Ontario, is permanently closing its corrugated box plant in Ingersoll, Ontario. Employees were gathered at 11 a.m. March 4 and given letters announcing the closure, says worker Kevin Piper, reports The Ingersoll Times. Fifty employees lost their jobs. “It’s a shock,” he says, explaining that some people were laid off about a month ago and production had slowed down but “I don’t think anybody expected it’d be a permanent cease in the operations.”

Signed by Mark Ragotte, Atlantic’s vice president of manufacturing, the letter employees received attributed the closure to the depressed economy and high dollar, “resulting in a decline in Canadian manufacturing, which has also reduced total corrugated demand.”

The letter also provided employees with “eight weeks notice of termination of employment” and notified them that they would not have to report for work during that time.

As workers were being notified of the closure, officials with CEP Local 333, which represents employees at Atlantic Packaging, were in Toronto negotiating a new contract for employees at the Ingersoll plant.

“Our plan for the day was to go there and secure a col- lective agreement the way we did in (Atlantic’s) Mississauga facility last week,” says Ken Cole, president and business agent with the union. He said he received news about the closure at the same time the announcement was made in Ingersoll.

“We knew the industry isn’t doing all that well but we didn’t think they were going to close,” he says. “We were in the middle of bargaining.”

Cole says the Ingersoll plant used to be a three-shift operation but was downgraded to a single shift in recent years.