Cornwall ON – There’s a glimmer of hope for workers at The Shell Oil Refinery in Montreal as negotiations still continue in spite of the Company announcement to shut down the facility.
On Monday, the Quebec Federation of Labour, which represents unionized workers at the refinery, called on consumers to boycott Shell for 24 hours on Friday to protest the planned closure.
The federation, the province’s biggest union, said all but 30 of the 500 workers at the plant will lose their jobs if the refinery is converted into a storage centre.
The union said the closure would also indirectly affect 3,500 jobs in industries dependent on the refinery.
What do you think Canada? Can the plant and jobs be saved as this is huge for Montreal and for all of us served by the refinery.
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The government (Liberals in minority supported by the NDP) passed a bill and nationalized some refining companies and turned them into the conglomerate we know as Petro Canada. That was in the 70’s and Fina, Gulf, BP all come to mind. Petro Canada now belongs to Suncor.
If we are truly concerned about the Shell refinery and its employee’s then we should ask our government to take it over as there are no buyers. Just stick it under Suncor who have a worth of over $43 Billion.
Well if people are serious about switching to alternate energy these are exactly the type of jobs that will disappear as the energy sector restructures itself.
Glassbowl the problems is that with the oil industry at the moment we already are under employed. There are pipelines pumping product out of Canada instead of us refining and processing it.
We should be maxing out our processing of all raw materials in Canada where it makes sense instead of simply exporting good jobs. There are good jobs in the future of alternative fuels. We just need the true political will to get there.
If we processed, in Canada, all of the oil we export to the US then we’d have a glut of gasoline/products on our hands here. We’d have no chance of even selling it in Canada, there are not enough buyers. The major oil companies have learned that its cheaper to import what we need than to pay salaries and have it done here in Canada. Again, it’s all about the money!
So you boycott the refinery they loose money and then are suppose to keep people employed?
Sounds like the union is nuts