Quebec will help find work for Bombardier layoffs
The provincial government will work with Bombardier to help the 2,500 Quebecers the company plans to lay off find new jobs in the aerospace industry, Economy Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon said on Monday morning. Bombardier will provide the government with detailed information about the types of jobs that will be affected by the layoffs, Fitzgibbon said. At the same time, the government will work with Aéro Montréal, an industry association, to identify the needs of other aerospace companies and match workers to open positions. The Labour Ministry will also be involved, Fitzgibbon said, to help workers access retraining programs. “We’re going to put the programs in place to make sure that bridging gets done as soon as possible,” he said. “Keep in mind that most of the layoffs are not being done tomorrow, it’s over 12, 18 months.” Fitzgibbon said he’s confident the majority of workers will be able to find new jobs in the industry. While he said he didn’t want to minimize the challenge faced by Bombardier employees who lose their jobs, it’s “highly possible that there will be zero impact on the families of Bombardier employees.” Fitzgibbon made the comments after meeting with a number of aerospace-industry representatives in Montreal. Notably absent from the meeting was Bombardier president and CEO Alain Bellemare. “Alain Bellemare is the president of a company of 70,000 employees that is a giant in rail and aviation, we are present in 29 (countries) around the world, we have US$16 billion in revenue,” said Olivier Marcil, Bombardier’s vice-president of external relations. “Alain Bellemare is a leader in this industry, he’s the leader of the company, but it’s a team, and the team is here. Bombardier isn’t hiding, Bombardier is here today.” Asked about Bellemare’s absence, Fitzgibbon said Bombardier had sent two senior representatives. “Bombardier was here,” he said, adding that he plans to speak with Bellemare in the near future For the union that represents around 6,000 workers at Montreal area Bombardier plants, the hardest part now is not knowing who will lose their jobs. “Until they know if they’re affected or not, until they know who will be affected, it is going to be difficult,” Chartrand said. “That’s the roughest part of it, going into the holidays, people not knowing what’s going to happen with them.” Chartrand said his main focus remains protecting jobs at Bombardier. However, he said “at the end of the day, if Bombardier doesn’t keep them, I am confident that there will be other jobs, not necessarily with the same conditions, but there will be other jobs for them in the aerospace industry.” More than 40,000 people work in Montreal’s aerospace industry, said Suzanne Benoît, the president of Aéro Montréal. In addition to Bombardier, there are four other larger players — Pratt & Whitney Canada, Bell Helicopter, CAE and Airbus — as well as more than 200 small- and medium-sized businesses that participate in the supply chains of those larger companies. The overall industry is healthy, she said. Isabelle Dostaler, the dean of the Faculty of Business Administration at Memorial University, said she agrees that the industry is healthy. “The Canadian aerospace industry is more than Bombardier, and our problem is that, given that Bombardier has so much attention, each time something happens to it, we have the impression that our whole aerospace sector is falling apart,” said Dostaler, whose research focuses include aerospace and aviation management. Companies like Airbus and Boeing are doing well and remain potential clients for local aerospace suppliers, she said. While the C Series — now the Airbus A220 — is an extremely innovative plane, Bombardier struggled to sell it, she said. Part of the problem, Dostaler said, is one that affects Canadian businesses in many industries: they’re better at innovating than selling. “We’re good at developing hightech products, and we tend to put them on the shelves and wait for buyers to materialize,” she said. “Having said that, embarking on the C Series program meant that Bombardier all of a sudden was going to compete with Airbus and Boeing. Airbus and Boeing, and especially Airbus, did not stay passive.” With the C Series, Bombardier was attempting to move into a new market where it was an unknown quantity. “For major carriers, they will feel safer dealing with Airbus than with Bombardier,” she said.