Union members meet with potential G-P buyer

BANGOR – Local union members who met recently with the potential buyer of Georgia-Pacific Corp.’s mill in Old Town anticipate good results from ongoing negotiations but are releasing few other details.

“We have been in discussions with the buyer interested this week,” Dan Bird, the local papermakers union vice president and peer support worker at the Bangor CareerCenter, said Wednesday.

Bird brought up to date the Penobscot County Transition Team about the possible sale of the G-P mill. The paper mill closed March 16, leaving more than 450 people without jobs.

The team is made up of local organizations, business leaders and lawmakers whose goal is to help workers recover from layoffs and closings.

Gov. John Baldacci announced last week that an oral agreement to redevelop the G-P mill site had been reached with a potential buyer, thought to be Montreal-based Cascades Inc., which produces specialty packaging and paper products, mostly from recycled fibers.

Baldacci declined to release specifics of the agreement but said he expects to have an announcement in the next week or so.

Bird added that if and when the G-P facility is reopened, not all of the displaced employees would return.

“It does look like we will get a number of people returning to the facility, over a period of time,” he said. “We’ve been told anywhere between 40, within a couple of months … up to 150.”

The business plan is now being reviewed by all the parties involved, Bird said.

In the five months that the mill has been closed, questions about whether it would reopen have kept approximately 20 percent of the displaced workers from applying for assistance, which Bird said worried him, especially with the looming deadline to apply.

“Many of these people … don’t believe there is anything these services can do for them or they’re waiting to go back to the mill,” he said. “Some are like deer in the headlights and are not planning for the worst-case scenario.”

The six-month deadline for G-P workers, and those who lost jobs because of the mill closing, to apply for services is fast approaching, Theresa Mudgett, State Rapid Response director, said Wednesday.

“Sept. 15 is the date they have to apply for services,” Mudgett, who also works for the Training and Development Corp. in Bangor, stressed.

When G-P announced that it was closing the Old Town facility, it also announced four affiliated G-P chip mills would close. Employees of this type of secondarily impacted business can qualify for retraining and other services, she said.

“If a business has downsized or closed, they may be eligible for the trade act [assistance],” Mudgett said. “It could have been the day after [G-P closed] or two weeks after.”

To prepare for anticipated requests for home heating oil, the transitional team kicked around ideas to help displaced workers, who, for the most part, do not qualify for low-income assistance.

“I’m starting to get calls right now from people who have empty oil tanks,” Bird said. “They don’t know how they are going to meet their other obligations and pay for heating oil.”

The team is holding a meeting 9 a.m. Tuesday at Penquis CAP on Harlow Street to discuss the issue with invited representatives from several area agencies or programs that provide heating fuel assistance.

The transitional team also is working on a job fair in September at Eastern Maine Community College in Bangor that, in addition to job openings, will have information about how to enroll in area schools and other available services.