End of an era as PNG closes Kennedy Heights printing plant
By Nelson Daily Staff
Members of Unifor Local 2000 were dealt another blow this past weekend when more than 200 workers were forced to look for a new career after the closure of the Kennedy Heights printing plant in Surrey by Pacific Newspaper Group (PNG).
The last newspaper left the press at Kennedy Heights Saturday (January 31) morning, ending decades of production for Vancouver’s largest dailies — the Vancouver Sun and Province newspapers.
Pacific Newspaper Group (PNG), which owns the Vancouver Sun and Province newspapers, announced in September 2013 it will outsource print production to Transcontinental Printing on Annacis Island in Delta.
Peter McQuade, who worked as a pressman from 1983 until he left to join Unifor in 2005, started at Kennedy Heights 18 years ago with 350 other employees.
At the time it opened in July 1997, the plant was the most technologically advanced printing press in the world.
“For the first year it was a bit of a struggle,” recalls McQuade. “It was a new plant, there was some long days when we moved into that plant trying to get production going.”
At the time, circulation for the Vancouver Sun was 300,000. Today print numbers total just 90,000 copies.
The steady slowdown in circulation has resulted in a reciprocal decline in advertising, which means editorial content is shrinking.
There are fewer and fewer readers purchasing physical copy of newspapers with more news junkies getting their fix by tuning in to online sources.
In an editorial on the Unifor Local 2000 website, executive member Gary Engler summed up the end of an era this way:
Over 200 of our members are losing their jobs. Each and every one of them has family and friends who will also be affected by the closing of the Kennedy Heights plant. Dislocation, uncertainty and financial hardship are, and will be, the inevitable result.
Our sadness does nothing to relieve their pain but it is real nonetheless. And that sadness is magnified by the reality that our solidarity was not enough to prevent the closing of the plant and the contracting out of our members’ work.
We can blame ruthless U.S. hedge funds that own Postmedia, or we can blame the severe drop in advertising revenue that has inflicted the entire newspaper industry or we can blame ourselves.
But rather than wallow in blame, I prefer to reflect on something else.
Our Kennedy Heights members have always fought the good fight, have always been prepared to stand up for themselves and their sisters and brothers. Heads should be held high because for many decades the wages and conditions achieved by our local and its predecessors were among the best in North America. We demanded and won a fair share of the fruits of a very profitable industry.
But times have changed and our industry has changed.
There is no shame in being the victims of massive technological and economic forces.
While there is sadness and empathy for the difficulties facing our brothers and sisters, we must not deny their proud legacy.
They were always prepared to stand up for what they believed in. They were, and are, good union members. They were, and are, exemplary practitioners of solidarity.
Good-bye sisters and brothers. I am proud to have worked with you and for you.
Unifor Local 2000, formerly CEP Local 2000 based in Vancouver, is the union that represented former members of Nelson Daily News before the paper was closed by Black Press in July of 2010.
