'We've got to fight': Wabush mine pensioners hope courts will restore benefits

Three years after the shutdownof Wabush Mines by Cliffs Natural Resources, former workers and retirees are looking to a Quebec court to help them recover some of what they lost.

"We're all in this together now,"said Rita Pynn, a retiree and member of the Wabush pension committee. "We've got to fight for what we worked for and what we feel Cliffs robbed us of."

The workers lost medical benefitswhen the mine went into creditor protection.

The company also left the workers' pension plan underfunded by more than$45 million. When the plan was wound up in December of 2015, bargaining unit employees lost 21 percentand staff employees lost 25 percent.

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"For a lot of people, that's quite a substantial amount of money to lose" Pynn said. "Especially for widows left them with a very small pension to live on."

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The group is hoping to recover some of the lost funds through Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) proceedings, now before a Quebec court.

But because the pension plan is considered an unsecured creditor, it does not get priority on a list of debtors.

"They are last on the list," Labrador West MHA Graham Letto said.

"Once the CCAA is wound up, all creditors that are owed money from the wind-down of WabushMines all would be paid first before the pensioners."

More protection in N.L. courts

Pensioners hoped that strongerprovincial legislation in Newfoundland and Labrador would give them priority as a creditor, though the judge overseeing the CCAA case recently ruled to keep the proceedings in Quebec, where the company also had assets and employees.

The judge did, however,leave the door open for the issue of "deemed trust" to be interpreted in courtsin this province, if thegovernment were to ask for it.

We want the government to move forward with that appeal as quickly as possible so this gets heard in the province where we are retirees and we live.- Rita Pynn

"We want it heard in Newfoundland. We don't want it heard in Quebec," Pynn said.

"If we could get it heard [here] then there is a chance we may be able to obtain some funding for our pension plan that we've lost."

Deemed Trust, a clause unique to pension rules in Newfoundland and Labrador, would give the pensioners priority as a creditor.Right now the Department of Justice says it is considering it.

"We want the government to move forward with that appeal as quickly as possible so this gets heard in the province where we are retirees and we live," Pynn said.

Letto saidhe expects to hear a decision from the justice department on that matter before the end of February.

Good year for Cliffs

While this issue is playing out in court, parent companyCliffs Natural Resources,based in Cleveland, is boasting big profits after a rise in iron ore prices.

"They're not restructuring, they're liquidating their business in Canada," 35-year mine worker Herb Walsh said."In the states they're making more money than they ever had. We had a binding contract. How can you just turn around and throw that to one side."

BloombergNews called Cliffs Natural Resources the "the world's best raw materials producer". Its stock was up 404 per cent at the end of last year and this year it's continued torise.

The pensioners recently petitioned the federal government, whose legislation trumps provincial rules when it comes to CCAA proceedings, to hold foreign parent companies responsible for their Canadian subsidiaries'debts and responsibilities.

"Cliffs is a prime example. To allow them to exit Canada and leave the employees like they did in Wabush is nothing short of criminal, really," Letto said.