Laid-off Bombardier workers en route to finding new roles at company and beyond

BUSINESS

Laid-off Bombardier workers en route to finding new roles at company and beyond

The Canadian Press Published Friday, February 22, 2019 4:50PM EST

A Bombardier plant is shown in Montreal on October 29, 2015. Bombardier Inc. has resumed subway car deliveries to New York it after the local transit authority halted them last week, citing problems with existing trains. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes

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MONTREAL -- The CEO and union leaders at Bombardier Inc. say the plane-and-train maker is well on the way to finding new work for recently laid-off employees.

Bombardier says filling different positions within the Montreal-based company, finding jobs with other employers or reverting to part-time work are part of the so-called "reclassification" process.

Last November, the plane-and-train-maker announced about 5,000 layoffs -- 2,500 of them in Quebec and 500 in Ontario -- as part of a restructuring plan that the company says will save it US$250 million a year.

Chief executive Alain Bellemare says that so far about 20 per cent of laid-off employees in Quebec, or roughly 500 workers, have been reclassified, often finding other roles at the 77-year-old company or elsewhere in the province's aerospace sector.

David Chartrand, Quebec co-ordinator for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, says that no workers he represents have lost their jobs to date.

Bellemare has said the reclassification process will take 18 months in total.