MONTREAL, May 26, 2014 /PRNewswire/ - Resolute Forest Products Inc. (NYSE: RFP) (TSX: RFP) today expressed its satisfaction with employee support for the renewal of collective agreements in Canada.
"We are delighted with the strong support expressed by our employees for the agreement entered into between Resolute and Unifor," said President and Chief Executive Officer Richard Garneau. "This agreement will help us keep our Canadian pulp and paper mills competitive and preserves our position as a financially strong and reliable supplier for our customers. We are pleased to see that our employees and their union leaders appreciate the nature of the issues and challenges facing our company, such as accessing forest resources, controlling costs and challenging market dynamics for some of our end-use paper products."
An agreement in principle was entered into between Unifor and the Company on May 8, 2014, to renew the collective agreements for a four-year period. This agreement in principle was submitted and accepted by a strong majority of union members during the ratification process over the past few weeks in each mill covered by the agreement.
This agreement covers nearly 2,000 employees across 11 Resolute pulp and paper mills in Canada, consisting of the Quebec mills of Amos, Baie-Comeau, Dolbeau, Gatineau, Kénogami, Laurentide and Saint-Félicien, as well as the Ontario mills of Fort Frances, Iroquois Falls, Thorold and Thunder Bay. The 11 facilities account for over 41% of Resolute's total pulp and paper capacity.
The agreement with Unifor was reached two months after Resolute and the United Steel Workers (USW) renewed, prior to their expiration, the collective agreements of Resolute's U.S. mills of Catawba (South Carolina) and Calhoun (Tennessee), now expiring in 2019, and CoosaPines (Alabama) and Augusta (Georgia), now expiring in 2020.
About Resolute Forest Products
Resolute Forest Products is a global leader in the forest products
industry with a diverse range of products, including newsprint,
specialty papers, market pulp and wood products. The Company owns or
operates nearly 40 pulp and paper mills and wood products facilities in
the United States, Canada and South Korea, and power generation assets
in Canada. Marketing its products in close to 90 countries, Resolute
has third-party certified 100% of its managed woodlands to at least one
of three internationally recognized sustainable forest management
standards. The shares of Resolute Forest Products trade under the stock
symbol RFP on both the New York Stock Exchange and the Toronto Stock
Exchange.
Resolute and other member companies of the Forest Products Association of Canada, as well as a number of environmental organizations, are partners in the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement. The group works to identify solutions to conservation issues that meet the goal of balancing equally the three pillars of sustainability linked to human activities: environmental, social and economic.
SOURCE Resolute Forest Products Inc.
