Canwest enters bankruptcy protection

The inevitable finally happened Friday as Canwest’s newspaper division entered creditor protection. While this ends one kind of uncertainty for Local 2000 members who work at Canwest owned-operations, new questions now arise.

What we do know is that our collective agreements at four dailies, seven weeklies and College Printers remain in place.

“Members will continue to receive the same pay, benefits and other protections of their union contracts — none of that changes,” said Mike Bocking, president of Local 2000.

“On the other hand, it also means we are entering a significant period of uncertainty, where we can only guess as to who the evenutal owners of these newspapers will be.”

According to media reports a group of lenders led by Canada’s five largest banks have made a “stalking horse bid” of $950 million for all of Canwest’s papers, including the National Post. These are the same banks that own a big portion of Canwest Limited Partnership’s $1.3 billion debt.

It is expected that other companies will now bid on all or parts of the Canwest newspaper empire. Most commentators say it is unlikely that the banks would want to own a newspaper chain for long, although they may retain ownership for some time, hoping that the advertising market improves and thus the price that a buyer would be willing to pay.

“We expect buyers to be interested in the newspapers because they are profitable, at the right debt levels,” said Bocking. “Everyone who works for Canwest should hope that at the end of this process the new company or companies have significantly lower debt levels.”

The process is governed by the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) and will take place before an Ontario Superior Court judge.

Our union will be seeking representation in that process.

“We have a coordinated strategy between the National and Local levels of the CEP,” said Bocking. “While we are concerned that the CCAA process favours big creditors, our union will fight to uphold the rights of its members.”

We will be updating members regularly as events unfold.Canwest

This entry was posted on Friday, January 8th, 2010 at 3:02 pm and is filed under Local News.