Yes,

Canada day has come and gone and today I sit here wondering where the future lies to some degree.

I am a faithful employee of many years in Fort Frances, and have watched it turn into an unfruitful and discarded waist item. In all my many years (25 plus), I have never seen such a disorganized attempt at doing the right thing. All they did recently is do a little cleansing of those that were not gut suckers and (yes sir) people.

Let me explain:

Since the current mill manager has come into fruitfulness and installed his ideals of managers in a work place. We have steadily gone downhill. Safety has sunk into the depths of the unknown and moral just does not exist! We simply will not follow our current manager or his hence men anywhere, including those places they flaunt with the golden carrot. He simply is not a leader, and nobody in there right mind would follow him, except for those few (yes men) he has installed.

He has ejected many a great people, only to entice those (yes men) to follow. We have lost our way and rejected the good people to stay. Those reading this that have left, know what I speak of. I only wish it had been different and you could all come back to help us properly restructure ourselves into a viable team.

His ways have been to embrace nepotism and to reject personality situations that speak the truth. It is either yes sir, or the highway! Only unfortunately, it has been the highway to a great number of valuable individuals that have left our mill. I am sad for this. I will soon be one of them. I have invested my life to better what we had, only to learn that our leaders took us down the garden path of doom and nepotism.

Our current management has no concept about team playing. It is so blatant in our faces that team playing does not even enter the picture. We are doomed to path of unrighteousness. We have so dearly wished for the white night to arrive to reverse what this man has done. But sadly this has not happened!

Why?

Because our management is so caught up in there own twisted world of nepotism and blight, to realize that they have screwed up royally, or is this a planned downfall of Fort Frances? Consensus in the mill here speaks about 50/50. Nobody thinks our management is out there, to help us make it. It is so quite the contrary, it is unreal!

If AbitibiBowater truly wants Fort Frances to be a productive entity of their company, then they will send somebody to speak to the employees that actually do the work here. And not to be sheltered by the managers so that the truth will be spoken!

An undesirableable cleansing will not fix our problems. Only a new manager and a management concept will! The time bomb is ticking, and if the current manager and his (serial power) manager (Kraft mill manager) continues on the path of destruction, then Fort Frances will indeed become a fossil of the forest industry.

It is time that someone speaks the truth of Fort Frances.

Somebody please come here and speak to us. We are quickly running out of time and need proper restructuring. We want to be player, but not with the current management with what we have to work with. They just are now acceptable to all of us employees at Fort Frances Ont.

Please visit us and talk with us!

Or, we will we be done like that overcooked steak we forgot about last summer!

These days you have to wonder if managements do indeed have a hidden agenda. (i.e. self-destruct) You'd think that with the co-gen plant they built, Fort Frances would be a keeper.

twiceslapped has totally recognized the problems developing in Fort Frances.
Another huge problem is safety, The managers in Fort Frances kraft mill do not believe in safety, they tell everyone that they care but in reality they are lying to the employees and to themselves. There have been many incidents and near misses that happened in the bio-mass project that have not been reported. There are many incidents were employees have been instructed to preform un-safe acts, while the supervisor watched. People wonder why Fort Frances has such a terrible safety record, they just have to look at the people responsible for bio-mass to explain the poor safety record, these people are more worried about meeting a deadline than the safety of the workers.

Another issue that twicedslapped is right about is the termination of key people. They recently terminated people in the kraft mill who were very capable of doing and knowing their jobs. these people kept the place safe for the employees, and did not kiss ass to keep their jobs.. I wonder how safe the kraft mill is now that the key players they are gone. Its just a matter or time before the kraft mill managemet kills someone.
The termination of these people will surely affect production, and at worst cause more people to lose their jobs because of poor production and poor decision making.

If there are unsafe work practices going on there, has anyone made a complaint to the labour board? I would think that should be the first step to fixing the troubles you guys are experiencing there.

To timberjack1:

The unsafe work practices that have happened in the bio-mass project have been reported to the kraft mill manager, His decision has been to ignore and hide the truth. A majority of these infractions have been witnessed and instruted by one superintendent. One day an employee will be seriously injured by the un-safe decision making of kraft mill management.
Most employees are afraid to report infractions due to the fact that the last person to report and question the kraft mill manager has been terminated.
I guess they feel its safer to rule by fear instead common sense.

That's not good. In this day and age stuff like that shouldn't happen. It's understandable that employees don't want to rock the boat but if things are being done that will result in serious injuries or worse, rocking the boat is a small price to pay if it saves someone's life. In Ontario we have the right to refuse to do the job if it's unsafe. (Occupational Health and Safety Act) Don't be intimidated by cement-head managers.

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Sorry Sliman: the fat man kissed enough ass to keep his job. Only the people who cared and are needed were terminated. It seems strange that the Recovery department in Fort Frances just got bigger due to Bio-mass, so what did they do ? They terminated two supervisors in the Recovery department both had tickets and were well respected by the employees. Makes you wonder why? Now they are very short on men and experience. Oh well its the Abitibi way. It seems like they want to mill to fail.

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No wonder Ft. Frances is on the ropes...too many lazy fat people and those who continue to support them and then blame management for their current status quo.