The President of United Steelworkers local 1-417 says on Saturday, the T’it’q’et First nation served Savona Specialty Products an eviction notice for its Lillooet site effective the end of March.

Marty Gibbons says the news came as a bit of a surprise. “We haven’t been involved in negotiations. We were aware that, for some time that SSP was attempting to renew a lease on First Nations land, but we were just informed on the weekend that bargaining had broken off and the first nation band in question has served the company with an eviction notice effective the end of March.”

“It’s really concerning for us that if the lease is cancelled, what’s going to happen? Will the company simply move the jobs to Savona? Will they move them to Merritt? Will they just discontinue them? It’s really very concerning for us and the communities.”

Gibbons says it’s more than just Lillooet as Lillooet feeds Savaona. There are 80 employees at the Lillooet plant with an additional 100 employees working in harvesting operations. Plus there are spin off jobs potentially impacted as well.

Gibbons says it will be holding a meeting with plant employees to discuss the situation on Friday. “At this point we haven’t been given a lot of details…. but what we are going to do is have a meeting this Friday and we intend to engage all levels of government as this is an indigenous issue. There’s a federal scope to this as well. We intent to reach out to our MLA’s our MP’s. We’re going to be having discussion hopefully with the Lillooet Tribal council as well the local Mayor and council.”

Gibbons says a plant meeting will be held on Friday to update workers and formulate a plan of action.