Jul 18, 2017 @ 18:09<\/b><\/p>\n
Sears Canada has been given the court\u2019s approval to begin liquidation sales Friday at the 59 locations it plans to close \u2013 the proceeds of which Ontario\u2019s NDP says should fund Sears\u2019 employees pensions first, not executive bonuses or debts to large firms.<\/p>\n
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The Ontario NDP has demanded legal changes so that when a company is entering bankruptcy, current and former employees are the first in line to get paid the pensions they\u2019re owed \u2013 not last. A year ago, New Democrats were successful in passing a motion at the provincial legislature on that subject, but Premier Wynne refused to act on it.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWorkers have spent years paying into their pension plans and earning contributions to those plans \u2013 it\u2019s their money,\u201d said NDP Pensions Critic Paul Miller. \u201cFor a company to be able to take that money and pay executive bonuses or pay back corporate loans, leaving hard-working staff and their families out \u2013 that\u2019s wrong.<\/p>\n
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\u201cMy heart goes out to the Sears employees \u2013 and all the others that have faced this situation on Ontario in the last few years \u2013 who have lost their job, been denied the severance package they were owed, and are now going to bed at night wondering if the savings they worked hard for will be wiped out.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Current laws allow companies entering bankruptcy to pay out bonuses and all its other debt first, pushing workers\u2019 pensions and any other money they\u2019re owed to the back of the line.\u00a0Despite her own MPPs supporting the NDP motion for a change to that law, Premier Kathleen Wynne balked at the idea of helping the workers last week, saying \u201cthere isn\u2019t a role for the government.\u201d<\/p>\n
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NDP Employment Critic Catherine Fife said Wynne and the Conservative leader have been silent on the issue because they\u2019re not on the side of the workers.\u00a0\u201cThe NDP knows whose side we\u2019re on,\u201d said Fife. \u201cExecutives, big corporations and foreign creditors can wait \u2013 Ontario workers should get every penny of what is owed to them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jul 18, 2017 @ 18:09 Sears Canada has been given the court\u2019s approval to begin liquidation sales Friday at the 59 locations it plans to close \u2013 the proceeds of which Ontario\u2019s NDP says should fund Sears\u2019 employees pensions first, not executive bonuses or debts to large firms. The Ontario NDP has demanded legal …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,216,85],"tags":[593],"class_list":["post-5098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","category-editorials","category-politics","tag-sears-canada-closing"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-30 06:49:04","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5098"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5099,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5098\/revisions\/5099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}