Article content continued

“This enforces my opinion of Cameco being a caring employer. They care about their employees and the communities they come from,” O’Hara said, noting that the agreement will be especially beneficial for the roughly 49 per cent of workers who live in the province’s north.

Cameco said in a memo to employees last week that it was working on a plan to top up EI benefits and provide group benefits during the shutdown. Tim Gitzel, the company’s president and CEO, said in an interview that the company will need them when the operations are restarted.

Company spokesman Gord Struthers confirmed the agreement in an email on Tuesday, noting that Cameco will top up EI and continue “selected benefits” for permanent unionized and salaried staff.

“Cameco respects people and we want to help our employees and their families get through this period. When it’s time to restart production, we will need the many skilled and experienced people who operate these facilities,” Struthers said.

Cameco has been struggling since the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi disaster sent uranium prices into freefall by drastically reducing demand for nuclear fuel. The company responded by cutting costs, part of what it calls a “lower for longer” business strategy.

Despite temporarily closing its Rabbit Lake mine in April 2016 and slashing its corporate workforce, however, the company continued to struggle as uranium prices fell by more than 70 per cent. Last month, Cameco reported its fourth consecutive quarterly loss.

“There’s just today too much uranium out there,” Gitzel said last week. “We have a good inventory of uranium at Cameco that can sustain us that we can put into profitable contracts … We can actually buy uranium cheaper than we can produce it.”

amacpherson@postmedia.com

twitter.com/macphersona