Crise du secteur manufacturier au Québec : ampleur et nature des restructurations impliquant des licenciements collectifs entre 2003 et 2008

Data from Statistics Canada show that Quebec lost 86.700 manufacturing jobs between 2004 and 2008, which represents a withdraw of -13,8% (Bernard, 2009). A high value Canadian dollar, international competition, production shifts and global operations consolidations are often mentioned as causes of the difficulties in Canadian manufacturing — mainly concentrated in Quebec and Ontario, which have both been severely hit. The financial crisis that broke out in the summer 2007, contributed to worsen the crisis, specific to the manufacturing sector whose origins go up at the beginning of the years 2000 (Weir, 2007; AgirE, 2008; Pilat and al., 2006).   This paper examines these aspects in some detail at the establishment level, in order to assess its extent and nature between 2003 and 2008. The data set featured provides a unique overview of the specific aspects of the restructuring processes that involve job losses in Quebec. Two original sources contributed to our study. First, we consulted the list of companies that sent a notification of mass termination to the Quebec Ministry of Labour between 2003 and 2008. Second, we searched electronic media archives to find new cases of plant closures not reported by the Ministry and additional information on the cases found with the Ministry database. Our tracking methodology and analytical typology of restructuring processes are based on those developed by the European Monitoring Center on Change (EMCC) and used in other studies by Bronfenbrenner and Luce (2004) and by Hickey and Schenk (submitted). The results, presented in terms of restructuring events and job losses, are broken down into a few variables (year of occurrence, facility size, sub-sector, technological intensity, administrative region, restructuring type).  In total for the study period, we have identified 1,631 restructuring events within Quebec’s regions, which resulted in the loss of 129,383 jobs. Thus, 78,246 workers lost their jobs due to downsizing and 51,137 workers lost their jobs due to closures. Internal restructuring is the most frequent form of restructuring, followed by bankruptcy/closure. Offshoring, outsourcing, relocation and merger/acquisition are the types of restructuring that have resulted on average, in more job losses per event in Quebec's manufacturing sector during the study period.  The year 2008 was one that generated the most restructuring events. Montreal and Monteregie are the regions that were the most affected by restructuring events, job losses and plant closures. Overall, it’s the low-technology industries that were the most impacted by the manufacturing crisis. The paper and wood industry had the greatest amount of restructuring events. This sub-sector also had the most job losses, followed by the textiles and clothing industry. These two industries share more than half of the closures.   Demand shortage (22.1%), global competition (14.3%), the rise of Canadian dollar (11.2%), internal corporate reorganization (11.1%), cost rationalization to increase profitability (10.1%) and financial difficulties (9.9%) were the main reasons given by employers.  Our results show that there were two stages in the evolution of the restructuring events within Quebec’s manufacturing sector. First, structural changes were observed in some industries (e.g. wood and paper and textile-garment) at the beginning of the period and a second phase characterized by economic related changes , due to the economic crisis, whose effects began to be felt at that time (Quebec Institute of Statistics, 2009a).

Keyphrases: restructuring, manufacturing sector, layoff, closures