Some 70 employees at the Marystown Dominion store received their termination notices Thursday night.
Loblaws/Dominion Newfoundland District-Manager Robert Cahill, along with a company Public Relations representative, met with most of the store's employees in Marystown to deliver the news. The store will close Jan. 31, 2010.
CAW Local 597 Union president Bill King, visibly upset after the meeting, said official notices were given to the workers, some of whom have been employed at the store since it opened in the Peninsula Mall in 1979.
"According to department of labour regulations, a company with more than 50 workers must give eight weeks notice. They will now be given their written notices.
"I pushed for this in our last round of negotiations Thursday past (Nov. 5), so severance packages could be negotiated and the employees could get on with their lives."
Dominion had announced in June it was closing its Marystown store because it could not reach a satisfactory lease arrangement with the owners of the Peninsula Mall - Econo Malls. Dominion wanted only a two-year lease to go forward, but the mall owners insisted on a longer term.
