Novamerican Steel Inc. Announces Its Name Change to Barzel Industries Inc.

Wow!very impessive...les than 2 yrs after the acquisition of this company by symmetry holdings (ilut),over 500 hundreds jobs lost....2 branches sold (more to come)3 branches closed...for now (Dorval and Lasalle will eventually get closed as well)...Laying off plant workers temporarly (they say)so they don"t have to pay what they owe them legaly....when everybody knows that none of them will ever get their jobs back. Hiring hundreds of none produtive people ( we call them laptops and blackberries people). Investors be aware....The company"s name is changing but the way of thinking remains the same......Sadly , more jobs will be lost.......

It's amazing what a company with an idea can accomplish. So far they have tanked the stock, lost money hand over fist, closed branches, and laid off workers that have been with the company for over 20 years. The owners of the company have lots of books smarts and no common sense. The coporatate headquarters are in Norwood, yet they closed that branch last week. This is a company that will not survive the next 10 years.

When people in charge are more interested to talk about their way (The Decalogue) of managing the company then learning about the reality of the market they are in.....You wonder if these guys are preachers or business people....Don't be fouled by this cult.

The Decalogue, the Play books, the flow charts won't help all the college boys the new owners hired. They don't even know what a hot roll angle is. This company won't make it 6 more months before it sells off or closes the rest of the plants. Sorry to say 480 million dollar company down the drain. Over 950 jobs gone all because of a book & the theory of constaints - how's that working for ya?

Profound Knowledge wrote:

Wow!very impessive...les than 2 yrs after the acquisition of this company by symmetry holdings (ilut),over 500 hundreds jobs lost....2 branches sold (more to come)3 branches closed...for now (Dorval and Lasalle will eventually get closed as well)...Laying off plant workers temporarly (they say)so they don"t have to pay what they owe them legaly....when everybody knows that none of them will ever get their jobs back. Hiring hundreds of none produtive people ( we call them laptops and blackberries people). Investors be aware....The company"s name is changing but the way of thinking remains the same......Sadly , more jobs will be lost.......

10-4 you are right on the money

Im glad to see that Im not the only one who thinks this new way of working is like a CULT....have said it since the beginning...trying to brainwash people into thinking their way is the right way?? I DONT THINK SO....!!!
Doesnt matter how many college degree people you get in there....they dont have the STEEL KNOWLEDGE.
Math, flow charts, blah blah blah...nothing is as predictable as they think....except maybe the closing of plants left right and center...
The poor employees that were left behind... hopefully they come out of there SANE in the end...

More news.....As i was writing on feb 15th....It is now a reality.....Barzel just gave(sold) Dorval and Lasalle facilities back to the Jones' Family....Part of the deal involve Machines and leases from buildings.From a source of mine....some plant employees were re-hired by the Jones' and the rest of them were laid-off temporarily (again) by Barzel.... by doing so , according to the laws in QC, Barzel don't have to pay any 4% and the 8 weeks indemnity package for at least 6 months....if employees don't get call back(believe me, they won't) during the next 6 months then they'll receive their money, unless , of course , the company goes bankrupt....What's next on Barzel's agenda?

More news is the Norwood plant is closed as of 2/27/09. Hartford CT is closed as well. The RI & Albany plants are sold. Dorval & Lasalle sold back to the Jones thats good they new a good thing not like Bozo Ind.

Dingo wrote:

More news is the Norwood plant is closed as of 2/27/09. Hartford CT is closed as well. The RI & Albany plants are sold. Dorval & Lasalle sold back to the Jones thats good they new a good thing not like Bozo Ind.

The fact that the Jones' are back in business is a very good news for some plant employees in Dorval and Lasalle. It means the end of a 2 year nightmare for most of them and finaly job security ,that Barzel promised but never delivered, for workers.

I will come back on this site from time to time, to keep people informed when new informations are available to me....please tell employees or ex-employees to stop by once in a while....because i'm sure that there is more to come from Barzel's secret agenda.

The disaster that has happened at Novamerican is truly sad. The company which was healthy and profitable and provided sustenance for many families does not exist anymore.
In its place is an experiment in management philosophy called the Decalogue, the proponents of this philosophy are zealots in the true sense of the word. They have hired Phd's and MBA's to work in an industry that could not be simpler. They lost $79 mil at a company that had never lost a dime, in a year when the Reliances and Metals USA made record profits. They are so misguided and lost that it is hopeless.
Unfortunately the reassurance provided by the previous owners about the intentions of the new owners, has proved to be false. How much due diligence was carried out on either side of this transaction is questionable at best.
Being a public company it is possible to follow the transaction and the results and the motivating factor that dominated this transaction-greed.
There are many people who fullfilled a contributing role in the old Novamerican who have been ignored and thrown overboard by the combined actions of both ownership groups- one group exacted an exhorbitant price and the other continues an experiment destined to fail.
The families of the 400 or so ex-employees are I'm sure suffering very real consequences of the actions of a few selfish people.

Wow, great to find this site and others that feel the same about Barzel.
First, the Jones's are not without fault. Greed is the correct word. Some due-dilligence should have been done. When somebody buys a company for 600 million without visiting the various plants or checking the millions of dollars of inventory then someone should have smelled a skunk. And I'm still waiting for my "dinner".
Secondly, the Barzel boys are whacked. There is no way this is going to last much longer. They should stop trying to take money from former employees by reducing their severance agreements and consider reducing the salaries of the top 3 or 4 in the company. I feel 1.2 million is over paying a CEO for running a company into the ground.
Lastly I feel very bad for all those employees that dedicated years and years of service just to be pushed aside like the trash. only to be replaced by PHD's who know nothing about the metals business.

Great forum! How many former employees just to survive had to borrow in their 401K? Their RRSP or sell their house? Why? The Jones' family abandon thousands of dedicated employees who helped day by day some for 20 years plus building the Novamerican Steel Company as it was the day it was sold. I have to agree with what is written so far, Greed was the motive of the sale. Reading “It’s not luck”, on page 20, I knew what this new group of people was all about and had already a good idea were this new ownership was going. The Jones' family negotiated and engaged in various discussions with Symmetry from April 2007 until the completion of the sale in November 2007. Puzzling no one at Novamerican HQ who was involves in discussion and decision figure out what was going on. Or in the name of Greed they choose to ignore the obvious signs. The sale of the company in 2007 was motivated by cash and only cash. Other well known families in the industry have kept their company intact during that period and continue to provide employment to thousands of dedicated people. I do applauded these companies and congratulate management for their sincerity and honesty towards their employees. Today it is a shame to see the Jones' family back for round two.

I don’t have a PhD’s or a MBA, I don’t speak Russian or Lithuanian, and it did not stop me to be successful in this industry. The next generation of MBA’s or PHD’s will have the opportunities to learn what not to do to succeed in business with the Barzel Industries case study. Eliyahu just finished a new book “The Theory of Constraints and the system of profound knowledge” they talk about the 10 step process to the Decalogue. Whoa! Are we in the presence of the future supreme master? The Decalogue according to Wikipedia is the list of Ten Commandments given to Moses on Mount Sinai in the form of two stone tablets. The only apparent difference is Moses had made the oath of poverty! At this time only a miracle can save Barzel.

Best of luck to all former employees who are still out of a job, to the ones who thought they had security via their severance package that was recently cut, and to all employees who are still working at Barzel Ind

I would suggest to everyone to go and read this
http://www.secinfo.com/dSEyn.s6q.htm

If these Decalogue freaks owe you any kind of money from a signed contract please don't let them run without paying. They are executing their plan meticulously, that is making cash as fast as they can Trough The Pot...

When you will see M. Playford release some of his shares to the market, it will be time to say Oh! Oh! to Barzel... By the way, does anybody know why GBS Gold shutdown? Wasn't M. Playford the owner?

For the Jones, I think they took the money and runned when this too good to be true offer occured (like many would have done). And I hope they had enough respect to their former employees not to know that they would leave them into this mess by signing this contract. If they knew, it would be just miserable...

Hope some actual employees would leave comments...

How many PHD's,MBA's, CPA's, and Attorney's does it take to destroy a company in less than two years?

Go to Barzel.com ,aka Bozo.com , and you can see their photos and fancy bios.

It is truly amazing that this group of Graf Tech refugees sold JPMC on their TOC rubbish and received $450mil. What's more amazing, or disturbing if you are one of the 400 X employees, is where have they been during this disaster.

I guess the mastermind of this fiasco was right when he called them "Stupid Ignorant Monkey's".

JPMC will be holding the junk bonds until hell freezes over.

The real tradegy here is the collateral damage that has been delivered to the employees that spent life times buiding the company. Loyalty, hard work, and determination made the previous owners and stock holders very rich.

The "Slimmetry" group came in and destroyed a great company. The last group of employees to be ousted, some with forty years of service, were given two weeks severance which equates to a slap in the face. As Mr. Constraint said, "Thrown out like trash".

If anyone had done their due diligence on this cult they would have found out that they were three minutes away from bankrupting Graf Tech before the CEO threw them out like trash. Even their surgardaddy got the ax for canceling retirees health benefits.

Good luck to all of you who have been harmed by the demise of the company which was once a great place to work.

Barzel is run by a handful of over-educated, arrogant,inconsiderate moneygrabbers.They don't care how many lives they have a negative effect on.They are the worst people I've ever seen run a business.They can't see the forest for the trees.The death knell has been sounded............

American Steel & Aluminum- Novamerican Steel- Barzel it doesn't matter what name they go by, they are a bunch of crooks! Over a year ago, they turned their backs on all their contract customers and decided not to service them anymore... they have lost millions of dollars (of course because of the economy, haha), made sure to get their million dollar bonuses, and now a year and hundreds of layoffs later- they have cancelled severance packages, laid off more employees and started selling off the company in huge chunks! Once again they have changed their gameplan and have begun a frantic "begging" for the business back campaign and telling people they can buy anything anyone needs again! Why the one year break? I hope that customers are not fooled by this last ditch effort to salvage what is already lost! Anyone who does business with these idiots should be very careful... look at their credit rating and see just how long they will be around.... the pool has been started....the funeral plans are made....sniff

The end is near. The stock price is down to 35 cents,it started at $7.60 per share. They have slashed prices in order to stay afloat. Severance packages cut by up to 90%. 392 dedicated people out of work. Assets sold off at auction prices. What's next? Corrado's salary or bonus gets cut? But..... he has that new house he is building for his family as others loose their house because they have no job. Sad.

Well, well - our friends at Bazaro Industries have made another U-turn.

Evidently they got wind of some form of retaliation by that group of "Senior Citizens" they terminated.

First they announce that your severance is being cut to either 50% or 10% of the original amount. Then a number of people receive calls telling them that they changed their mind and you are now reinstated.

Some went back to 100% while others went from 10% to 50%. What sports these jokers are. They wave a severance package in your face and as long as you agree to waive all your rights you get paid - well, maybe.

Did this group of dopes not have an attorney on staff - maybe two! Don't they know that they have breached the agreements?

Now they have that whole group of siver haired untrainable dogs to deal with.

Did they just overlook the fact that they terminated all the employees who are referred to as "Babby Boomers"? You know, the ones with wrinkles and white/silver hair.

Could this have been a plan from the beginning? Make it appear as though they are keepers, shuttle a group of the silvered hair old foggies north of the border for training, wait about six months and then replace them with young MBA's.

Gee, wonder what a judge and jury would think about that?

What could possible be next?

They'll probably attempt to hire some people back and try to re-create the company!

OOOOH NOOOO MR. BILL!!!

[QUOTE who=weres northside of monteral before or after down town"Bottleneck"]Wel l, well - our friends at Bazaro Industries have made another U-turn.
Evidently they got wind of some form of retaliation by that group of "Senior Citizens" they terminated.
First they announce that your severance is being cut to either 50% or 10% of the original amount. Then a number of people receive calls telling them that they changed their mind and yof monteral before the casinos exit or after
Some went back to 100% while others went from 10% to 50%. What sports these jokers are. They wave a severance package in your face and as long as you agree to waive all your rights you get paid - well, maybe.
Did this group of dopes not have an attorney on staff - maybe two! Don't they know that they have breached the agreements?
Now they have that whole group of siver haired untrainable dogs to deal with.
Did they just overlook the fact that they terminated all the employees who are referred to as "Babby Boomers"? You know, the ones with wrinkles and white/silver hair.
Could this have been a plan from the beginning? Make it appear as though they are keepers, shuttle a group of the silvered hair old foggies north of the border for training, wait about six months and then replace them with young MBA's.
Gee, wonder what a judge and jury would think about that?
What could possible be next?
They'll probably attempt to hire some people back and try to re-create the company!
OOOOH NOOOO MR. BILL!!!
[/QUOTE]weres northside of monteral

News Alert!!!!!
The Customer Appreciation Cook-Out at the old ASA Harrisburg is scheduled for Thursday May 14th. Book early as parking is limited to 4 spaces. There will be hourly give aways of Dr. Lepore's autographed book "The Decalogue". This is the premier text book on how to destroy a thriving company in 10 easy steps. The customers should ask where all the employees and inventory went as they tour the desimated facility