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The headline in yesterday’s Brandon Sun read: “Job Expo Draws a Crowd.”
Reporter Charles Tweed and photographer Bruce Bumstead travelled to Virden on Monday and discovered hundreds of jobs up for grabs at the Virden Recruitment Expo.
The expo, which wrapped up yesterday at the Virden multi-purpose recreation facility, had more than 30 companies attempting to fill worker shortages in the area.
As expected in our Tiny Texas, oilfield and service companies dominated the expo, as the region is experiencing a surge in production and the jobs pay well.
But they aren’t the only company looking for people. The Brandon Correctional Centre was looking to hire 12 more guards, Alliance Energy Industrial from Vanscoy, Sask., was looking for about 100 people to help with a potash expansion outside of Saskatoon.
Clearly, it’s a good time to be getting trained in trades in Westman — and a good time to be looking for a lot of types of work. Albeit mostly in the blue collar or service industries. But jobs, nonetheless.
Why then, you might ask, are there such staggering numbers of unemployed in some areas of Westman?
In his regular Winnipeg Free Press column last week, Brandon writer Deveryn Ross cited a Canadian Press report that showed “recent research by Statistics Canada shows unemployed people outnumber the amount of job vacancies by a ratio of three to one. While there are some industries that have pockets of labour shortages, generally, there is a surplus of workers and not enough jobs to go around.”
Ross was writing in support of the Harper government’s plan to modify unemployment programs in order to better match workers with employers struggling with labour shortages.
The strategy, Ross suggested, will increase retraining for unemployed Canadians while making it more difficult for employers to hire workers from aboard when unemployed Canadians are available.
It perhaps speaks to why Harper decided to terminate the two remaining provincial settlement service agreements — one with Manitoba, the other with British Columbia.
Asked Ross: With hundreds of thousands of unemployed and under-employed Canadians, why is Manitoba recruiting truck drivers from overseas? Wouldn’t it make more sense to train unemployed Manitobans to fill those jobs?
Alas, while we would tend to agree in principle with that philosophy, it simply hasn’t played out in practice.
Maple Leaf didn’t imagine it would end up reshaping Brandon’s cultural mosaic when it started plans to open up a huge hog processing plant here in the late 1990s. But it simply could not attract and retain enough local workers — especially from some chronically unemployed sectors, such as aboriginals and youth — who were willing to do the type of work required at the plant.
So Maple Leaf has, and continues to, search far and wide for immigrant workers willing to travel thousands of kilometres from home to do the work that many Westman unemployed refuse to do.
Now we agree that hog slaughtering isn’t pretty work. But with so many other opportunities now out there, somebody has to start asking the tough questions as to why we have so many unemployed people.
But until they get motivated to get a paycheque — and maybe Harper’s new stick will work better than the current carrot — then cities and provinces who depend on large companies to keep them growing will shudder every time the federal government tightens up immigration requirements.
For now, we’ll leave you with the inspiring story of Fermin Sanchez.
He was one of those people in Virden on Monday looking to make a career change.
“I want to work in the oilfield so that I can provide a better future for him,” Sanchez told reporter Tweed, while pointing at his two-year-old son, Salvador.
Sanchez, who came to Canada from El Salvador six years ago, works at the Maple Leaf Foods processing plant.
The job at Maple Leaf Foods has been good to him, Sanchez said, but he is looking for a change.
“I just want one chance,” Sanchez said. “It is a big, big opportunity for us.”
If only everybody viewed this country as the land of opportunity ...
Republished from the Brandon Sun print edition April 25, 2012
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The headline in yesterday’s Brandon Sun read: “Job Expo Draws a Crowd.”
Reporter Charles Tweed and photographer Bruce Bumstead travelled to Virden on Monday and discovered hundreds of jobs up for grabs at the Virden Recruitment Expo.
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The headline in yesterday’s Brandon Sun read: “Job Expo Draws a Crowd.”
Reporter Charles Tweed and photographer Bruce Bumstead travelled to Virden on Monday and discovered hundreds of jobs up for grabs at the Virden Recruitment Expo.
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