Several years ago I wrote a fictional account of Joe and Mary, two Newfoundlanders who had left the Rock to find their fortune in Fort McMurray. They were expecting a child, there was literally no room at the inn, they were sleeping in their vehicle, and life in the promised land was very tough and bleak indeed.
A similar tale could be told this year, with oil now floating around $35 US a barrel for the benchmark West Texas Intermediate. It’s a harsh world out there in the oil country and about to get much harsher.
In recent weeks I’ve talked to more people who’ve been laid off. One said he had put out about 30 resumés in the month or two since he was laid off. He had been the last man standing with his company. And those that he applied to told him they had hundreds of other applications already.
Many who were laid off with the spring breakup of 2015, have not had work since. They will soon start running low on the number of weeks left in their employment insurance benefits, with no end to this downturn in sight. If anything, it’s getting much worse.
Another company I spoke to had laid off half its staff in the past year and the phone is barely ringing. While the staff has been reduced by half, their work was down by two-thirds. They wouldn’t lay off anyone before Christmas, but who knows what the New Year will bring? They had been on a federal government work-share program since the spring, but it had just expired.
That program is designed to help companies and workers get through a rough patch and has been used successfully in the past by oilfield companies during previous downturns. But again, there’s no end in sight for this downturn, even if there is an end for each work-share benefit.
Workers who had come from Ontario and Manitoba saw the writing on the wall months ago, and left, sparing the necessity of laying them off. They had come to Saskatchewan to work at a good-paying job. Those jobs were over, so it was time to go home.
A look on Saskjobs.ca shows 280 jobs listed in Estevan and area. Five years ago, it was common to see that number around 1,100. As of Dec. 20 there were a handful of service rig and hyrovac companies looking for workers. That was about it for oilfield jobs. Newspapers that once had a half dozen pages of career ads (including mine) now have next to none. There was a job posting for manager at a dollar store, though.
When Premier Brad Wall brought up concerns recently about energy workers who had lost their jobs, he wasn’t kidding.
Tim McMillan, once Wall’s minister responsible for Energy and Resources, and now president and CEO of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, told the National Post in an interview posted Dec. 18 they expect to see 100,000 jobs lost in the oil and gas sector, including 40,000 direct jobs, by the end of 2015.
If we saw that many jobs evaporate in one sector in Ontario (say, automaking) in one year, what do you think the reaction would be?
If I were writing about my fictional Joe and Mary now, I would say they finally found work in Fort Mac all those years ago, but the insanely high cost of living made it difficult to get ahead. They finally bought a house, but in the last year that house lost $125,000 in value, but their mortgage did not. The oilsands project Joe had been working on was shut down due to low oil prices and the Alberta government’s increase in corporate taxes. And their kid? That kid’s going to be hoping the food bank has a hamper for them this Christmas.
It’s going to be a tough Christmas for too many Joes and Marys this year, and it won’t be fiction, either.
— Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected].
