Duane Hicks
A recent survey by the Rainy River Future Development Corp. indicates there’s a labour shortage here in Rainy River District.
RRFDC consultant Tannis Drysdale said the survey—which received about 75 responses from district businesses, with the majority coming from Fort Frances—asked questions about the availability of labour and if there’s been any recent changes in that area.
The results showed “people that had more employees were experiencing more problems with hiring, which obviously means they’re out looking for employees more often,” she explained.
This feedback built on anecdotal evidence the RRFDC had been hearing from most business sectors over the last three-four months, noted Drysdale.
The survey confirmed the labour shortage is a systemic problem.
Drysdale noted the labour shortage seems to be right across the board, from manufacturing to the service industry.
“We asked what type of industry they were in: restaurants, hotels, skilled trades, non-skilled trades,” she remarked.
“The only co-relation was the number of employees you hired.
“Those that hired more employees were having more issues; those that didn’t have any employees or one employee were obviously not out in the marketplace looking for new staff,” she added.
Drysdale admitted the reasons for the shortage aren’t clear and that the trend bears further investigation.
“What we don’t know yet is, is it a permanent problem? Is it being created by the current construction [of New Gold’s Rainy River Project]?” she said.
“Will it level off when the mine’s operational?”
It’s also possible the pool of youth available to fill entry-level jobs may be shrinking.
“That’s definitely an issue this year,” Drysdale stressed.
“We had trouble this year, as did the town, as did everyone looking for young people.”
She speculated that since the closure of the paper mill here, many workers not yet of retirement age sought employment elsewhere and had to relocate—moving their families, including high school-aged children, away with them.
Meanwhile, out-of-town mine workers have yet to move here. And even when they do, the majority of them likely will be younger and not have older children.
On top of that, some of the youths who do live here might have “different work habits” now than previous generations, Drysdale suggested.
She pointed out many families now have significantly fewer children than the generations before, and thus many parents can provide those children “with significantly more spending money as they work significantly less hours.”
The RRFDC is following up on the survey in several ways.
“We began meeting with service providers who are tasked by the provincial government to be responsible for labour force issues, and we’ve started talking about different opportunities to, first of all, educate our employers about how to attract and retain employees,” said Drysdale.
She added a speaker will be brought here over this winter to address the latter.
“We’ve [also] began marketing Fort Frances and the positions that are available at different job fairs,” she added.
“And we’re probably going to have, in the springtime, a job fair for Fort Frances’ employers so they can practise the skills that they’ve been trained to have with the new marketing focus.”
On the bright side, the survey also indicated that “the business community was overwhelmingly optimistic” and that “opportunities for sales had increased over the last 12 months.”
Editor’s note: This is the first of several planned articles about the labour force shortage in Fort Frances and surrounding area.
