The big paycheques from Alberta are drying up, and with them the economic good times
It was a tell-tale sign when East Coast Catering of St. John’s laid off 44 workers in September. The company supplies meals and housekeeping services to Newfoundland’s offshore oil rigs, two of which departed this year at the end of their contracts.
‘I am certainly not pushing the panic button, but I think we should have our hand hovering over it.’– Radio host Paddy Daley
“The majority of our business is not directly impacted by the recent drop in oil prices,” East Coast Catering said, but the subtle signs of a downturn are there.
“I am not worried yet. And I am certainly not pushing the panic button, but I think we should have our hand hovering over it,” said Paddy Daley a well known call-in radio host for VOCM in St. John’s.
Newfoundland’s offshore oil industry has been somewhat insulated from the shock of plunging oil prices over the last 16 months, but the long tail of job losses and cancelled contracts so clearly evident in Alberta is beginning to show, especially as the province’s “turnaround workers” come home for good.
Darryl Day worked in Alberta’s hydraulic fracturing industry. He was laid off in June, one of many Newfoundlanders who’ll no longer make the commute to the Alberta oil patch.
For years, thousands of Newfoundlanders commuted back and forth to Alberta’s oil patch, working three or four weeks at a time and bringing home plump paycheques. Many of them aren’t going back this fall.
Darryl Day used to fly from Gander to Alberta and back — 22 days out, 13 days back home. He was recruited at a job fair in Newfoundland six years ago to drive heavy machinery for a hydraulic fracturing company. Those were the “good times.”
“Different companies would run three or four job fairs in Newfoundland a week and they would leave with however many employees,” Day said. “Then if they ran short, they would come back again.”
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