Prince
Rupert’s Overwaitea Saved
UPDATE January 8th--17 laid off as Jimmy Pattison squeezes employees to make >$
"HE (the manager) called up those people who were being laid off couple nights ago" (Friday evening?). There were 17 phone calls. Even the ones who are left are nervous. People with over a decade seniority are not safe. "(She) is hanging on by the skin of her teeth". "(MY) hours are not regular now. Some early. Some late. How do I look after the kids?" I don't know if her face showed gratitude for still having a job, or concern for the uncertainties that continued into the near future.
“We heard yesterday (December 20th) that the Union (local 1518 of the United Food and Commercial Workers) vote had accepted Jimmy Pattison’s package,” said one of the clerks at the Prince Rupert store. You could see the relief in her face. “Of course, there are going to be layoffs”, she said resignedly.
(Note--subsequent local media articles have clarified this "no full time people will be laid off", but the cap (20 hours) on 'junior employees' hours raised to 40). As part-timers vast majority of employees this could have effect of shifting work to lower paid staff.
Two Versions
of what happened
As the Vancouver Sun article on the compromise states there appear to be two versions of what the deal meant.
The Union portrayed the vote as a side issue in a much wider dispute for which a mediator had been brought in. This was Pattison’s wish to bring in “big box stores” with weaker union contracts.
The Pattison Group maintains this was only concerned high operating costs in six stores. The details will remain in house, but cost saving measures have been agreed to. (I do not find any press release from Pattison Group on WWW about this issue.)
The
Internet allows us to fill in some of the blank spaces
The Jim Pattison Group is a huge (22,000 employees and $4.6 Billion in sales its brochure like web site modestly announces on its main page) privately owned company.
Because it is a private company, it does not need to reveal much of the information a company listed on a stock exchange would. The WWW sites maintain this ‘secretiveness’ not offering much more than a few numbers and site locations. For example the Overwaitea site has little more than recipes and ‘history’ information.
(The Canadian Fish Company “Canfisco” site is slightly more informative. The local Prince Rupert Cannery is described and numerous other historical canneries of the Skeena region are pictured on site.)
Nor are the analysts much more helpful; the Hoovers site is almost gushing in its awe of how much the Pattison Group has grown from small Vancouver car dealership in 1961 to “Canada’s third largest privately owned company” now.
More Gushing
Jim Pattison was selected by Entrepreneur Of The Year (EOY) program as the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award (September 11, 2000). There we find out that the Pattison group is the 34th largest company in Canada.:
"Jim mirrors the image of a true
entrepreneur in every sense of the word. His outstanding skill and dedication
has made him a premiere business leader in Canada and his achievements stand as
a role model for our country's next generation of entrepreneurs."
A little History
There is a chronology on the site that shows the steady growth of this BC grown conglomerate—I only mention the food group here
- 1968 - Acquired Overwaitea Foods, Vancouver
- 1984 - Acquired Canadian Fishing Company
- 1999 - Acquired Cooper's Foods
- 1995 acquires Buy-Low Foods;
- Note too: 1994 - Acquired Westshore Terminals, a BC-based coal-export terminal
The Overwaitea Group includes Save-on-Foods (as the Terrace store is called) and I am told they have the same Union and contract as the store in Prince Rupert does; it may be guessed that the “big box” concept may have come into the Pattison Group with the Buy-Low Foods purchased in 1995. I find nothing on this chain nor know whether it is unionized or not.
Any Comments??