Before It's Too Late

A friend of mine called me today, very upset about having just quit her job at Minacs. She needs the money, and didn't mind the work, but she had no choice. She wasn't able to arrange transportation for her newest shift change, and no alternatives were available. It's unfortunate.

The majority of people who have written about and continue to report on the call center in Port Hawkesbury, whether now with Minacs or previously with EDS, are lucky enough to have never had to work there. I have.

When the call center in Port Hawkesbury opened in a few years ago, people applied in droves for a position. On the surface, it seemed like a pretty good gig. The money was good, at least compared to a lot of the minimum wage jobs available in our area. A new, air conditioned building, paid training, benefits, opportunity for advancement; these were all perks widely advertised in order to recruit new employees, and in the Strait area, with dismal prospects on the Job Bank and high unemployment, working at the call center was like hitting the jackpot. Politicians bent over backwards to lure a call center here, and groveled with thanks and appreciation when our "saviors" finally came to rescue our area from the depths of economic disparity.

At first, everything was wonderful. Maybe not the most glamorous job in the world, but hey, it's work; who were we to complain, right?

But the staff turnover pointed to problems soon after the novelty of the call center wore off. People were quitting after only working there a few months, and the majority of remaining employees were dissatisfied and miserable.

Working in a call center environment is very stressful. Callers screaming and swearing at you, telling you to get a real job; supervisors, no more qualified than you, barking orders in your direction; bathroom breaks often timed to the minute, with a demeaning tongue-lashing as the mildest consequence for taking two minutes too long; a quality assurance staff monitoring your every move, your every call; these are just some of the components that turn a once-appealing state-of-the-art building full of opportunity, into a windowless dungeon of misery. Every job has its stress, but call centers are notorious for it.

The biggest problem for most was, and continues to be, the hours of operation. Call centers thrive in large cities because there are so many local people to fill the positions, and just as many to apply once that staff has turned over. There is also local transit to get people to and from home at all hours.

And this is why any call center operation in Port Hawkesbury will inevitably fail. Training allows employees to fall into a regular routine, establish car pools, and let their bodies adjust to a certain schedule. But after the training is over, the shift work is sporadic and unpredictable. One week you're working days, two weeks later you might be working until 1am, and without nearly enough notice. How is someone in L'Ardoise with no car supposed to make travel arrangements to and from Port Hawkesbury for a 4-12 shift, especially when the person they travelled with the week before has been switched to 9-5? How is a parent from a very rural area supposed to find suitable childcare for a few weeks during the evening, and then someone else to provide this childcare a few weeks later early in the morning? We don't have city busses, or 24-hour day cares. If these people had the kind of budget to make the arrangements necessary to work at the call center, they wouldn't be working at the call center to begin with.

It's very unfortunate that the right people haven't yet come to realize and address the pitfalls associated with a call center in Port Hawkesbury. EDS, Minacs - it's more of the same, and that should have been recognized and resolved before bringing in another company. Whether it be decreasing the hours of operation, thereby decreasing the number of shifts, or accommodating people more effectively to ensure better attendance, changes need to be made in order to sustain Minacs' success in this region. The status quo won't work in the long term. It hasn't it the past, and since nothing much has changed in terms of the transition from EDS to Minacs, it won't this time either.

People from this area aren't lazy, but they're also not able to draw blood from a stone. And unless "the powers that be" can correct deficiencies with the current set up, pretty soon we'll have a vacant building on the Queen Street Extension and plenty of hard working people filing for Employment Insurance benefits.