Two days’ warning about layoffs
Some Freedom Mobile workers feel helpless over impending closure
Two days — “a slap on the face” — is all the notice Jay Gannon got that he is losing his Freedom Mobile job of more than five years.
Gannon is one of 130 fulltime employees who will be laid off beginning Wednesday by Shaw Communications which owns Freedom Mobile. Workers learned Monday the company is closing the downtown Windsor call centre March 28.
“They have nothing. There’s nothing there,” Gannon said of savings the mostly minimum wage earners would have to survive on while they search for another job. “You can’t save anything when you’re making $11.65, $12.15, $13 (an hour). They’ve only been making $14 (an hour) for what, two weeks?”
The starting wage was $11.65 an hour and the average wage was $13.68 an hour before the province upped minimum wage to $14 an hour at the beginning of 2018, said Gannon, Unit 505 president with the merged Telecommunications Workers Union, United Steelworkers Local 1944.
The workers voted to join the union a year ago and had agreed to their first collective agreement in September after being threatened by the company with a lockout. Gannon said the company wasn’t interested in working with the union from the outset and he can’t see how it makes sense to move jobs to Victoria, B.C., where workers would be paid more.
He estimates about 35 workers received only two days’ notice, meaning their last shift is Wednesday. Union officials said those workers will be entitled to two weeks’ pay since they were not given two weeks’ notice.
The rest of the workers are being laid off Feb. 21 and March 28.
Other employees did not want to talk to the Star Tuesday because they hope to work until the centre closes.
“It’s sad because a lot of these folks, it’s already precarious employment,” Gannon said.
Shaw Communications vicepresident of external affairs Chethan Lakshman said the consolidation of customer care operations in Victoria was not the result of the unionization. The company is not offering relocation to Windsor employees and is not moving the work overseas, he said. He wouldn’t comment on the average wage of its Victoria workers.
The union’s National Local 1944 president Lee Riggs called the call centre closure outrageous and unjustified Monday. Shaw Communications recently showed a firstquarter profit of $114 million and Riggs pointed to the CEO Bradley Shaw’s 2015 compensation of $13.1 million.
Gannon, an adherence specialist who helped with the flow of calls and made $18.60 an hour, said the workers only unionized to get a better working environment. Freedom Mobile workers, like non-unionized Tim Hortons workers, are just trying to survive on minimum wage, he said. Tim Hortons faced some backlash recently when some franchises eliminated paid breaks and reduced benefits in response to the increased minimum wage. Shaw Communications didn’t give the minimum wage hike as a reason but said it was the result of a review and consolidation that Shaw started in January 2015.
Gannon hopes Shaw Communications will reconsider. It could return work to Canada from Egypt and the Philippines, he said.
“Even the dogs get the crumbs that fall off the master’s table and so people were looking for a little piece of the pie,” Gannon said. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
WindsorEssex Economic Development Corporation CEO Stephen MacKenzie said the HGS call centre at the Tecumseh Mall is expected to hire in February but the closure of the Freedom Mobile office will be a big hit for the city. “It’s certainly a significant loss that’s for sure. We were very disappointed to hear this announcement,” MacKenzie said.
In December the unemployment rate in Windsor decreased to 6.1 per cent.
MacKenzie said St. Clair College and the University of Windsor are holding a job fair Jan. 24 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the St. Denis Centre.
Even the dogs get the crumbs that fall off the master’s table and so people were looking for a little piece of the pie.