Brooks shaken by closure of XL Foods plant.
Loss of top employer ‘terrifying’
Broo ks – They’re living in the heart of cattle country, yet some shoppers in Brooks are brushing by the meat counter these days.
Worry over tainted beef that was processed at a meat-packing plant in the Prairie town has some people digging into deep-freeze to find their frozen stock.
“I’ve decided to use up the beef in my freezer,” Joel Saranchuk said as she loaded groceries outside a local supermarket.
“I’m not buying anything new, just to be safe.”
Concerns didn’t end at the checkout line.
News that the XL Foods Inc. plant had been temporarily shuttered by Canada’s food inspection agency resonated through the town Friday as service workers, business owners and property managers voiced fears over how an extended shutdown of Brooks’s largest employer would impact their bottom line.
“It’s terrifying for a lot of people in town,” said taxi driver Lorrene Neufeld, who collects at least half her fares from employees of the meatpacking plant at the centre of an international E. coli scare.
It was a payday for many of Neufeld’s customers, and she said they had expressed their worries as she drove them to the bank.
“They don’t know when their next paycheque is coming,” she said.
That was the case for Pierre Fariala, who has manned the plant’s front line for four years.
“It’s not good out here,” said Fariala, adding that finding other work of equal pay would be difficult.
Plant workers weren’t the only ones wondering when, or if, their next paycheque will arrive.
Property manager Barb Maisonneuve said she fears the ripple effect that could occur with about 2,200 plant employees out of work.
“Half of our tenants might not be able to afford their rent,” said Maisonneuve of Avenue Living, which owns about 150 units in town. Several of her renters spent the day filling out social assistance forms and a few tenants even tried getting a jump on finding another job.
“I’ve had about 15 resumes come across my desk in the past few days,” she said.
Roughly one out every five of Brooks’s 13,500 residents is a new immigrant who has taken a hard-to-fill job in the beefprocessing industry. There’s a chance some could lose work permits if they can’t find work, Maisonneuve said.
“It would be a shame to see some of the people around here get sent back home,” she said.
“We don’t know what it’s going to do to our Brooks market.”
Small-business owners, such as Anita Reyes of Asian Store, are counting on the plant opening again. “I’m really worried,” Reyes said.