Employees hit hard by layoffs

Coe Newnes: More than 100 workers laid off, don’t get their holiday pay.

While the layoffs are a stab in the heart, losing the holiday pay is a turn of the knife.

Some of the 105 employees who were laid off May 7 from Coe Newnes McGehee later spoke to the Observer, expressing a recurring theme. Although the layoffs are a terrible blow, the fact employees won’t be paid the severance and holiday pay owing to them makes the situation even worse.

Ian Turner has worked for the sawmill equipment manufacturing company for a total of 27 years. He worked for three years beginning in 1977, left for a few years to farm, then returned for 24 years, receiving his layoff notice last Wednesday.

Although his tone is sad, he takes a somewhat philosophical approach to the termination of more than a quarter century of his labour.

“I just happened to join the 20,000 plus people not working in the forest industry,” he says. “There’s not much you can do about it, just keep on doing.”

But, like many others, the fact he won’t get holiday or severance pay is more difficult to accept.

“I would have just as soon been laid off before the court order so that we could have got them. The holiday pay has already been earned. If I took some people’s money like that, I wouldn’t be talking on the phone,” he says. “That’s the only thing that really bothered me about it. It seemed like they decided to pay the bank rather than the employees. I just hope the money we didn’t get paid will help some other people keep working.”

During his time, Turner saw the company’s metamorphosis from about 20 employees to hundreds, and through various name changes. When he started, the company was housed in the old blacksmith shop downtown. He’s done many jobs with the company, most recently as a senior estimator, preparing quotes and price proposals.

He has no idea why he was one of 105 out of 330 people laid off.

“I don’t think there’s any rhyme or reason. I don’t actually know. It could have been out of a hat,” he said, surmising that perhaps more senior positions were cut because they’re paid more, or perhaps the company won’t even have an estimating department any more and the work will be done by engineering.

Turner has seen layoffs at the company before as the forest industry goes up and down, but this is the worst.

Born in Salmon Arm, Turner has parents and siblings here who he can lean on. He owns a vineyard and runs cattle with his parents. However, those enterprises don’t pay.

He has four children, two who are 12 and under, and he admits to being worried.

“You’ve always got to worry. You’ve got a mortgage and you’ve got to keep food on the table.”

However, he’s more concerned for younger families who don’t have the support he does.

“It’s going to be hard on a lot of younger people who are just getting started. When their family’s not there, they’ve got a mortgage and housing’s not cheap.”

Ben Lemon would have been with the company 20 years on Sept. 14.

Losing his holiday and severance pay pours salt into an open wound.

“Not only did they steal my holiday pay, they don’t have the decency to continue our insurance,” he said, referring to his health plan. “It would have been nice to at least give us the benefits to the end of the month. Give us time to get something in place.”

He also wonders why, if the company was so well-run, it took only three months for it to need creditor protection.

“Where’s all the money we’ve made if we can’t survive one quarter without profit?... The shame of it is, we have the best electronics in the industry and we used to have the best people in the industry.”

He said he and other employees have worked very hard over the years to make other people rich – and now they’re left with nothing.

“I’m now the cliché,” he says, explaining he’s 51. “I’m a middle-aged, unemployed, over-educated guy. I’ve got them to thank for that too. I think I resent that more than anything. Being turned into cliché.”

Like Turner, Lemon is going to take a couple of weeks before he starts thinking about another job.

“I’m too emotional right now,” he says, adding that his children are grown, so he’s in a better position than a lot of people. “I’m not going to lose my house, but I can’t say that for a lot of people who are laid off. It’s going to impact Salmon Arm big time.”