Latest news with #jobLoss
CTV News
03-07-2025
- Business
- CTV News
Mattawa fights to save discount store
Northern Ontario Watch Residents are petitioning to save Scott's Discount Store, a 20-year staple set to close in August. Owner Giant Tiger says the decision was difficult, affecting a dozen jobs. Locals say the store provides essential affordable goods, with no easy alternatives nearby. Eric Taschner reports.
CBS News
23-06-2025
- Business
- CBS News
Historic Domino sugary refinery in Yonkers to close at year's end. Here's what it could mean for the community.
The historic Domino sugar refinery in Yonkers will close this year, after more than a century in operation. The move has many concerned about the impact to workers and the community. 300 jobs will be lost when Domino sugar refinery closes For the last 25 years, the massive refinery on the Hudson River has been owned by Domino, but it has been turning raw cane into sugar products since at least 1900. A spoonful of sugar won't make the decision to close the plant any more palatable. When it shuts down at the end of the year, it will mean the end of 300 jobs. "Shocked and appalled," eight-year employee Tyrone Antrum said of the decision to close. "Every year we heard rumors of it shutting down, just never thought it would happen. ASR, the corporate owner, says it's part of an "optimization plan" that will shift operations to Buffalo and elsewhere in the Northeast. "It's gonna be a great loss for the community" Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano calls the decision bittersweet. "The fact that they've been there so long is something we've been proud of," Spano said. The plant drives millions in regional economic activity. Domino partners with local nonprofits and employees volunteer many hours at nearby YMCA Community Garden and elsewhere. It was just a few years ago that Domino invested in signage and facade improvements at the refinery, and the general manager said the company looked forward to being in Yonkers "for generations to come." "It's gonna be a great loss for the community due to the fact that they create jobs in the community and they not only help us at the YMCA Community Garden they also help everyone else with an organization. It's gonna be a great loss for all of us,' said the YMCA Community Garden's Lucy Moreno-Casanova. Refinery sits on valuable property, Spano says The plant will likely be torn down. The waterfront property adjacent to Metro-North's Hudson line that it sits on will have developers circling. "Twenty-four acres that it sits on are probably the most valuable property between here and Albany," Spano said. The city and state say they'll work with the company to assist workers facing the sour prospect of unemployment. "Whatever it takes -- I got a family to support, so I'm out here looking already," Antrum said.
Washington Post
20-06-2025
- Washington Post
How Talking Heads stumbled their way to success
In the mid-1970s, the struggle to avoid bankruptcy was only one of New York's problems, as anyone who walked the city's crime-ridden, garbage-strewn streets in those days will recall. More than 1 million residents left during the second half of the decade, some victims of job loss, others fearing for their safety. One demographic showed a significant increase, however: young artists who suddenly found that housing was affordable and life wasn't that scary if you thought the risks were worth taking.
RNZ News
13-06-2025
- Business
- RNZ News
Jobs New Zealanders are no longer doing
Over the past 25 years 77 percent of service station attendant roles have gone, with people now filling up with petrol themselves. Photo: RNZ / Dan Cook When was the last time you encountered someone working on the forecourt of a service station? Although we're all used to sorting our own fuel now, there was a time when it wasn't uncommon to have an attendant offer to help. Data compiled by Infometrics looked at the types of jobs that have disappeared over the past 25 years, and service station attendants are near the top of the list, with 77 percent of their roles, or 5557 individuals, gone. Telephone betting clerks were also significantly reduced, down 86 percent, although only 114 people. Footwear production machine operators were lost at a rate of 82 percent, postal sorting officers at 76 percent and mail clerks at 71 percent. In absolute terms, some of the biggest job losses were among people calling themselves secretaries, "general clerks", and sewing machinists. Infometrics chief forecaster Gareth Kiernan, who produced the data for RNZ, said there were a number of major changes that showed up, reflecting the moving makeup of the New Zealand workforce. There had been a reduction in personal assistant and information entry roles. "Across a grouping of personal assistant, secretary (general), legal secretary, general clerk, data entry operator, machine shorthand operator, and word processing operator, total employment numbers have fallen from 98,700 to 41,861 since 2000. "However, many of those roles have evolved into the following nearby grouping covering contract administrator, program or project administrator, office manager, health practice manager, and practice managers - up from 25,543 to 74,634 over the same period." Professor Sholeh Maani, of the University of Auckland, said roles such as typists used to be a staple in offices but had been absorbed into general administrative duties because everyone would do their own typing. She said switchboard operators were also no longer a requirement in businesses where automated systems had taken over. Some of the jobs that disappeared were in manufacturing that does not happen in New Zealand any more. "Across sewing machinist, footwear production machine operator, hide and skin processing machine operator, knitting machine operator, textile dyeing and finishing machine operator, weaving machine operator, yarn carding and spinning machine operator, and textile and footwear production machine operators, employment has fallen from 14,472 to 5608 since 2000," Kiernan said. "Across paper and pulp mill worker, sawmill or timber yard worker, and wood and wood products factory worker, employment has fallen from 6408 to 2864 since 2000 - reflecting that we send most of our wood to China as unprocessed logs - although the fall in forestry workers, from 4967 to 3900, is interesting as well, perhaps reflecting greater mechanisation in the industry." He said farming, too, had become a lot less labour intensive. There was a notable drop in sheep farmers. University of Otago associate professor Paula O'Kane said the loss of the roles was not always a bad thing, depending on what work people found instead. "You have that group [that was] highly involved in manufacturing - some will have moved into much more interesting roles in terms of the design or what sits behind the machinery that's used in automation. You'll get a chunk who have actually got much more challenging and meaningful roles. "And then there's another chunk who've come down to something more menial and potentially less valued." Massey University professor Jarrod Haar said the evolution of technology changed the workforce. Machinery had become cheaper and more useful, reducing the number of humans needed in some roles. Sometimes, it had also allowed roles to be spread more thinly, he said. Someone who might previously have employed an assistant, for example, might now use a virtual assistant who was also working for a range of other people. There has also been a drop in the number of people calling themselves sewing machinists. Photo: 123RF AI was expected to be the next big driver of workforce change. Haar said it was already disrupting data entry roles, where it could do work previously only handled by humans. He said there would probably be job losses as the changes were worked through but the market would realign. "We might see new businesses starting or new jobs that don't exist. I think we'll see lots of what used to be done, plus an AI component to it." Haar said the best advice for employees was to add value wherever they could. Kiernan said there could be transitional costs as people trained or upskilled. But he said the fact there had been so much change in the past 25 years and unemployment was still only 5 percent at what was likely to be the peak showed the market could adapt. O'Kane said there was a generational shift, too. Younger people might not want to work 60 hours a week as older generations had. "I think younger people are looking for different things out of work and those things are often around more intrinsic motivations. The idea of fulfilment and doing good." She said younger people were not as interested in middle-level administration jobs, which would probably be taken over by technology. "I don't think it's a bad thing. I think it's a good thing in the sense that it will make jobs richer and give people more meaningful work, and work that potentially challenges them more." But she said if some of the "middle" was lost to AI and other automation, there was a risk that the gap between the "haves and have nots" widened. "You're going to see the lower level jobs that are still going to be there, the caring roles that are often very undervalued, and then the potentially higher level jobs. "I think we need to constantly enable people to be upskilled and keep up with technology and keep up with the skill sets that are needed in the modern workplace. "I think we're looking at a lot more communication skills. That's interpersonal communication, negotiation and really knowing how to work well with people and be innovative and creative as well. And I think we can work with people to support some of those people who potentially maybe weren't moving into those more high-quality jobs to give them the skill sets to enable them to. "And then, you're still going to have those lower level jobs… those need to be valued." She said it would be important to look after workers in vulnerable roles, including valuing work done by carers, to ensure they earned enough to live fulfilling lives and were not left behind as the "working poor". Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
CTV News
12-06-2025
- Business
- CTV News
Significant number of Canadian moms who gave birth lost their jobs soon after, new data reveals
Arina Kharlamova was cradling her two-month-old daughter when an email popped into her inbox that disrupted the calm of her maternity leave. The message invited the Whitby, Ont., woman to a meeting where she was told she was part of a layoff affecting 30 per cent of the staff at the company she worked for. 'It felt like a tailspin, honestly,' she recalled. 'It was very, very destabilizing, very difficult to be present and continue just focusing on my baby rather than starting to panic.' Though she didn't know it at the time, Kharlamova was not alone in her experience. A new study funded by advocacy group Moms at Work and law firm Hudson Sinclair found 15 per cent of 1,390 Canadian moms who gave birth in 2022 and 2023 were dismissed, laid off or had their contracts go unrenewed during their pregnancy, maternity leave or when they returned to work. The respondents were surveyed online and reached through social media posts, email blasts and partner organizations, including women's associations across Canada. The overall Canadian workforce has an average involuntary turnover rate of 5.1 per cent, according to 2023 research from consulting firm Mercer. Allison Venditti, Moms at Work's founder, found the gap striking even though she had long suspected there was a connection between motherhood and job loss. She's heard many stories of pregnant women or new moms losing their jobs. Some, like Kharlamova, were terminated as part of a larger group of layoffs because their employer was closing or downsizing, which means they likely would have lost their jobs regardless. However, Venditti suspects that some companies add pregnant women or mothers to broader layoff lists because they're 'out of sight, out of mind' and easy to cut when managers are asked to let go of staff. Others terminate them because they worry parenting will get in the way of work or reduce productivity, she said. When Venditti broached the phenomenon with other people, she says they told her things such as, 'it's not a real problem' or 'anecdotally hearing it from a couple of women doesn't make it true.' Realizing that 'in order to fix the problem, you have to show that it's a problem,' she set off to collect data. At 15 per cent, the findings suggests this group has more than three times the involuntary departure rate as the broader working population. That wound up being 'validating' for Deborah Hudson, a Toronto employment lawyer whose firm co-funded the survey. She's had at least 100 clients, including three in a recent week, draw a link between their pregnancies and their unemployment. Employers cannot lay off workers because they've taken leave but are allowed to terminate employees during their leave if the reason for the cut is entirely unrelated to them being pregnant or giving birth, Hudson said. That means moms on parental leave can legally be laid off if their employer goes out of business, closes one of its divisions or cuts a wide swath of its workforce to cope with mounting costs. But a company can't hire someone to temporarily cover a leave and then terminate the original worker to give the job to their replacement for the long term, Hudson says, because Canadian laws dictate that employees on parental leave must be reinstated to their original position or a comparable role upon their return. In these cases and others, employers are betting their employees won't go to lawyers, she says. Employers that cut staff as a result of their impending or current parental status are often hoping workers won't have the time, energy or funding to fight them, Venditti said. When they do, she said it often ends up in a settlement because no one wants to endure a lengthy and expensive legal process. 'These are women who have been on maternity leave and are often getting 55 per cent (of their wages through employment insurance) who need to go back to work and are, in most instances, not in a financial position to go after their company because they're trying to find daycare and a new job,' she said. While the bulk of Canadian mothers Moms at Work surveyed kept their jobs through pregnancy, 16 per cent were denied flexible work during that time and 11 per cent said they were discouraged from attending prenatal appointments. After giving birth but still on leave, 21 per cent said they were pushed to work while off with their baby and 29 per cent reported feeling pressured to return early. When they were back on the job, 26 per cent reported reduced earnings because they were demoted to lower paying jobs or got fewer bonuses and commissions. Twenty-five per cent were denied promotions and one in six were reassigned 'undesirable duties.' Those numbers suggest to Venditti that 'women are coming back to organizations that are making it very clear that they don't want them there.' 'If they're not pushing you out the door, many places are trying,' she said. Companies should instead think more long-term, said Beth Wanner, a Regina-based marketing executive who started Mother Cover, a firm supporting workers that take leave. She said about a third of parents leave their jobs within 18 months of returning from parental leave. Many make the leap to new companies because they felt unsupported during or after pregnancy at their last employer but would have stuck around if they were afforded more flexible work hours or weren't overlooked for promotions or raises. With companies spending up to 200 per cent of someone's salary to replace employees gone for good and pouring months into training new workers, she said there's not just a moral case but also a business case for them to treat women better during and after their pregnancies. 'This isn't about charity,' she said. 'This isn't about just doing what's right.' It isn't only companies with a role to play. Venditti said there is much the federal government can do as well. Because Canada's current employment insurance program requires recipients to have worked between 420 and 700 hours prior to a leave, when moms lose their jobs during or following pregnancy, they've likely burned through all of or most of their eligibility. She'd like to see income support for mothers not be contingent on hours worked and be more generous than EI, which pays up to 55 per cent of a woman's salary. She envisions those supports could be offered through a program dedicated just for parental leave, rather than the traditional EI system. 'EI was designed as a protection but many, many, many people don't qualify for it anymore,' she said. 'The bottom line is, EI isn't working for most mothers.' This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 11, 2025. Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press
