WATCH ABOVE: The Alberta economy is booming. But, with that boom, comes worker shortages. As Vinesh Pratap explains, a Stony Plain business had to close its doors because it couldn’t find employees.
EDMONTON – Parkland Packers has been in business since 1976. At least it was, until Aug. 2, 2014.
In the summer, owner Hermann Knupp let his 12 employees go and closed down the nearly 40-year-old meat packing business.
“Right now, we can’t sell anything, we don’t do production of anything, because of the shortage of the staff, of qualified staff,” said Knupp.
“You know the funny part is, our daughter was in Greece last week and she ran into people from Stony Plain and in Greece they said ‘is that ever sad, I can’t get my meat anymore from Parkland Packers’,” said Knupp, reminiscently.
Knupp recounted weekends where his market would be flooded with shoppers; sometimes seeing 200 customers in a day.
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Parkland Packers closed down because of a domino effect that started when the company lost a skilled employee, who was crucial to production in the processing plant.
“It started in spring when my last employee had to call his employer, says he’s going to be looking for something else, for something different, going to go on his own,” explained Knupp.
“Since May, we tried to advertise in the paper… in the job bank looking for a qualified meat cutter, or a foreman for the slaughter house. No applications.”
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Knupp did receive a few inquiries from potential employees, but nothing came out of them. Some inquiries were made from as far away as Saudi Arabia.
“We pay good wages. We paid over $20 to $25/hour as a meat cutter,” said Knupp.
However, even those wages were not enough to find the six skilled workers needed to keep Parkland Packers properly staffed.
“Now you don’t even want to go to town because everybody is asking, ‘Hermann when are you going to open up again?’… I have no answer.”
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