Sears holds job fair for displaced employees

The Sears warehouse and distribution centre in Belleville held a job fair at its College Street facility on Wednesday.

“It’s a shame what’s happened but you know at the end of the day there are great opportunities out there for people and we’re trying to help find them jobs through processes like this across the country,” explains Jeff Abbott, the vice-president of Supply Chain and Logistics for Sears Canada. “It’s not the outcome that any of us had hoped for.”

In all, 59 companies were on hand to meet with job seekers still grappling with the news that Sears Canada is liquidating and shuttering stores across Canada. The City of Belleville helped spearhead the job fair which included jobs spanning from manufacturing to health care to farming and finance.

The majority of operations at the Belleville and Montreal sites will cease on Dec. 22,2017 with the call centres remaining open into the New Year.

“What we’re doing here is focusing on the retail small ticket replenishment to the store and converting what was the e-com inventory into retail to move it to the store so it can be sold,” says Abbott.

There are 660 people who work at Sears’s Belleville location.