Canada Oil Patch-From $200,000 A Year To Zero For Some Oil Patch Workers

Source: Our Windsor

In the boom, truck mechanics earned six figures in Fort McMurray. Now many scramble to find any work at all

Every desk in the Alberta Works employment centre in Fort McMurray is occupied by noon on a Monday, with several more people waiting on the periphery for a chance to log on to the computers and scan a slim list of job prospects.

Some 400 people walk through its doors every day, including labourers, cleaners, bus drivers and trades people. More recently it also includes engineers and other professionals, says acting director Samra Ilyas.

The unemployment rate in Fort McMurray has nearly doubled in the last year to 8.6 per cent from 4.6 per cent, according to Statistics Canada. The national average is 7 per cent.

Joe Cook has been out of work since August, 2015. The 48-year-old from St. Catherines, has been in Fort McMurray since 2009. With industrial jobs in Ontario drying up, he came in search of steady work.

At its peak, jobs in the oil sands for welders, heavy truck mechanics and other skilled trades were paying as much as $200,000 with overtime, he says. But the cost of living is also high. Demand for housing got so tight, homeowners were charging $1,000 a month for a bedroom.

The joke among incoming workers was you could get a job your first day in town but have to sleep in your car, he says.

Cook is sticking it out in Fort McMurray in part because there’s nothing to go back to in Ontario. All the industrial plants in Wallaceburg, where he used to work have closed down.

That’s a sentiment echoed by Andrew Tayes. The 30-year-old New Brunswick native considers himself one of the lucky ones. After four years working here, the 30-year-old from New Brunswick still has a job at an oil sands site north of Fort McMurray.

It’s a punishing routine. Like many oil sands workers, Tayes works 12-hour shifts 20 days a month, then gets 10 days off. But driving a 150-tonne truck hauling muskeg for oil sands production has given him a six figure income, a nice house back home in Browns Flat, a small community outside Saint John, and paid for his sons’ hockey equipment.

With a high school diploma and some additional training, a full-time heavy truck operator can make $130,000 a year. “I’d be lucky to make $30,000 back home,” Tayes said.

Tayes is one of an estimated 40,000 people who fly in and fly out of the camps on a regular basis. When he’s on the job, he stays at one of the many work camps on site an hour or so outside of town. Room and board is covered by the employer and there’s virtually nowhere to spend your money.

But these workers were also among the first to be hit when the oil companies began cutting spending on new growth.

That’s had a domino effect on Fort McMurray, by reducing demand for security guards, cleaners, the shuttle buses that would take them out to the site, caterers and taxi drivers.

The crew Tayes works on is down to about a dozen people from 50 or 60. Most of the others have been laid off and gone home, to New Brunswick or Newfoundland, Kelowna B.C, or Red Deer, Alberta.

For those left behind, the work contracts are shorter now, down from several years at a time to just a few months. And the free direct charter flights from home out East to camp have been replaced by a $350 flight allowance on a commercial flight that hops through Toronto and Calgary.

“We’re not worried right now. But in another two or three months (when his latest contract expires), we will be,” he says.

But like many here, Tayes believes the price of oil will eventually bounce back. “We all know it’s going to happen eventually, it’s just a matter of when.”

Back at the employment office, Joe Cook says he feels the same way. “It’ll come back,” he says. “Eventually.”