Job Loss in Summerside

This is a major blow to a community such as ours. 177 jobs moved out of a community of 14,000 will be felt by our shops and services. I was sick to my stomach as I know what it is like to have someone in your family have a major decision to make such as this. We will need to work really hard to replace some of the job loss this community has seen in the last while. It will take a joint effort with the City, Province, SRDC, and Chamber of Commerce working together to develop a strategy to encourage new business development.

Call centre jobs leave Summerside for Charlottetown
Last Updated: Thursday, February 18, 2010 10:02 PM AT
CBC News
Trina Gordon, who owns a restaurant in the same building as the call centre, described the Summerside office as chaotic and sad Thursday. (CBC)
A major call centre on P.E.I. is closing its Summerside office and consolidating all its services in Charlottetown.
All 177 employees in Summerside are being given the option of working in Charlottetown.
The two call centres were established by Watts Communications in 1996 and 1998, but were more recently operated under the name Resolve. In July of last year, they were taken over by Davis + Henderson.
Tom Band, vice-president of call centre operations for the company, said the decision to consolidate was made because the firm doesn't need all the space in the two buildings.
"When we looked at our short-term growth needs and our long-term growth needs and the capacity available to us in our two sites, it was an easy choice for us to select Charlottetown," said Band.
'To say I'm disappointed would be an understatement.'— Bruce MacDougall, deputy mayor, Summerside
"Our technology, our infrastructure and capacity for future growth can be accommodated in Charlottetown itself. It would just not be possible, unfortunately, in Summerside."
The news came as a shock to the Summerside employees, who found out Thursday. Davis + Henderson is one of the biggest employers in the city.
"It's pretty chaotic in there right now," said Trina Gordon, who owns a restaurant in the same building as the call centre.
"I'm just standing back watching people, and there's people, you know, fighting over the phones, there's people calling schools to see if they can get into schools, there's people calling their families to tell their families before they hear it on the news, and there's a lot of people crying, you know. It's chaotic and it's sad."
Band said the company is doing what it can to ease the transition. Summerside employees are being given a retention bonus if they stay on and a relocation allowance.
But that does nothing to soften the blow for the city of Summerside, where there are suddenly 177 fewer jobs.
"To say I'm disappointed would be an understatement. We weren't expecting this one," said deputy mayor Bruce MacDougall.
"News like this for any community is devastating, and especially for Summerside."
Still, Summerside city council hasn't given up on the company or the jobs, said MacDougall.
"I think the first thing we have to do is to contact the company, see if there's an opportunity we can sit down with ourselves and the province, maybe come up with some incentives for them to stay in Summerside," he said.
The employees in Summerside who decide to transfer will be brought into the Charlottetown centre in three phases beginning in April. The facility in Summerside will close by the end of May, when Davis + Henderson plans to have all 470 of its P.E.I. workers in Charlottetown.
Once the consolidation is complete the Charlottetown centre will employ 470 people.
Davis + Henderson, founded in 1875, employs 4,700 people in Canada, including 888 in the Maritimes.