Editor’s note: This is the first of two articles featuring a discussion with Sean Murray, who has been leading a local committee seeking solutions to strengthen Pictou County’s economy.
Michelin, one of the area’s larger and stable employers, announced it was downsizing its workforce and closing an entire production line.
The announcement shook the foundation of industrial Pictou County and left people wondering when the next shoe would drop. Sure, there were still businesses surviving and thriving in the county, including Sobeys Inc. and Northern Pulp, but many people feared when one successful business started to crack, others would follow.
Not long after the Michelin announcement, four Liberal cabinet ministers rode into town to speak with business leaders assuring them help was on the way. But instead of taking the problems back to Halifax for a solution, they asked local businessman Sean Murray, president and CEO of Advocate Printing, to lead the charge for a better, stronger economy.
During an interview this week in the boardroom of his company, Murray said he was asked to write a report for the province, but it has grown into much more. It has turned into hope.
“I want to make sure people know that it is about Pictou County collectively working together for a change. It is not about someone parachuting in from government to fix it and its not any one entity to empower and make Pictou County more successful.”
Murray says Pictou County has had it good for a long time with a strong industrial base and business success.
“Pictou County has always done well on entrepreneurism and the industrial sector. Quite frankly, we got a little fat and lazy on the industrial sector. We had great jobs through TrentonWorks and Northern Pulp and Michelin, Sobeys and Scotsburn and others and we never had the crisis many other areas had.
“We had a few blips, but they were absorbed into the economy. Westray was blip, but at that time, Michelin expanded, Sobeys expanded, Northern Pulp expanded, Scotsburn expanded and at that time, you saw the economy blossom. A new head office at Sobeys showed up, $100,000 went into Michelin, so incredible things happened and the community rallied around it.
If you look at TrentonWorks, those were a lot of jobs that disbursed into the economy, but the economy at the time was on an upswing so many people were hiring and quite frankly, Western Canada took a lot of those people.”
He said dependency on big industrial companies hasn't helped the local economy in the long run because it took the focus off entrepreneurship for far too long.
“Our biggest challenge now is that reliance on the large industries has not put as much focus on the mid-size and small organizations within Pictou County. We don’t have as many growth companies ready to step up and take the mantel and drive our companies.
Certainly Sobeys is still a great employer and it will continue to hire, but we have to face reality: they are now a national player and most of the jobs are going to happen somewhere else.
Our hope is that Michelin, who has been an excellent employer in our community, will find additional work and products they can sell from their Granton plants. To be fair, the reaction to their downsizing has been incredible and they have not dropped as many people to date as they expected they would.”
Pictou County has many challenges including a lack of workers.
“We had the Convergys announcement and they decided to stay, but the really nice thing from the Convergys announcement was there was instant interest from other people looking to take up that call centre because Pictou County has a reputation for excellence in customer service within that call centre sector. The challenge with our call centres in Pictou County is that we can’t seem to find enough people.
“The ready workforce is a huge challenge. When I say we can’t find enough people, for a long time, they wanted that site to be 450-500 people and they can’t seem to get back that 260-300 range. In a company the size of a Convergys, it becomes hard to manage a small spot versus one of those larger spots.”
The lack of people eligible to work is also coupled with the fact that many people in Pictou County are not employable, he said.
“We also have a challenge of a population in Pictou County not ready for the workforce. The high illiteracy rates in rural Atlantic Canada is a challenge. There is no good way to say this… people that are on social assistance find it’s far better to live in rural areas than urban areas because the cost of housing is far lower.
“A company also has to look inward see if its rate of pay, expectations and training are good for the area, but certainly our unemployment rate is high, but if you talk about business people in Pictou County, they say they can’t hire.
“It is really hard for us here to get somebody. If you are looking for unskilled, not even hiring a high school education, it’s still hard. What you will end up with is maybe one or two people it looks like it’s worth hiring and, generally, you have to hire four before you get one person willing to stay up more than a week. They will show up for work, but not show up again. You talk to the quick service restaurant industry and they have a huge problem, which, this is where the temporary foreign worker challenge comes from.”
If employers are lucky enough to find good employees, Murray said it is challenging to keep people from going to Western Canada for better pay and where rewards come in quicker.
“We have the other challenge: if you take that individual that has ambition and is willing to work, it becomes very difficult once you train them. As soon as they have any technical or trade skills, they are being recruited at significant wages to Western Canada.
“It used to be someone could come in here to Atlantic Canada and earn a couple of dollars over minimum wage and, very quickly, earn a skilled labour’s wage.”
People need to see that Pictou County is a better place to live and work, he said.
“It really takes a mind-set change. People talk about this committee but, right now, what there really is, is a loose affiliation of people. I have been going after people and trying to find the low-hanging fruit. What makes Pictou County better? The Department of Labour and Workforce Nova Scotia are trying to empower the workforce and get them educated to find opportunity for them. They mean well, they have people on the ground, we have all kinds of empowerment programs throughout Pictou County that are trying to get people out of a desperate situation. When we talk about people not ready for the workforce, they are not bad people, they are just put in a desperate situation.”
The recent round of announcements in the industrial sector and downturn in the economy had many business people treading water to stay alive rather than being able to invest in their own business.
“We had a challenge where we had knocks to our industrial base and that has meant that there has been minimal growth within some of the service industries and other industries which has meant many entrepreneurs and business owners have not been promoting and hiring to middle management.
“So we tend to have these organizations that are somewhat bipolar. You have the team that is operating and then you have very thin management at the top because of the economics of the business. As such, by not having people move to middle level, we have two challenges. We have the middle-income challenge and this also becomes a huge succession challenge. What happens when those senior leaders that are now 50, 60, 70 years old, need to step out and retire? They are withering and closing down.”
Murray said recent negative media attention on the county has also made it difficult to get people interested in doing business here.
“People are leading with the negative all of the time. There are businesses that are not looking at Pictou County right now simply until that pulp mill discussion gets finished. It is so polarized and it is getting national radio, TV news and newspapers. When I was in Chicago last week, someone who had never been to Nova Scotia, when they found out where I was from, wanted to know why I lived there because it was such a polluted community.
“It’s so unfortunate because the arguments are so polarized from their own point of view. They are arguing two different languages. Those on the Clean Pictou County side are arguing health and wellness. A perfect argument, it’s smart, it’s right and then the mill is arguing the economy. Somewhere along the way we have to find a common language so we can move it forward.”
Part two of this interview with Sean Murray will be published in Tuesday’s paper where he offers some solutions to these challenges and expresses why Pictou County has a lot to be hopeful for.
