In mid-June, Niverville’s town council announced the introduction of English language classes to the line-up of programming being offered at the Community Resource and Recreation Centre (CRRC). The classes, to be held in the fall, will be fully subsidized by the town. Registration will open August 1.
Council’s purpose in offering these classes is to assist struggling local businesses by hopefully increasing the size of the local labour pool.
“I received a call from a business owner asking for help,” says Mayor Myron Dyck. “They said they cannot find staff.”
Dyck says the business owner had resorted to taxiing people back and forth from Winnipeg to fill their vacant positions.
Following a conversation with the Chamber of Commerce and the rest of council, Dyck instructed staff at the town office to locate and hire a qualified instructor and make the arrangements to launch the first classes as soon as possible.
“If you look at entry-level jobs, I believe you can see who the people and cultures are that are working those jobs,” Dyck says. “Most of them are first-generation Canadians. With the federal government accepting 500,000 immigrants each year, some will find their way to Manitoba and Niverville—and they need jobs. Some have English. Many do not.”
The classes will also check off another proverbial box, Dyck says. They will be an opportunity to fulfill a commitment made by the town to use the CRRC to help immigrants assimilate to Canadian culture. Between the existing cooking classes and the coming English language classes, Dyck feels the town is doing their part.
“[This was] done so businesses will have access to more staff, to stay open more hours, so people can shop in their own town instead of having to leave to go elsewhere,” explains Dyck.
An added benefit, he says, is that people tend to buy or rent homes and shop in the communities in which they find employment. That could produce an added boon to the local economy.
“The struggle is real,” says Niverville Chamber of Commerce vice-president Elvin Krahn. “Fifty-five percent of Canadian entrepreneurs are struggling to hire the workers they need.”
Amanda Wiens, the Chamber’s president, agrees. “This is a concern we have heard echoed by our business community as well,” she says. “Any barriers that we can help remove for those that want to enter the workforce will help our local employers have access to a larger pool of skilled labour.”
Wes Hildebrand, human resources manager for the Niverville Heritage Centre, is all too familiar with the struggle. Between the campus’s personal care home, restaurant, and event centre, staff always seem to be in short supply.
Their greatest need, Hildebrand says, is in support services such as dietary aids, cooks, housekeeping, and custodial staff.
On the event centre side of things, serving and hosting staff are desperately needed. These positions, he adds, are harder to fill because they mostly provide part-time employment.
“People that are past high school or college, they’re wanting more hours,” Hildebrand says. “And so a lot of times we have to rely on the immigrant part of our labour pool for filling in some of those positions.”
A high percentage of the immigrants Hildebrand hires already reside in the Niverville or Ritchot region, he adds.
“We definitely have hired some that have struggled with English, and we’re fine with that,” he says. “We just work with them. But had they had an opportunity to study English in an evening class, that definitely would have made them more comfortable with being here.”
Spectis Moulders of Niverville and its sister company, Exclusive Cabinets, employ a good number of people whose first language is not English. Owner Kenton Pilek currently has about 80 workers between the two plants. For most of them, lack of English fluency isn’t an impediment.
“It depends on what language it is,” Pilek says. “If it was Czechoslovakian, that might be a challenge. With French, English, Spanish, Mexican, Low German, and High German, we get by no problem… I have people here that speak many languages and I speak a few, so we get by.”
Even so, Pilek says he hasn’t hesitated to cover the cost of English language classes when his employees request them. So far, they’ve mostly attended classes at the Steinbach Regional Secondary School.
A course in town, Pilek says, would likely encourage more of his staff to learn English.
Meanwhile, Wiens says that she and the local Chamber are thankful for the open dialogue they have with town council. And they’re especially thankful when council responds in such innovative ways to the needs of the business community.
“The government announced in May that they were investing $1 million into a project that would support the post-COVID recovery of the hardest hit sectors, which includes restaurants, food and beverage, hotels, and supply chain,” Wiens says.
She adds that attracting new employees has been a real struggle in their recovery.