Angela Rankin was laid off from Zellers after 13 years. At age 50 she's wondering what's next for her.
Angela Rankin knows exactly how much Target paid Zellers for the leases to 220 stores across Canada.
It wasn’t a billion. It was $1.8-billion -- $1.825-billion to be more precise.
Rankin was let go on July 28 from the Zellers at Dufferin and Dupont in Toronto after 13 years working the cash, the sales floor and as a pharmacy technician, with nothing more than the legally mandated severance pay her employers were required to give.
“It’s selfishness. It’s sad,” says Rankin, 50, a mother of one who helps support cousins in Jamaica.
“I don’t know what they’re thinking. I don’t know where their mind is. It’s greediness.”
Rankin will speak at a demonstration led by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union on Wednesday, Aug. 22, at 11 a.m., in front of Target’s Canadian headquarters in Mississauga.
“Target needs to do the right thing – keep the workers and respect their wages and benefits,” says Kevin Shimmin, national representative of the UFCW Canada,
Target posted earnings Wednesday of $704 million (U.S.), or $1.06 per share, in the period ended July 30. Overall revenue rose 3.5 per cent to $16.45 million in the quarter. Revenue at stores opened at least a year rose 3.1 per cent.
The chain will open its first stores in Canada in 2013.
Rankin worked 28 hours a week at Zellers and when she left she was earning $11.97 an hour. She kept a second job to make ends meet. She worked in security for eight years. She works part-time for the UFCW.
Now, at 50, she’s wondering what’s next. Should she apply for another retail job? Should she go back to school? She knows she loves helping people any way she can.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” says Kendra Coulter, a professor at the Centre for Labour Studies at Brock University.
“This is a decision that has been made at the corporate level by Target and Zellers and HBC.”
She blames Stephen Harper’s Conservative government for failing to protect workers.
“If a very profitable foreign company is going to come into our country to rebrand stores, our citizens deserve respect and some criteria have to be met. They’re not building infrastructure from scratch, they’re not creating an enterprise that didn’t exist, they are rebranding stores,” said Coulter.
Of the 220 Zellers leaseholds originally purchased in 2011, Target kept 189. It transferred 45 of the 189 to other retailers, including 39 to Walmart. In July, HBC announced that it would be closing its remaining 85 stores.
There were 273 Zellers locations in Canada before the deals were made, each location employing between 100 and 150 people. About 15 Zellers stores were unionized.
That means at least 27,300 people across Canada lost their jobs as a result of the transactions.
Continue reading here.
It wasn’t a billion. It was $1.8-billion -- $1.825-billion to be more precise.
Rankin was let go on July 28 from the Zellers at Dufferin and Dupont in Toronto after 13 years working the cash, the sales floor and as a pharmacy technician, with nothing more than the legally mandated severance pay her employers were required to give.
“It’s selfishness. It’s sad,” says Rankin, 50, a mother of one who helps support cousins in Jamaica.
“I don’t know what they’re thinking. I don’t know where their mind is. It’s greediness.”
Rankin will speak at a demonstration led by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union on Wednesday, Aug. 22, at 11 a.m., in front of Target’s Canadian headquarters in Mississauga.
“Target needs to do the right thing – keep the workers and respect their wages and benefits,” says Kevin Shimmin, national representative of the UFCW Canada,
Target posted earnings Wednesday of $704 million (U.S.), or $1.06 per share, in the period ended July 30. Overall revenue rose 3.5 per cent to $16.45 million in the quarter. Revenue at stores opened at least a year rose 3.1 per cent.
The chain will open its first stores in Canada in 2013.
Rankin worked 28 hours a week at Zellers and when she left she was earning $11.97 an hour. She kept a second job to make ends meet. She worked in security for eight years. She works part-time for the UFCW.
Now, at 50, she’s wondering what’s next. Should she apply for another retail job? Should she go back to school? She knows she loves helping people any way she can.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” says Kendra Coulter, a professor at the Centre for Labour Studies at Brock University.
“This is a decision that has been made at the corporate level by Target and Zellers and HBC.”
She blames Stephen Harper’s Conservative government for failing to protect workers.
“If a very profitable foreign company is going to come into our country to rebrand stores, our citizens deserve respect and some criteria have to be met. They’re not building infrastructure from scratch, they’re not creating an enterprise that didn’t exist, they are rebranding stores,” said Coulter.
Of the 220 Zellers leaseholds originally purchased in 2011, Target kept 189. It transferred 45 of the 189 to other retailers, including 39 to Walmart. In July, HBC announced that it would be closing its remaining 85 stores.
There were 273 Zellers locations in Canada before the deals were made, each location employing between 100 and 150 people. About 15 Zellers stores were unionized.
That means at least 27,300 people across Canada lost their jobs as a result of the transactions.
Continue reading here.
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