Wilf Falk, Manitoba's folksy but blunt chief statistician, was in Thompson Sept. 26, representing NDP Minister of Entrepreneurship, Training and Trade Peter Bjornson's Advisory Council on Workforce Development, as he gave a talk to local employers on the Business and Labour Market Conditions Sector Council Survey conducted by the Manitoba Bureau of Statistics on behalf of the province's 16 sector councils last fall.
The Advisory Council on Workforce Development provides recommendations and advice to Bjornson on current and future workforce trends and labour market information.
While there were plenty of nuggets of interesting information in Falk's 33-minute pre-dinner presentation at Riverlodge Place on Jasper Drive, there weren't a lot of surprising new revelations.
The news that there is "lots of churn in the labour market, more so in the private sector" and that "poaching" of trained employees from their competitors, rather than investing in training their existing workforce, is far too common among Manitoba employers - or that "uncompetitive compensation and benefits" is an ongoing issue also - wasn't so much new news as it was Falk reiterating some of the more problematic areas for employers highlighted by the survey.
The statistical snapshot was taken between October and December last year and garnered 611 respondents - 85 per cent from the private sector and the remaining 15 per cent from non-profits - for a response rate of 26 per cent. Fifty-six per cent of the responding businesses had less than 25 employees.
Four out of five - 80 per cent of the large Northern Manitoba Sector Council employers - responded to the survey, along with four additional Northern employers, which also responded.
Falk said he was here last March for a Manitoba Federation of Non-profit Organizations (MFNPO) workshop to discuss the results of their non-profit survey and "and one of the things we heard at the Thompson workshop here was participants telling us that the non-profit world in Thompson was a bit of a revolving door; that people were moving between organizations and it was the same people sort of circulating and they were having trouble getting funding."
The Manitoba Bureau of Statistics is the central statistical agency of the Province of Manitoba. Falk has an MSc in statistics from the University of Manitoba.
Falk said Northern sector council employers often have different issues than their southern Manitoba counterparts. While many of the latter weren't for the most part hiring during the period of the survey, all four of the big businesses responding in the North were, having about 170 vacancies in total. The North also had a higher number of employees retiring, Falk said.
The Northern Manitoba Sector Council was formed in September 2007 as a not-for-profit corporation. The interest in creating this council, Industry participants in mining, forestry and energy who realized that the necessary skilled people were no longer readily available for their enterprises, Doug Lauvstad, public sector director at the University College of the North (UCN) in The Pas and executive director of the Northern Manitoba Sector Council, said in May 2008. The key industry participants originally five years ago were Vale, HudBay Minerals Inc., Garson Gold Mines, later acquired by Alexis Mineral Corporation, which is now known as QMX Gold, Crowflight Resources, now known as CaNickel Mining Ltd., Tolko Ltd., Louisiana Pacific and Manitoba Hydro.
