Nearly 600 people in New Brunswick will be thrown out of work when Sears locations in this province are shuttered, 235 of those from the Saint John call centre alone.
Paul Fudge is chief financial officer of Opportunities New Brunswick, which agreed to provide $4.3M in payroll rebates to Sears, and he tells us their biggest concern right now is the people affected by the layoffs.
“We’ve actually mobilized our internal teams and are working with PETL to help direct affected employees to assistance programs that the province has available for them. We’ve also engaged our full investment attraction team to see if there’s any additional deals on the horizon that they can speed up,” says Fudge.
“We’re trying to see where we can help as quickly as possible even though it’s not necessarily what our mandate is, but we’re trying to help the employees.”
Fudge says they have not paid Sears a cent and no money has been advanced by the province whatsoever to the company.
