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Photo Pru Sowers
Sharon Daly would work more in the winter if there were retail jobs available. |
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Photo Pru Sowers
Kimber Billow-Griffeth, a retiree, works year-round at Utilities, preferring the company of customers to staying at home. |
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Workforce weighs in
Employees paint alternate picture of business challenges
By Pru Sowers
Banner Staff
PROVINCETOWN — Conspicuously missing from the recent business summit here, where business owners and town officials weighed in on the challenging local business climate, was any input from local workers, the people on the front line of commerce.
In fact, when asked their opinion on the local workforce, several employers were critical of the resident working population, saying they were not interested in working year-round, had drug problems and spent their winters happily collecting unemployment benefits.
But recent interviews with several year-round residents who work here found a different picture. While there are undoubtedly people with substance abuse problems in Provincetown and others who choose not to work for some reason, the interviewees said the workforce challenges facing the town are caused in large part by employers. Most people want — and need — to work in the winter, they said, but can’t because there are no jobs or the jobs that are available are unpredictable in terms of the hours available and wages paid.
“If [employees] were making a decent wage, they’d work. If you’re earning more than you’re collecting [in unemployment], then they would do it,” said David “Dixie” Federico, who has worked in the restaurant industry in Provincetown for 25 years.
“It may be better to stay home with my kids and catch up on life than work for $8.50 an hour,” said a long-time waitress, who collects unemployment in the winter and asked not to be identified. “If there were a restaurant open in the winter that needed help, I’d be there.”
Another challenge is that for the few jobs that are available in the winter, when most of the businesses up and down Commercial Street close, the number of available hours for employees is often unpredictable. It’s based on the customer traffic that does or does not show up, forcing employers to adjust the hours their store or restaurant is open.
“They promise you four or five days of work. Then all of a sudden business is slow so they want you to work only on weekends,” said Sebastian Araujo, who worked in the local retail sector until deciding to become a property manager. “The only way to deal with Provincetown is to work for yourself.”
Provincetown has a long employment history of people working two, three or more jobs in the summer and then taking the winters off. Artists in particular have long been drawn by the ability to make a year’s wages during the summer, then spend the winter painting or writing.
But the soaring cost of housing that has affected Cape Cod over the past several years has made it difficult for lower income workers to make it through the winter, even with a weekly unemployment check. Town officials have made it a priority to find ways to promote a year-round economy, largely to assist the economic well-being of the local population.
That has proven particularly difficult in Provincetown, renowned for its summer activities. The number of businesses open year-round has steadily declined, forcing some workers to move out of town and others to struggle to remain.
Sharon Daly has lived in Provincetown for six years, employed for all of them at Roots for the Home and Garden on Commercial Street. She goes from working six days a week in the summer to one day a week in the winter, earning under the limit allowed by unemployment benefit rules.
“I’d be happy working four days a week. There is that boredom factor that sets in,” she said. “But the reality is we don’t have the customer base [in winter] and there is no reason to keep a store open given the cost of electricity and heat.”
Daly could look for another job in Provincetown, but at age 60, isn’t interested in the more strenuous housekeeping jobs that sometimes go begging at guesthouses in the winter. But she is one of the lucky ones, having enough money to get through until summer.
“I’m comfortable. But there are people who struggle, artists, kids in their 20s who don’t have savings,” she said.
Some year-round workers cope with the loss of winter wages by striking out on their own. Danielle Freeman has worked at clothing store Diane Z for 14 years, putting in 60-hour weeks in the summer and cutting back to occasional weekends in the winter. While she treats the winter as a vacation, visiting friends and traveling, she also earns additional income by doing tailoring and hemming for clients.
“I’m busy all the time, I can’t stand to stay still,” she said, adding, “I’m a work-alcoholic,” a trait that would seem to appeal to local employers who complain they can’t find enough help in the winter.
The winter work schedule does appeal to one group of local employees: retirees. Kimber Billow-Griffeth works year-round at Utilities, a trendy housewares store on Commercial Street. He is the only employee in the winter, putting in three days a week even though he has a pension from his career as a high school music teacher.
“I like to work. I just like to be around people. It’s kind of an extension of teaching,” he said.
But that work ethic does not always extend to the younger men and women who work at Utilities in the summer, Billow-Griffeth said. Mostly foreign, because local high school kids “never apply” for work at Utilities, Billow-Griffeth, said he remembers one 20-year-old who worked for one day then quit, saying it was too much work.
“I’m 20 years older than this guy who said it was ‘way too much work for me,’” he said.
“It’s a work ethic,” added Joe Alleva, who works at the front desk at the Brass Key Guesthouse. “I have 23-year-olds and I say, ‘pick up that guest’s suitcase’ and they say, ‘I can’t.’”
So apparently a “slacker” mentality does appear creeping into the Provincetown workforce at times. So does working off the books, apparently a time-honored tradition here.
“Everything in town is off the books,” Araujo said. “There are places in town that only take cash so can pay cash.”
But working off the books means an employee cannot apply for unemployment benefits. And with the number of winter jobs diminishing in Provincetown, that benefits check is often the only thing enabling workers to remain in town, a town that says it desperately needs a year-round population in order to remain a viable community.
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Mar 27th, 2008