With oil prices plunging, the pink slips are starting to fly in Alberta’s Oil Sands.
It’s expected that some of the thousands of woodworkers who left our region’s logging operations some years back when the sector hit rock bottom in 2008 to work in the oil patch, could be headed back to Vancouver Island in search of a job.
But Rick Wangler, First Vice President of the Steelworkers union Local 1-1937, says there may not be logging jobs for them immediately upon their return.
But Wangler says the long term outlook suggests a huge number of vacancies in the lumber sector.
Meanwhile Wangler says it’s encouraging to see lumber prices firming up, adding the low Canadian dollar and low oil prices also helps the sector.
Oil prices have been on a steady downward slide since June, after Saudi Arabia refused to cut oil production in a bid to retain global market share.
