After years of assisting people in finding gainful employment, the workers at Osoyoos’ WorkZone will soon have to direct their skills onto themselves as the office will be closing its doors on March 30, 2012.
Dian Zorn (left), Ania Przepierzynska (centre) and Jenny Taylor (right) stand in the Osoyoos WorkZone office on Thursday, January 12. The trio have been a WorkZone team for the past four years but will have to seek new employment come March 30 as WorkZone will be closing its doors and handing over services to the Open Door Group. Photo by Mathew White.
“It’s like anything else, sometimes the time has just come,” said Verlaine Murphy, owner and manager of WorkZone. “I believe we did an excellent job. We’ve got wonderful staff down there. We definitely feel as part of the community, but sometimes it’s time for somebody else to come in with a different view and a different vision and I think the community will benefit by it.”
In 2008, the province of British Columbia made an agreement with the federal government called the “Canada-British Columbia Labour Market Agreement.” Basically, the plan outlined a number of services previously provided by the federal government being handed over to the provincial government. As the plan came into effect, it became apparent that there were a number of similar services being offered by more than one company.
“You ultimately had a duplication of services where different agencies in town were providing the same services under different funding pots,” said Murphy. “So the province started a long-term study looking at how it could better serve the citizens of the province by making all services available to all people and cutting out all this duplication.”
After a year of meetings, discussions and information sessions, the province came out with an official request for proposals in March 2011. It was then up to the different agencies to bid on specific areas they would like to take responsibility for.
“VerTek Diversified, the company that operates WorkZone, chose at that last minute that this really wasn’t a fit for us anymore and it was time for us to move on and do other things so we didn’t end up submitting a proposal,” said Murphy.
Instead, WorkZone will be taken over by the Open Door Group at the beginning of April, after working throughout the month of March to transfer client files over to the new company (with written permission from the clients). This will ensure there is not a gap in services.
The news isn’t coming as a surprise to WorkZone employees, however, as the staff were informed last year of the impending closure. Two full-time employees will be laid off in Osoyoos, as well as a few employees who make the commute to Osoyoos from the Oliver and Penticton offices.
WorkZone first opened its doors in Osoyoos in June 2003. Since 2005, the Osoyoos office has assisted 774 individuals in developing action plans to gain sustainable employment – 540 of which who were successful. It should be noted though that anyone who WorkZone was unable to contact was listed as unemployed, so the number of successful applicants is actually higher. In total, over the past seven years more than 46,000 people have used the WorkZone resources in Osoyoos in one way or another.
