Oil boom has employers running on empty

SIDNEY, Mont. – Ira Lake measures success in batches of caramel rolls.

Lately, the number of batches is up, and that’s good. The catch is, he can’t seem to hire enough people to bake them.

The owner of Sidney’s M&M Cafe is not alone in his predicament. Sidney’s Main Street is peppered with help-wanted signs.

The worker crunch started 2 1/2 years ago, when the sleeping giant awoke west of town. Oil is again pumping lifeblood into the region. But the oil industry’s $25-an-hour jobs have tipped the balance of the local economy.

“How do you begin to compete against that?” asked Pam Cayer, who is short two or three body technicians at North Star Auto Body & Glass, which she owns with her husband, S.J. “And how do you blame anybody?”

Dolph Harris, owner of Sidney Millwork Co., a cabinet-making shop, sometimes wonders if life in Sidney wasn’t better before oil hit $60 a barrel.

“The whole atmosphere has changed here,” he said. “It’s kind of sad when you have more work than employees.”

Full staff for Harris is 50 employees, and he’s running at less than half that.

“We’ve lost some very talented people,” he said. “Part of it’s our fault. We need, in some areas, to revamp our thinking.”

After owning the company for 28 years, Harris is doing just that. If the workers aren’t to be had close by, he grabs them from wherever he can. And he takes them for as long as they’re available.

Months ago, Harris contacted a Billings businessman who brings in legal foreign workers. Harris hopes to have half a dozen on the payroll after the first of the year. He wonders where they will live and how they will adjust to Sidney, but he is willing to give it a try.

Steve Olson, manager of the job service offices in Glendive and Sidney, has watched job openings jump 300 percent in the past three years. The energy industry plays a key role, he said.

But the high-paying jobs in the oil field have spawned a game of musical jobs. Some local workers who once needed two jobs to make ends meet now can make it on one, he said. Some spouses and significant others now have the option of staying home.

Sidney’s struggle can be measured by the most recent labor statistics. As of October, Richland County was running at 2.3 percent unemployment – the sixth-lowest total of the state’s 56 counties.

In Yellowstone County, with 2.6 percent unemployment, employers can draw from a pool of 81,000 potential workers. But in Richland County, the entire labor force is limited to about 5,300 people – and it’s estimated that a mere 122 of them are still unemployed.

John Francis, owner of the local McDonald’s, ran a quarter-page newspaper ad, offering wages between $7.50 and $10 an hour, with medical coverage, a 401(k) and a bonus program. He got zero applicants.

To find more employees, Sidney business owners are bumping up wages, providing more benefits and offering more flexible work schedules. Some take it a step further.

At McDonald’s, Francis signed up for a pilot program that directs drive-through orders to a California call center. A person more than 1,000 miles away takes the order, then sends it back to Sidney via the Internet.

While employers troll far-off labor pools, the small Eastern Montana town is simultaneously attracting job seekers from far-off locales. People from Texas, Hawaii, Canada and even the Middle East have called to inquire, Olson said.

“The news is definitely out,” he said.

John Beagle, owner of Beagle Properties in Sidney, says the home-buyers’ market is extremely tight, rentals are even worse and motels are full almost every night.

“Small towns like Sidney, they struggle through this type of crisis because nobody wants to invest in small towns,” he said.

With no place for new hires to live, some employers are dabbling in real estate. Sidney Sugar keeps an apartment so new employees have a place to stay until they can find something permanent.

To pick up the slack, many Sidney business owners are turning to family. The tried-and-true practice is nothing new for businesses everywhere, but it’s become do-or-die for too many in Sidney.

Two and a half years ago, just as the oilfields were making a comeback, Lake returned home to let his parents retire. Today, instead of living life in the slow lane, they’re working for him – six to seven hours each day.

“The job needs to be done, so they do it,” he said. “If I didn’t have the family, I’d be in dire straits.”

Even with their help, Lake and his wife, Amy, virtually live at the cafe.

In the long run, Olson sees Sidney’s challenge as a positive for the community.

“When it’s the status quo, there’s not much energy going around,” he said. “When it’s challenging, people come together.”

Meanwhile, Ira Lake has come to peace with the pace. Once you accept it, he said, you make the most of it.

These days at the M&M Cafe, they’re baking twice as many caramel rolls as they did before oil hit $60 a barrel. Still, they’re making less than half as many rolls as they made during the height of the last oil boom

“That’s what’s good,” he said. “Maybe it’ll last longer.”