MILLBROOK - Convergys earned nearly $4 million by creating jobs at its Millbrook contact centre through a provincial rebate program.
Nova Scotia Business Incorporated spokeswoman Sarah Levy said $3.9 million was paid to the company through a six-year payroll rebate program that was signed in 2003 when the company and province announced the call centre was coming to town.
"The rebate helps support a company as it creates new jobs, so it's all about incremental job growth, new job growth," she said.
The company was eligible for a maximum of $6.5 million if it hit all its maximum annual targets for job creation, which would have seen 780 jobs created at the Millbrook location.
A Convergys official said Thursday the location employed about 500 people at its peak and currently has about 250 workers.
The Ohio-based company announced on Wednesday it would be ceasing operation in Millbrook on Sept. 1.
The company has three other sites across the province, including New Glasgow, Dartmouth and Digby. Levy said a conservative estimate of what the company has paid out annually during the past decade in wages and salaries is $50 million.
Levy said the rebate program is a great tool for NSBI.
"It's relatively risk-free," she said, noting some other provinces across the country offer up-front loans. "For us, the company creates the job and then the incentive comes."
Some people have criticized the program, saying companies set up shot and create jobs until the rebate program, and thus government funding, ends.
"It doesn't often correspond with the end of a rebate agreement. It does in this case, but I think you would find that to be the exception and not the rule," Levy said.
Economic development minister Percy Paris told the Canadian Press the province is taking a "serious look" at whether using payroll rebates as a means to attract companies provides value for money to taxpayers. He said the analysis is part of an economic development strategy that will likely be released this fall.
Colchester North MLA Karen Casey said a lot of people, including her constituents, were able to gain valuable skills through training the company offered its employees. She defended the decision to provide government money to the company through the rebate program.
"It was at a time when a lot of folks were looking for work," she said. "I believe it was the right thing to do at the time."
But she also has concerns about the future.
"The history of call centres establishing here and staying here has not been good," she said, noting centres closed in Canso and Cheticamp last fall. "I think we need to take a look at that."
Casey hopes something else will come along to replace the lost jobs.
Truro-Bible Hill MLA Lenore Zann said she was "shocked" to hear the news Wednesday night.
She said government officials would be meeting with the company and employee representatives before an inter-departmental transition team delivers necessary programs to the impacted workers. Those services could include job search advice, career counselling, return to work plans, essential skills training and retraining.
"We're not quite sure exactly when but it's going to happen soon," Zann said.
"I know the fear and the anxiety and the panic that goes along with when a job is done and you don't know where your next dollar is going to come from," said Zann, who has been self-employed except for the past year. "It's really scary ... my heart goes out to the people."
jmalloy@trurodaily.com
