How seasonal workers get one Vermont retailer through the holiday season
November jobs numbers come in Friday morning and one sector to keep an eye on is retail, which typically staffs up at this time of year to handle the holiday shopping rush.
That means lots of workers are taking on temporary, seasonal jobs in stores and warehouses. For one business in Ferrisburgh, Vermont, an influx of seasonal workers is essential during the company’s busiest season.
Dakin Farm makes gift boxes full of food products from New England. The most popular, according to owner Sam Cutting, are the breakfast boxes.
“The basic breakfast would be pure Vermont maple syrup, pancake mix and cob smoked bacon,” he says.
The company runs two retail stores, but the bulk of the business is shipping gift boxes across the country. The vast majority of those, Cutting says, are ordered and shipped right now -– in the weeks leading up to Christmas.
“We’ve got two weeks to ship basically 40,000 packages,” he says. “And so in order to do that, we bring in about 120 seasonal workers, and we’re just moving packages all over the place.”
The packing room on the second floor of a renovated barn is humming. Those seasonal workers pull cheeses and meats from refrigerators, jams and honey from shelves, and stuff them into boxes, which get pushed down a conveyor belt.
“We’re always busy. We’re Santa’s little elves,” laughs Jack Pilla, who’s been working seasonally at Dakin for 40 years. He’s seen the business grow considerably over the years.
“Back in the day, it was me, Sam, another guy, Dave, packing boxes at night in the retail store once it closed down. That was the operation,” he recalls.
Pilla keeps coming back, in part, he says, because it’s a reliable chunk of income to supplement other work he does the rest of the year.
“I’ve got multiple jobs. I’m a running coach, I am a landscaper, a carpenter. I’ve always been self-employed, so this I can fit into my schedule,” he said.
Most workers here also have other seasonal jobs the rest of the year, which is not uncommon in Vermont. According to the Census Bureau, the rate of people working multiple jobs in the state has long been higher than the national average.
But some are here after losing work, like 25-year-old Max Ratti-Bicknell.
“Well, I was a bartender and a brewer, and I’m hopefully gonna get back into that, but the restaurant that I worked at closed about a month ago,” he said.
He’d worked seasonally at Dakin for the past six winters, so he knew he could come back. And he brought some of his former restaurant coworkers with him.
“We were all kind of talking, you know, having our shift drinks at the end of the night,” said Ratti-Bicknell. “It’s like, ‘All right, what are we gonna do next?’ And I was like, ‘We can go work at Dakin,’ and everyone was like, ‘OK, sure, great!'”
Pay starts at $18 an hour. Returning employees make a bit more. Employees can sign up for as many shifts as they want, says Tricia Cole, the company’s bookkeeper and HR manager. And the number of shifts available goes up a lot over the next two weeks.
“This Saturday will be our first weekend, and then starting next Monday, the 9th, is when we’ll start night shifts,” Cole said.
Flexibility is part of what keeps Dianne Marcotte coming back — for 37 years now. She works in the call center, separated by a wall from the packing room in Dakin’s barn.
“If I need time off, they will give me that time off. If I want overtime, they’ll give me overtime,” Marcotte said.
But her favorite perk is the employee discount: 30%.
“I order at Christmas time 20 pounds of bacon, 20 pounds of sausage, and about eight spiral hams,” she said.
Those orders have given her a pretty strong familiarity with the company’s catalogue, which comes in handy on the phone.
“When I talk with people, I think they can tell that I’m honestly talking to them about knowledge of the products too,” she said.
The company’s expecting a rush of orders over the next week. Its seasonal workforce will stick around until early January.