Your team has barely won three games a month. You've traded away your franchise's best and most loved players for nothing, and your dwindling fan base is calling for the heads of management and coaching staff alike.
What do you do? If you're Canucks Sports and Entertainment, you lay off 1,000 unionized concession stand workers and announce you'll be replacing them with new staff, very likely willing to work for less.
That bit of bad PR trickled out last week when it was revealed the Vancouver
Canucks' parent company was terminating its contract with Aramark a year early so it could retool food offerings at Rogers Arena.
Apparently, the profit margin on an $8 cup of draft Budweiser or $6 slice of pizza just wasn't wide enough.
Servers, cashiers and cooks earned between $13 and $21 dollars per hour and received MSP coverage and modest dental benefits.
It's true the job doesn't require specialized skills or training, but when did it become such a sin to pay your employees enough to keep their heads above water? For many of the laid off workers, many of whom are women and immigrants, the nighttime work is a second income needed to make ends meet.
In a part of the world where the cost of living runs laps around increases in wages, it would be nice if such large and profitable private sector employers weren't so intent on undercutting those struggling at the bottom.
Maybe Canucks Sports and Entertainment is expecting fewer bums in seats next season.
That's certainly what they deserve.
