Oshawa Observer

Editor
Karen Raets

Associate Editors
Guy Berard
Charlie Turner

Photographer
Bob Thomson

April 1974

Correspondents

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OSHAWA HEAD OFFICE:
Personnel: Meta von Moeller; Management Development: Terry Wrona.

DIVISIONS:

BOLANDS LIMITED: Betty Briggs; CODVILLE DISTRIBUTORS: Joe Perdue; COINAMATIC (U.K.): Brian Stansfeld & Joe Bradley; COMSERVE: Sadie Stoddart; HICKESON-LANGS: Terry Geary;

HUDON ET ORSALI LIMITEE: Hazel Butler & Andre Duquette; HYPERMARCHE: Ginette Dubreuil;

'KENT DRUGS LIMITED: Lore Kuemmel & Julie Ugolini; MALTON DISTRIBUTION CENTRE: Tom McClelland; ONTARIO PRODUCE: Ann Walker; RESTAURANT DIVISION: Jean Watts; TOWERS: (Toronto) Doris Petford, (Montreal) Betty Mason.

FOOD CITY:
Barrie: Pat Neil; Bathurst: Jennie Wood; Belleville: Mildred Graves; Brantford: Ben Winter; Brock: Joan Brooks; Chatham: Dirk Augustine; Cooksville: Ethel McPherson; Dixie: Stella Sereda; Don Valley: Hazel Wood; Galleria: Christine Miller; GEM Foods: Elsie Bell; Golf Club: Beatrice Raes; Hamiton: Agnes Hay; Jane & Finch: Viette Winter; Lansdowne: Joyce Easton; Lawrence: Joan Johnston; Niagara Falls: Ron Loveridge; North Bay: Winnifred West; Oakville: Edna Simser; Owen Sound: Shirley Doherty; Oxford: Lois Hoeko; Saint John: Heather Earl; St. Catharines: Mickey Davirro; Stratford: Ruth Cummerford; Sudbury City Centre: Ann Strauss; Victoria Park: Gerry Spencer; Welland: Al Cibik; Wellington: Mary Lou Shadbolt; Westside: Ileana lannone; Woodstock: Phillip Thomas.

LES ALIMENTS BONIMART, QUEBEC:
Sherbrooke: George Jamis; St. Jean: Joseph Yaccatto.

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IGA:
Aurora: Dorothy Dewsbury; Newmarket: Dorothy Perry.

TOWERS:
Aldershot: Linda Scott; Barrie: Shirle Anderson; Belleville: Winina McLeod; Brampton: Edna May; Cyrville: Vivian Taylor; Dixie: Linda Symes; Galleria: Lorraine Gibbons; High Park: Cathy Harris; Jane & Finch: Jennie Curtsbaine; London: Kay Judge; New Minas: Marion Duggan; Niagara Falls: Mary Soave; North Bay: Barbara McCloskey; Oakville: Audrey Kulik; Owen Sound: Tim Wilcox; Peterborough: Pennie Buchner; Rexdale: Denise Cornish; Saint John: Russ Oickle; Scarborough: Betty Humphrys; Stoney Creek: Helen Dabrowski; Stratford: Mary Schmidt; Waterloo: Margaret Jolluet; Welland: Mike Broughton.

BONIMART, QUEBEC:
Chateauguay: Estelle Deere; Greenfield Park: Anne McKeller; Longueil: Jean Paul Pare; Metropolitan: Gisele Blanchet; Ste. Foy: Charlotte Landry; St. Jean: Lillian Lavalee.

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President's Corner

The Province of Ontario is currently facing a decision Which will have

far ranging effects on shoppers, retailers and retail employees alike.

At Oshawa that includes Towers, Food City, Drug City and Restaurant

Division employees.

The issue is retail hours, more specifically evening shopping. The

government has been forced into deciding the issue by a massive

lobby of small merchants.

When should the consumer shop? When it is convenient for the

consumer or when it is convenient for the shopkeeper?

When you clear away all the whitewash that has been poured over this whole question of store hours and the red herrings that have been drawn in to confuse the issue, that is what it all comes down to.

If it were not for the pressure campaign which has been mounted under the P.U.S.H. banner by merchants who want stores to close at 6 p.m., it would be relatively easy for the Ontario government to see where the public interest lay. But it has been impossible to ignore the clamor that P.U.S.H. has generated in the last year.

The consumers, the men or women who pay the bills, the people who keep all of us in business, should understand just what is happening and why.

Twenty-five years ago there was no problem. Stores were clustered in downtown areas and along principal thoroughfares. People walked or took a bus to do their shopping. Groceries were bought at the corner store. Married women for the most part were housewives and had time to shop whenever they decided so long as it was during the day.

And then the world began to change. We became a mobile society, we moved away from the community core, suburban subdivisions sprang up, mushroomed. When it became evident that Canada was not going to sink back into a depression after World War Two, people began to seek out a better life.

Are stores in business to serve the needs of their customers? Or are customers there to provide a livelihood for store owners?

And commerce, as it will if left alone, reacted to the changes in public habit and demand. Some merchants realized they could do better if they went where the customers were instead of forcing the customers to come to them. Suburban shopping centres sprang up, at first a food market and a few independent smaller shops, later larger centres including independent merchants and department stores, still later large enclosed, temperature-controlled shopping malls.

It was an evolution, a marketing revolution based on providing better service to the customer who is our reason for being in business in the first place.

If the customer needed a place to park his car, then build a shopping centre with adequate parking. Don't force him to drive for blocks looking for a place to park. If the customer found it more convenient to shop in the evening, why that's the time to be open. If a working housewife couldn't shop during the day, then by all means make evening shopping facilities available to her.
 

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At first only a few responded but when it became apparent just how many people were taking advantage of evening shopping facilities, many merchants, albeit some reluctantly, fell in line.

Cash registers, largely silent during daylight hours, rang merrily in the evening. At Towers, for example, a majority of all sales take place between the hours of six and 10 p.m.

Some downtown merchants, unhappy with the change, didn't take it lying down. Since in most communities downtown merchant groups exercised strong influence on local councils, they succeeded in having early closing bylaws passed whether the public liked it or not. The result of this was that shopping centres opened just outside municipal boundaries where township councils were not so easily influenced by downtown storekeepers.

But in many communities, the downtown merchants did not succeed in closing down business at 6 p.m. Most Ontario municipal leaders decided that hours of sale should be left to the marketplace — to the merchants and their customers. If people wanted to shop in the evening and stores were prepared to serve them ... well, that was up to them.

That was when the merchant establishment decided to go over the heads of the municipalities to the province itself and the P.U.S.H. campaign was launched. They would seek a provincial law that would take hours of sale out of the hands of the municipalities, out of the hands of the stores which are prepared to open evenings and most important of all, out of the hands of the people.

If they could get early closing legislation, the customers would have to shop when the merchants wanted ... and the clock would effectively be turned back to "the good old days."
 

Never mind that people who can only shop at--night would all be funneled into two nights. Never mind that thousands upon thousands of housewives and students augment the family income with evening part-time work which would disappear. Never mind the public convenience. Never mind freedom of choice. Get provincial legislation and ram daytime shopping down the public's throat.

Now to keep the public from getting up in arm a few red herrings were fished up. First, the public' was told by P.U.S.H. that evening shopping leads top higher prices (a statement that was debunked by the Government's Green Paper on Store Hours) when in fact the opposite is true. Second, imply that store employees have to work all kinds of weird and long hours including split shifts when in fact no suburban department store employs such practices so if anyone is forcing employees to work weird and long hours it can only be the downtown merchants. (Is this a case of the pot calling the kettle black?) Third, imply total gloom and doom. If evening hours weren't restricted, why then before long every independent merchant in the province would go bankrupt and then all we would have left would be chain stores, higher prices and less competition. In fact, it is the hot competition of those same chain stores that has P.U.S.H. hopping in the first place. Finally never use the words "restricted hours." Uniform hours has a fairer ring.

If you detect a note of cynicism in the foregoing it is only in response to the whole of the P.U.S.H. campaign which was born in cynicism and nurtured on a cynical and insensitive attitude toward the public interest. How else can you explain a cam­paign designed to take away from the public while all the time proclaiming "we are doing it for you."

Make no mistake. This is a clear attack on the public's freedom of choice. A P.U.S.H. official was quoted in press reports as saying "the people really didn't give a damn," (about store hours). We believe he is mistaken.

Moreover it is a clear attack on your right to work. Less hours of sale will result in fewer job oppor­tunities. Perhaps your member of the provincial legislature should be told how you feel about all of this — now. Once a law is passed, it will be too late.

Oshawa is doing everything it can to preserve evening shopping. Through the National Retailers' Institute, we have fought every effort to pass restric­tive municipal bylaws. We are fighting even harder now at the provincial level. But to win this final struggle will require the help of every store employee, their friends and relatives and, yes, even the customers, the ones who like to or need to shop at night. Please use every opportunity to let people know how their rights are being threatened. You can be of enormous help in bringing this matter to the attention of the public. Your help is earnestly requested and will be appreciated.