Summer sizzles for seasonal employment

MAT-SU — Alaska is a swing state for Mother Nature. Along with cold, dark winters come the long, mild summer days. For many small businesses, summer can make or break their year. For those employers, finding good seasonal help is essential.

“It can be really difficult to find people who don’t want full-time, year-round employment,” said George Collum, director of golf for Palmer Golf Course. “Seasonal help is crucial to the operation.”

That’s why for many seasonal employers, students are the answer. With high schools and colleges out for the summer, many students are looking to make some money in the summer months.

“Students work out well because they don’t expect to work here year-round,” Collum said. “It’s a great summer job, and for a lot of them it’s their first job.”

That was true for Brittany Heck, a 2005 Palmer High School graduate who began working summers at the golf course at 16. Now she’s a recent college graduate and is beginning her eighth and final summer at the municipal course.

“I started when I was in high school and have come back up every year from college,” she said. “I’ve pretty much done everything except the grounds crew.”

She used money earned from her seasonal job to help offset some of her college expenses.

“I saved everything up to pay for my books and computer and all that stuff,” she said.

While the hours and terms of the job fit well for students, what kept her coming back each summer has been a sense of belonging to the organization, Heck said.

“It’s like a big family,” she said. “Everybody gets along, we all hang out outside of work too.”

She even met her boyfriend, Hunter Blake, working at the golf course.

That retention from season to season is also important for employees at Susitna Speedway Go-Kart Amusement Park along the Palmer-Wasilla Highway. The go-kart track also employs seasonal summer workers.

“For us, it’s always been we hire kids who are 18 and older,” said track owner Katherine Morris. “Many times we have employees return two, three, four years at a time until they’re done with college. We’ve been pretty lucky.”

The seasonal nature of her business meshes perfectly with students, where the business is winding down by the time students have to return to school.

“About the time college gets started again, we’re back down to weekends only and we can handle it ourselves,” Morris said.

The track is open seven days a week, noon to 8 p.m. and has had a kick-start thanks to this year’s unusually warm spring.

“As soon as it hits 40 degrees, people seem to want to come out and ride,” she said. “We’ve had a lot of really good days this year with the weather.”

Retaining seasonal employees also helps the business in that Morris knows those returning have been trained properly and know their jobs well.

“We always end up with pretty good kids,” she said. “It works out well for them as well as for us. Going to college, they know they can have a summer job when they’re out, and I know they’re up on the safety and I can depend on them not to put themselves in harm’s way.”

Being a seasonal worker is old hat for Letitia Benson, who is working her third spring season at Jacobson’s Greenhouse and Nursery.

What keeps her coming back “are the beautiful flowers and my best friend is the manager here,” she said. “It’s definitely not a year-round deal, but it’s as hard-core a seasonal job as you can get.”

And Benson, who is also a nurse, should know. She grew up halibut fishing and plans to take off for another job when crab season begins June 15.

“The seasonal thing here (at the nursery) is that our season is usually done here by June 5,” she said. “The fishing season picks up June 15.”

Add the swelling ranks of local lawn and landscaping maintenance companies, along with government parks crews, and seasonal employment is an important component in the Valley’s summer economy, Collum said.

“It’s definitely win-win,” he said.

Contact Greg Johnson at greg.johnson@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.