The 2,200 employees at Maple Leaf Foods’ hog processing plant in Brandon have a new union contract that is expected to make life easier for foreign workers.
Last week, 78 percent of the Maple Leaf workers voted in favour of the five-year contract that provides pay raises up to nine percent and also improves the pension plan.
Foreign workers make up most of the employees at the Brandon plant, with 500 from China and 600 from Colombia, El Salvador and other Spanish speaking countries. There are also 200 Ukrainian workers.
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One of the union’s goals was to ensure that foreign workers could easily adjust to work and life in Manitoba, said Robert Ziegler, president of United Food and Commercial Workers local 832.
The new agreement requires Maple Leaf to translate the contract and the employee handbook into a particular language if it’s the first language of more than 100 union members.
The company will now handle the paperwork to help foreign workers working under the provincial nominee program get landed immigrant status and Canadian citizenship.
“The company still has to apply and go through the normal hoops to qualify for getting people here,” Ziegler said. “But once they’re here … we want to make sure that things are smooth for them …. Once someone is in Manitoba you want to facilitate them staying here and becoming part of a community.”
Maple Leaf did not return phone calls by deadlines.
After opening in 1999, the Maple Leaf plant went through several years of high employee turnover.
“The turnover at that plant is (now) one of the lowest in the industry,” said Ziegler.
In addition to the accommodations for foreign workers, the new contract includes attendance and production bonuses. An entry-level worker will now earn $13 to $14 per hour, Ziegler said. The most senior employees will receive $18.50 per hour.
“The wage increases I think are fair. It’s a balance for the company,” Ziegler said, adding employees will receive wage increases of $1.30 to $2.10 per hour during the life of the contract.
