The union representing workers who voted to end a four-month strike at Maple Leaf Foods’ Burlington, Ont. hog processing plant is accusing the company of buying the vote.
Striking workers of the United Food and Commercial Workers union agreed March 6 to accept the company’s final contract offer. Union officials say the average salary at the plant will drop from $33,000 to $20,000 per year under the new deal.
Workers voted 454 to 368 to accept the deal that included a $10,000-$33,000 payout whether employees returned to work or not. That means workers who joined the company a few days before the strike and found another job since then can walk away with $10,000, said Richard Pollock, chief negotiator with the Burlington local.
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“When you offer people money and they don’t even have to come back, people voting just to take the money are affecting people’s lives who live there,” he said. “No one should be allowed to pay money to manipulate and control a vote.”
The Toronto-based company said in February it would close the plant on March 20 if employees rejected the company’s final offer, which included a new wage scale of between $10 and $21 an hour, a guaranteed work week and an improved pension plan. Under the old contract, employees earned an average wage of $25.08, including benefits, with the least skilled person earning $16.58.
Pollock said half of the 454 workers who voted to accept the offer likely won’t be stepping foot back into the plant. If that’s true, the company’s plan to rebuild its tarnished relationship with workers could be on shaky ground.
“Morale is absolutely terrible,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll ever see a relationship in that factory again.”
By offering the buyout, the company was hoping workers would quit, Pollock said. “They want to get most of the people out of there and get a new work force in with no problems.”
The deal reached last week paves the way for a $30 million expansion of the kill-and-cut plant that will create 600 new jobs, company officials said.
“The $30 million expansion will be done as quickly as we can possibly execute. It will be measured in months. It will involve the latest technology, broadly distributed throughout the plant,” Maple Leaf president and chief executive Michael McCain told the news agency in a phone interview.
Maple Leaf plans to add a second shift at the Burlington plant to bring weekly kill capacity up to 65,000 hogs within a month, McCain said.
In November, Maple Leaf closed its Edmonton hog processing plant after 850 employees went on strike.
Pollock said workers in Maple Leaf’s other striking or locked out plants in North Battleford, Sask., and Hamilton, Ont., should be prepared for a repeat performance of what happened in Burlington.
“It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if he (McCain) put the same threat on them to take it or close,” he said. “This company is the most ruthless company I’ve come across.”
Norfolk, Virginia-based Smithfield Foods Inc. earlier this month offered to buy the Burlington plant if it were closed.
Maple Leaf rejected that offer, and said if the plant is closed it would take the equipment to its new pork plant in Brandon, Man.
The two rival companies have been in a bidding war over Schneider Corporation, which has a slaughter and packing plant in Winnipeg.
