A greater supply of hogs means workers at the Maple Leaf hog processing plant in Brandon soon will resume a five-day work week.
Maple Leaf went to a four-day work week this spring, giving a tight supply of hogs as the reason.
Fewer hogs were killed at the plant because of the reduced work week and employees were taking home smaller paycheques.
“It’s been difficult for everyone involved,” said plant manager Dave Wood. “It’s been challenging for management and challenging for the employees.”
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Maple Leaf’s Brandon plant will resume slaughtering hogs five a days a week on Oct. 16.
The plant, which employs 1,160 people, is processing 36,000 hogs per week. It wants to be processing 40,000 hogs a week by the end of October.
“We feel there are more hogs coming available,” Wood said, “and we want to take advantage of that situation.”
United Food and Commercial Workers Local 832, the union representing workers at the plant, was encouraged last week by the prospect of more hours for its members.
The reduced work week bruised the morale of plant workers, said union spokesperson Don Keith. He also thinks it increased staff turnover, which he said averaged more than 30 people per week during the summer.
“The vast majority of workers were not happy working four days (a week).”
The union made some suggestions to Maple Leaf that it thought might soften the impact on workers during the shortened work week. Among the ideas was to reduce the plant’s line speed while increasing staff training.
But the best solution was to find more hogs to put through the plant, Keith said.
“We obviously couldn’t go out and buy the hogs for them. That’s not our role. We don’t buy them and we don’t raise them.”
At full capacity on its first shift, Maple Leaf’s Brandon plant is capable of slaughtering 45,000 hogs a week.
