It has taken more than 60 years, but the Grain Services Union has finally achieved one of its original goals.
Beginning in 2001, elevator workers will be paid overtime when they put in more than 40 hours a week.
Federal labor minister Lawrence MacAulay announced last week he will repeal regulations which, since 1979, have given the grain industry an exemption from Canada Labor Code rules governing overtime during the busy spring and fall seasons.
“It’s a great day for country elevator workers,” said an exultant Hugh Wagner, general secretary of the Grain Services Union.
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When the union was founded in 1936, he said, one of its purposes was to get an eight-hour day and 40-hour work week.
“This is an historic victory,” he said July 10, shortly after MacAulay announced he was accepting the recommendation of Vancouver lawyer Stephen Kelleher, who spent several months studying the issue last fall and winter.
But what was seen as good news by the union was being greeted with dismay by a spokesperson for the grain handling companies, who said the new rules will result in additional costs that will inevitably be passed on to farmers.
“We’re disappointed,” said Ed Guest of the Western Grain Elevators Association, adding that the minister received bad advice.
“Kelleher obviously didn’t understand what we were telling him. He didn’t understand the cost to producers or that folks are being paid for the hours that are being worked.”
He pegged the extra cost at $12 million, and warned that the grain companies are in no position to swallow that kind of cost increase.
“That will have to be passed on to producers in dollars and cents or in kind,” he said.
The union says that even if the companies’ estimates of the additional costs are correct, it works out to about one cent per bushel of grain handled.
The new rules go into effect Jan. 31, 2001, which MacAulay said in a press release should give both employers and workers time to adjust to the new rules.
“All companies will have had an opportunity to negotiate adjustments as part of the normal collective bargaining process,” he said.
Wagner said the unionized companies (the three prairie pools) may attempt to negotiate concessions in employee compensation packages in order to recoup some of the additional costs associated with overtime.
“It won’t come as a terrible surprise, although we certainly dispute that any additional compensation has been paid for additional hours in the existing pay structure,” he said.
Non-unionized companies will be able to simply change compensation packages as they see fit.
Guest said there is not enough time before implementation of the new rules for the companies to adjust compensation sufficiently to make up the $12 million difference.
The grain companies have warned that implementing the Kelleher recommendations could lead to a variety of negative consequences, including reduced service to farmers, reduced share values for publicly traded grain companies, more elevator closures and labor strife.
