Workers wanted | Manitoba Pork Council asks Ottawa for support
Farmers are asking the Manitoba Pork Council and the federal government to help fix a labour shortage in the province’s bustling hog business.
They want the government and the pork council to do whatever they can to find workers within Canada or bring them in from overseas.
“If we could just bring the waiting time (for receiving approval for foreign hog barn workers) down from months to weeks, it’d be good for the industry,” said hog farmer Cal Penner during the council’s annual meeting April 9.
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“I think maybe the pork council could be a bit more proactive when it comes to maybe forming a pool of foreign workers who could be available for producers.”
Manitoba’s hog belt in central and eastern Manitoba is part of the economically booming Mennonite heartland and a core part of the boom.
However, the boom also brings labour problems as the growing towns of Steinbach, Winkler and Altona increase their demand for workers.
The success of the HyLife company has had a similar impact in French areas such as La Broquerie, providing lots of job opportunities in an area with few idle people.
Miles Beaudin of the pork council analyzed the labour pool in core hog production areas and found verification of what farmers have been saying: few unemployed people live in these areas and few are willing to take on demanding jobs in the country.
For instance, only 148 of La Broquerie’s 2,600 workforce were unemployed in 2012. Only 20 of 880 were unemployed in Ste. Anne’s and only 250 of 6,600 in the Rural Municipality of Hanover.
Those numbers create an unemployment rate of three percent, which economists consider to be near zero in real terms. It’s not easy persuading the ones that aren’t working to take a job in a hog barn outside of town.
“These hog farms are biosecure, so they are not close to town. They’re out in the country so it makes it that much more difficult to attract labour,” said Beaudin in an interview.
“That’s why we’re somewhat de-pendent on immigration processes currently and in the future to meet our needs.”
Penner introduced a motion to the meeting calling on the pork council to lobby the federal government for quicker approvals for temporary foreign workers. It passed easily.
“We find that the process is ex-tremely long,” said Penner.
“Eight months to a year is a long time to be short-staffed. It’s really debilitating for not only the owner and operator of the barn (but also for) the workers that are still on staff.”
