Manitoba dairy farmers are out tens of thousands of dollars after an eight-day strike at a major fluid milk processing plant in Winnipeg.
The big bill is for extra transportation costs involved in sending the milk that normally goes to the Parmalat Canada (formerly Beatrice) plant to other processors in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
Jim Wade, general manager of Manitoba Milk Producers, expects the extra costs to be between $3,000 and $4,000 for each day of the strike, plus six additional days when the plant accepted little or no milk.
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After traveling around the province for spring district meetings, Wade said farmers are finding the costs hard to swallow since the strike had nothing to do with them.
“They’re pretty angry,” he said. “To have them take the brunt of this labor dispute in terms of the transportation costs, they figure is not fair.”
Because of confidentiality agreements Wade could not say whether the plant is the largest in Manitoba, nor how much milk the plant buys.
“They take in an enormous amount of milk on a daily basis,” he said, adding the marketing board had to find a new home each day for the milk contained in 10 tractor-trailers and five tandem trucks.
The group hasn’t determined yet how it will finance the extra costs.
Three to four trailer loads per day went to a Saskatchewan plant. Part of this cost will be pooled by other dairy farmers in Western Canada.
Manitoba farmers will also notice a dip in their April revenue since most of displaced milk was turned into cheese and other industrial products, which have a lower price than fluid milk.
However, dairy farmers in Alberta and central Saskatchewan may notice an increase in their revenues because of the strike.
Parmalat had been bringing in milk from western provinces for industrial use. More of it was used for fluid milk.
Some plants in Alberta were also closed during the strike because of distribution changes. But Wade explained the western milk pool will be adjusted to settle out the revenue differences during the next two months.
“Whatever they (Saskatchewan and Alberta farmers) gained on the April sales in their province will be adjusted out of their income in the May payment,” he said.
Workers at the plant went on strike over concerns about Parmalat’s futures plans for contracting out labor, said Dan Oswald of the retail division of the United Steelworkers of America.
Prepare for the worst
While milk producers can’t prevent another labor dispute, the marketing board learned what it can achieve during a strike.
After the experience, the board has “a list of items” to discuss with processors about milk deliveries, said Wade, declining to elaborate.
“We’re very happy that the labor dispute is settled. We’re happy that we’re now back to normal, but producers find it very difficult to understand why it is they have to pick up the tab on this kind of stuff,” he said.
