Saskatchewan hog producers are squealing with delight over news that a strike has been averted at the province’s largest hog processing plant.
“We’re pleased as punch,” said Sask Pork general manager Neil Ketilson.
Workers at Mitchell’s Gourmet Foods Inc. voted 63 percent in favour of a new deal signed April 24. They will get pay hikes ranging from 30-50 cents an hour retroactive to the beginning of the month.
A week earlier, 96 percent of the membership of the United Food and Commercial Workers Canada Local 248P voted for a strike that would have left the province’s hog farmers in dire straits.
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federal government proposed several months ago to increase the compensation rate from 80 to 90 per cent and double the maximum payment from $3 million to $6 million
That’s when the province stepped in and appointed a mediator to help settle the dispute. Mitchell’s came up with a new four-year offer that the union accepted, much to the joy of Saskatchewan hog farmers.
“It would have been a huge impact if there was a disruption in the province,” said Ketilson.
Albert Belfour, president of the UFCW local, said the settlement was a “major relief” because workers’ wages had been frozen for seven years, but on the other hand “I’m not totally thrilled about it either.”
Belfour wishes they could have got more money out of the employer.
Mitchell’s president Stu Irvine was outraged that the union negotiated through the media, something he said hasn’t been done in 65 years of organized labour at the plant.
“I took great offence to it …. It still bothers me today,” said Irvine.
But he’s glad the dispute was settled and said that means the No. 1 slaughter facility in the province is “here to stay.”
An extended strike could have resulted in the permanent closure of the slaughter portion of Mitchell’s operation, said Irvine. And it was shaping up to be a protracted dispute.
“I think this could have been a lengthy strike if there was one,” he said.
Mitchell’s slaughters 3,500 hogs a day or nearly half of the 1.9 million hogs that are marketed in Saskatchewan each year.
If the labour dispute had escalated, Saskatchewan producers would have been forced to sell hogs to plants in the United States, which would have added an estimated cost of $100,000-$250,000 in weekly transportation, said Ketilson.
That’s because the Olymel plant in Red Deer and the Maple Leaf Pork plant in Brandon, the only two viable alternatives in Western Canada to Mitchell’s, are already operating at capacity.
Ketilson said the extra costs would have forced some producers out of business because the industry has been “running red ink” since October.
“They’re losing between $20 and $30 per hog sold. That’s very significant and it’s very difficult.”
On the bright side, producers have just gone through the trough in what has traditionally been a four-year cycle.
“The next three years should be better to average prices and our industry should do quite well,” said Ketilson.
The new deal at Mitchell’s also gives him reason to be optimistic.
“It’s a long-term contract that will provide good stability for 50 percent of our production in the province here over the next four years.”
