PERDUE, Sask. – The young hog barn workers at the front of the room exuded confidence as a union spokesperson outlined their position at a Jan. 13 public meeting.
The mood among the rest of audience of about 40 people – many of them family members of the locked-out workers at Bear Hills Pork Producers – was more harsh. They were angry at Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, which is part-owner of the hog barn complex here that is fighting with the Grain Services Union over the workers’s first collective agreement.
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“I just don’t like the way these kids are being treated,” said Loretta Davies, mother of one of the workers. “How are these 13 people going to put the company out of business?”
Bev Lemon was outraged that her son and the other workers had to fight for rights to which employees in other industries are legally entitled.
“These barns were built with the idea that these were going to be quality jobs,” said Lemon. “As far as I’m concerned these are not quality jobs.”
Saskatchewan labor standards dealing with hours of work, days off and overtime do not apply to hog barns.
The workers at Bear Hills Pork Producers joined the GSU in February 1999. They are the first hog barn in Western Canada to be unionized.
Contract negotiations failed over the union’s demand that the barn workers receive the same benefits package as other pool workers.
The two sides have come close to resolving most issues, such as moving to a 40-hour work week and giving employees more days off than the 11-days-on, three-days-off the schedule now gives them.
The present dispute began two days before Christmas, when the union informed management that workers would no longer work on weekends or statutory holidays. After New Year’s Day management locked out the workers.
The union says management has put a final offer on the table and refuses to bargain.
The company says the union has escalated its demands since the dispute began and doesn’t see any point in returning to the bargaining table yet.
“We have tabled a good and fair offer, and evidently when the union and the members look at it from their perspective, they don’t see it that way,” said Heartland manager John LaClare.
Laurie Davies, 22, who has worked in the barn for 18 months, told those attending the union-organized meeting that this agreement would probably form the basis of other labor contracts in the hog industry. But in an interview, LaClare said his company views this as a local dispute only.
Heartland and other investors in the Bear Hills operation declined to speak at the meeting.
Western Producer employees, including the reporter, are members of a different local of the Grain Services Union.
