The Militant (logo)  
   Vol. 69/No. 42           October 31, 2005  
 
 
Meat packers on strike in Alberta
confront scabs, boss violence
(front page)
 
BY JOHN STEELE  
BROOKS, Alberta—Meat packers on strike here against Tyson-owned Lakeside Packers, Canada’s largest cattle slaughterhouse, are facing an antiunion court injunction and company-organized violence. The majority of the 2,100 workers, members of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 401, walked out October 12 and halted most production in their fight for a contract.

Workers stopped the resumption of production October 18 in the face of company efforts to bring in scabs. “In the 1980s they killed the union,” said picket Morgan Dube. “Lakeside thought they could do the same thing to us, but we are hurting the company now. If you fight for your rights you’re always a winner.”

“We have about 1,400 on the picket line this morning,” bargaining committee member Reuben Mayo told the Militant by phone from the plant entrance two hours after the strike began. “We are well organized. People are upbeat. The company tried to get one busload of managers through this morning but we stopped them.”

On the second day of the strike the company succeeded in starting up the slaughter with about 300 line crossers that came on nine buses through a farmer’s field. Several strikers were beaten up that evening when they confronted scabs being bussed out.

The bosses suspended production at the plant October 14 for the weekend while they waited for a court injunction to give police the power to enforce a labor board ruling allowing no more than 50 pickets at the plant. The Court of Queen’s Bench granted the injunction the next day.

On October 17, the strikers successfully delayed the scabs from entering the company’s staging site, and then stalled the buses carrying them to the plant. Pickets said 11 line-crossers came over to the union side that day.

Four days into the strike Local 401 president Doug O’Halloran suffered neck and head injuries when his car was run off the highway near the plant by two vehicles driven by Lakeside personnel attempting to serve him with legal papers. Two high-ranking company officials have now been charged by the cops with dangerous driving. O’Halloran himself was charged with “willful damage” and “possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose,” reported CBC News.

On July 20 a strike for a contract was aborted when the Alberta government imposed a 60-day “cooling-off period.” At the end of September the workers approved a contract proposal from the government mediator. The Tyson bosses, however, rejected the mediator’s proposal and put an inferior contract on the table.

The workers had voted to be represented by the UFCW in August 2004, for the first time since the union was decertified at the plant in a hard-fought battle in 1984.

“Job is very hell. Management is hell. There are no rights, no one cares about it,” Muhammed Abduley told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Abduley and the majority of the workforce are immigrants from Africa. He said he wasn’t allowed time off to look after his children when his wife gave birth through a cesarean section delivery.

“When a cow falls, they come right away. When a man falls, they leave him. We should be respected,” said UFCW bargaining committee member and meat trimmer Peter Jany.

David Rosenfeld and Natalie Doucet contributed to this article.
 
 
Related articles:
Ontario smelter workers strike to defend benefits
Teachers walk out in British Columbia  
 
 
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