BY JANET ANDERSON AND TED LENOIRE
EDMONTON, Alberta - "Maple Leaf treats us like garbage," said Jackie Kanla as she picketed the plant December 6. Kanla, a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) Local 312A, is on strike against Maple Leaf Foods.

Along with 900 other UFCW members at the Edmonton meatpacking plant, Kanla stood up to the company's threat to close the facility and went on strike November 17. She and her co-workers face one of the most serious assaults launched on a major industrial union in this country in many years. Two days before the Edmonton strike began, 900 workers at Maple Leaf's Burlington, Ontario, plant struck when the company proposed wage cuts of up to Can$9 an hour (Can$1=US$0.70). Three months earlier Maple Leaf locked out the 200 UFCW members in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, and in October the company locked out another 300 in Hamilton, Ontario, in an attempt to intimidate workers taking strike votes on their contracts in Burlington and Edmonton.

Maple Leaf Foods is one of the largest food companies in Canada and the largest pork processor. Spokespeople for the company have justified their assault on the wages and working conditions of the more than 2,300 workers in these four plants with the explanation that they need to "trim the fat" in the Canadian pork industry to make it more competitive, particularly in relationship to the U.S. meatpacking bosses. Business commentators clamor about lucrative opportunities for Canadian pork sales in Asia and South America, if only Maple Leaf and other companies can overcome one obstacle. Maple Leaf summed up the argument in a full page advertisement in the November 17 Toronto Globe and Mail: "Canadian labour costs in wages, benefits, and work rules are cripplingly high."

The stakes for the company in this strike are high. But they face a determined obstacle in the militancy of the UFCW members.

And the battle in meatpacking comes at a time when resistance to bosses' attacks is on the upswing across Canada. Days after the food workers went out on strike, they were joined by postal workers in a country-wide work stoppage. In British Columbia, 2,400 pulp and paper workers at three Fletcher Challenge mills are into the fifth month of their strike, making this the longest paper strike in the province's history. Fletcher Challenge, like Maple Leaf, is demanding "flexibility" from its workforce in its drive to become more competitive.

Maple Leaf strike is solid
In spite of daily press reports to the contrary, the strike against Maple Leaf is solid. The press has ganged up to sow divisions among workers, trying to blame the plant shutdown on the union. The latest version of this attack centers on the news that the company is opening a new plant in Brandon, Manitoba, in 1999.

Kanla walked the picket line December 6 with her sister, daughter, and a couple dozen fellow workers. As they covered the main gate and walked the plant's fenced-in perimeter, they explained why they went on strike. Kanla described the speedup on the production line and how the number of injured workers has increased as a result. This makes the company's move to cut off health benefits such as drug subsidies especially hurtful, she said.

Baljit Minhs added his view on the media coverage of the strike. "They talk about a base wage of $14 or more an hour," he said. "But they don't say you have to work for several years for that. Most of us here are making a lot less."

"They take money from your paycheck for going to the bathroom," said Kiet Ngugen. "You have to ask permission. Then they time you - five minutes, ten minutes. Sometimes the foreman is right there at the door."

Albert Kaplan was signing out pickets in the strike headquarters, a block from the plant. Strikers walk the line 24 hours a day in four-hour shifts. Every hour they take a break in the warmth of the strike headquarters. It is a very disciplined, organized operation. As a picket captain, Kaplan was very busy, but he paused to talk to Militant reporters. "I've worked here 25 years. I was here when the plant was Gainers," he said. "I was part of the strike of '86. I was here when the government sold it to Burns. I've been here working for Maple Leaf. They responded to our contract demands by shutting the plant down. They want us to give up. But we won't. We've been through this kind of thing before."

History of struggle at Edmonton plant
In their strike against Gainers in 1986, the UFCW members at this same plant took on the company's attempt to break the union. The company brought in replacement workers with the message to all: "If you strike, you are history."

The strike had many parallels with the meatpackers fight against Hormel in the United States. In that 1985-86 strike, UFCW Local P-9 took on the giant Hormel company in Austin, Minnesota. The Hormel workers faced the combined power of the company, the cops, the courts, the governor, the Minnesota National Guard, and the big-business owned media. Hormel was determined to drive forward the restructuring that the meatpacking bosses had launched industry-wide in the early 1980s.

The Hormel workers held firm and reached out for support across the country, and even increasingly, around the world. Hormel finally succeeded in getting a concession contract with the connivance and open treachery of the UFCW officialdom. The company refused to rehire 850 of the 1,500 who went on strike. But the example of the P-9 strikers opened the way for other packinghouse workers to fight the bosses' drive to slash wages and speedup production.

The Gainers workers were among those who saw the example of the fighting P-9ers. Workers fought an intense six-month battle against the company. They organized a campaign of solidarity - sending striking workers across the country to speak to union locals, supplemented by a nationwide boycott. Although they took some concessions, the meatpackers succeeded in beating back the attempt to break the union, forcing Gainers to sign a contract, bringing back all of the striking workers.

As Douglas Ford, spokesman for Gainers during the 1986 strike, lamented in a column attacking the present strike in the December 9 Edmonton Journal, it was Gainers, not the union that ended up in the dust bin of history. "The company suffered enormously from the strike of 1986 and, in particular, the lingering effects of the boycott. From my perspective, Gainers never was able to recover from 1986 and lost significant market share as a result of the strike."

Maple Leaf now needs to drive forward on raising productivity and attacking wages to get on par, and if possible below, those in the United States. The company needs to win this assault on the UFCW workers at its four hog-processing plants if it's to become competitive in its drive for new markets. Other meatpacking bosses are carefully watching this battle.

"It used to be that if you had a problem you stopped the line and worked it out together," Kaplan said. "When someone had to go to the bathroom or something, you worked that out. Not now. Now if the line stops for any reason the supervisors go wacky trying to get it going. Relief breaks are monitored by the supervisors.

"We were doing 4,000 hogs a day," he continued. "The line speeded up to almost twice that amount. But they want 9,000. And since 1984 we have only had two 3 percent wage increases. Your cost of living isn't going to go down because you make less money. We had no choice but to strike."

Kaplan added, "Ever since Burns the conditions have been bad and getting worse." Burns bought the plant after Gainers went out of business. The Alberta government leased the land and buildings to Burns and then Maple Leaf for pennies, Kaplan explained. The lease was up for renegotiation this December 31.

Kaplan appealed for solidarity. He offered flyers on the boycott called by the union and supported by the Canadian Labor Congress and several provincial labor federations.

Messages of support would be helpful, he said. Money would be even more useful. The Alberta Federation of Labor has launched a fund to aid the strikers and an "adopt a striker" campaign to help cover Christmas costs for the children of the workers. Contributions have already come from Manitoba and Ontario. Greg Zikos, president of the UFCW local on strike against Maple Leaf in Burlington, Ontario, said that United Steelworkers of America members at Stelco's steel mill in Hamilton, Ontario, are doing a plantgate collection December 16. According to Zikos, 50 auto workers from Ford's Oakville plant walked the picket line in Burlington December 12.

Mike Hoar, a computerized scale operator who has worked at the Burlington plant for 19 years, reported on the success Ontario strikers had in convincing a number of grocery stores in Hamilton, Burlington, and Kitchener-Waterloo not to carry Maple Leaf products.

While the UFCW members in Edmonton picket, motorists driving by on the busy highway honk and wave. Conversations on the line are constantly interrupted by these expressions of support. Minhs commented, "We have a lot of support. The company is out to beat the unions. If they break us, then it will be harder on other workers."

He pointed to a sign in the window of the main plant building that says "Boycott Unions." Another worker stated, "I know the supervisor who put that there. It's his sign all right, but it's what the company wants."

Ted Lenoire is a member of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 424 in Edmonton, Alberta. Joanne Pritchard contributed to this article.  
 
 
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