BY SUSAN BERMAN
STONEY CREEK, Ontario - The picket trailer of United Food
and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 617-P is standing room
only. Some workers are warming up; others are signing in after
returning from grocery store leafleting to encourage people to
boycott Maple Leaf Foods products.
On October 4 Maple Leaf Foods owner Michael McCain locked out the 280 workers here. UFCW members at the North Battleford, Saskatchewan, plant were also locked out, and workers at the Edmonton, Alberta, and Burlington, Ontario, plants are on strike. The Canadian food giant McCain is driving to radically restructure the pork industry to be more competitive - attempting to slash wages and benefits, increase line speed, and change work rules.
Laurin and Simone Thivierge, a brother and sister who work at the plant and serve on the boycott committee, talked to Militant correspondents. "We had 80 percent benefits coverage and now they want to cut that to 50 percent," Simone explained. Laurin added that in the proposed contract, "if you miss one day's work you lose one day seniority. So if you're off on maternity or paternity leave, you'd lose six months."
The majority of the workforce, about 60 percent, is women. Like the other Maple Leaf plants, the workforce is multinational. This pork processing plant is mainly supplied by the struck plant in Burlington. Some of the strikers from Burlington and Stoney Creek have picketed each others' plants. They also have a joint Boycott Committee.
Of the four plants, the Stoney Creek facility has the second lowest wages. Starting rate is Can$10.15 (Can$1 = US$0.70) an hour. Because of the low wages, many workers rely on overtime to earn a living wage. "We live on overtime, but they want to abolish the workweek," explained Laurin. "What they put in the contract is 40 hours a week [not stipulating a Monday - Friday workweek]. So if it just says 40 hours a week some people can be working Sunday to Thursday and others can work Tuesday to Saturday. None would get overtime pay for the weekend."
Amadeu Vieira has worked at the plant for 6 years and was one of the workers who fought to organize the union here. Vieira said, "He offered us a three-year contract with a 35- cent wage increase the first year and 30 cents the second and third."
He is one of three workers fired by the company for strike- related activity. "They're accusing us of mischief. But they got nowhere to stand," said Vieira, whose brother is one of the others fired by Maple Leaf.
The company has been getting help from the cops and the courts. Among other attacks against unionists, an injunction posted at the gate limits picketing to 15 people. The day before Militant reporters visited the picket line, three workers were hit by a pick-up truck driven by security guards escorting another vehicle out of the plant. "It's funny how the people who hit the pickets aren't being charged," Vieira noted.
The locked-out workers have been getting a lot of support from other working people, especially from teachers and auto workers. Simone Thivierge said they get a pretty good response from shoppers when they do their daily leaflet distributions at grocery stores. "We're also going door-to-door distributing flyers and we're hoping by next week to start telephoning."
In a related development, meatpackers at Toronto's Quality Meats have just signed a one-year extension of their contract. At an early-morning plant-gate distribution of the Militant, workers stopped to talk and get information on the Maple Leaf strike. Several workers explained the company wanted a short contract extension to see if Maple Leaf succeeds in pushing back the meatpackers, so it could try to do the same.
Solidarity messages and contributions to the locked-out Maple Leaf workers can be sent to: UFCW Local 617-P, 1129 Main St. E., Hamilton, Ontario, L8M 1P2. For more information call: (905) 545-8354.