The Alberta Labour Relations Board organized the August 26-27 vote. After a massive campaign of intimidation by the company against union supporters, the vote in favor of the union was 905-857, or a 51.4 percent margin.

“If a union is there, maybe the job can be better and we can have job security,” Miller Mbiyi, who has worked at Lakeside for four years, told the UFCW.

“We don’t know what the union is going to do,” said Robert Reid, according to the Brooks Bulletin. Repeating company-inspired rumors, Reid said he was worried that the union would try to run longtime workers out of Lakeside.

Behind the majority support for the union are the brutal conditions in the giant plant, which processes a million beef carcasses a year—one-third of all the cows slaughtered in Canada.

On April 26 the bosses fired 70 workers, most of Sudanese origin, who had walked off the job to protest the firing of co-workers who had organized a parking-lot protest against the intolerable working conditions. Issues raised by the workers included the company’s practice of forcing injured employees to work, refusing requests to leave the line to use the washroom, and rejecting the right of women workers to return to their jobs after maternity leave.

None of the fired workers got their jobs back, reported Doug O’Halloran, president of UFCW Local 401, in a phone interview with the Militant. But UFCW officials report these workers’ willingness to stand up to the bosses was a factor in the majority vote for the union.

Union organizer Archie Duckworth told the press there are many other issues facing workers. “The biggest are the right to go and see you own doctor,” he said, “the fear of being fired if you’re injured, and the right to be treated fairly and with dignity and to be paid fairly.”

Lakeside Packers, the biggest slaughterhouse in Canada, is now owned by U.S-based Tyson Foods, the world’s largest processor of chicken and red meat products. The UFCW had organized Lakeside years ago, but in a hard-fought strike in 1984 the union lost the battle and was decertified. The August vote was the third attempt by the UFCW to reorganize the plant in the last 10 years.

“We’re proud of the efforts of the employees standing up to the intimidation tactics of Tyson,” said O’Halloran. “If the employer hadn’t engaged in intimidation tactics over the past few days, I’m sure we would have received more than 60 percent support.”

In the days before the vote a small anti-union group distributed a leaflet that read: “We had a dream that the union actually won the vote—but it wasn’t really a dream—IT WAS A NIGHTMARE!” The leaflet claimed that negotiations to ratify a collective agreement would be lengthy, implying the company would not give out February pay and benefit increases. “No raises until there is a contract—whenever that is,” the anti-union tract stated.

As part of this anti-union campaign the Lakeside Packers plant manager distributed a letter to workers that concluded: “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.”

“We don’t believe an outside, third party is needed to intervene in the relationship we have with our team members,” Tyson spokesperson Gary Mickelson said before the vote. “We know that our success depends on them and we work very hard to maintain an open line of communication with them.”

The Tyson bosses have not indicated yet whether they intend to appeal the certification of the union, or begin negotiations for a contract as the UFCW has requested.

A Labor Day UFCW press release celebrated both the union victory at Lakeside Packers and the August 2 certification of the UFCW at Wal-Mart in Jonquière, Quebec, the first union victory at a Wal-Mart store in Canada.

John Steele is a member of UFCW Local 175 at Quality Meat Packers in Toronto.  
 
 
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