New employer, old attitudes
shape
bargaining at food products operation
Schneider Office Employees' Association | CWA Canada
Local 30009
Even though they are dealing with
new management, members of the bargaining committee
at a food products operation are encountering the same
old anti-union belligerence for which their previous
employer was known.
Arthur Lacroix, president of the
Schneider Office Employees' Association (SOEA), says
negotiations are "sort of" under way to renew
the collective agreement that expired in November.
"Things are different with Maple Leaf" — which
took over Schneider Foods in 2004 — "but
it remains to be seen whether they're better," he
says with a sigh.
Lacroix says the company is holding off on moving
white-collar employees to its Kitchener, Ont., operation
(where they would automatically become members of the
SOEA) until the contract is sorted out.
Key issues for the Local's membership, which once
numbered 170 but is now down to 75, continue to be
salaries, job security and severance language. The
employees, who perform information technology, administration,
finance or clerical jobs, had to settle for an unpalatable
agreement in 2005 and are facing similar concessionary
pressures this time around.
Lacroix says the company wants
to do away with performance reviews, which determine
an employee's placement on the pay grid, "because
it wants to make the salary decisions and make them
non-grievable."
It was the contract's guaranteed access to the grievance
process that was a key consideration for members two
years ago, when the company was transferring jobs to
Mississauga, he notes.
Maple Leaf Foods, which in the 1990s adopted the strategy
of boosting profits by cutting expenses, has seen two
decades of bitter labour disputes in the form of strikes
or lockouts at its plants across Canada.