Office workers ratify 5-year deal
with 10% pay increase
Schneider
Office Employees' Association | CWA
Canada Local 30009
Office workers at a food products
operation in Kitchener have voted 91 per cent in favour
of ratifying a collective agreement that contains salary
increases of 10 per cent over five years.
Arthur Lacroix, president of the
75-member Schneider Office Employees' Association (SOEA),
says that, while they lost double overtime in the new
deal, they gained increased and simplified severance
and "negotiated increases with a 'real union'
salary grid with automatic increases every six months
from start to target rates."
Other major gains, he says,
came in health benefits credits and an agreement
on bargaining unit status "that
will help to grow our membership and our share of the
office staff" at Maple Leaf Foods.
Now that the agreement has been ratified, Maple Leaf
is expected to transfer more employees to the Kitchener
operation. It's possible, says Lacroix, that the SOEA
membership will eventually more than double what it
is today.
The SOEA represents workers in administration, finance,
clerical and information technology departments.
As a side benefit of negotiations,
says Lacroix, "we
also settled a 2006 salary increase grievance with
a $750 payment to each member effective upon ratification."
The ratification vote, held Saturday, came after only
six bargaining sessions with management, notes Lacroix.
Historically, collective bargaining was far more arduous
with Schneider Foods, which was taken over by Maple
Leaf in 2004.