BY KATY LEROUGETEL
BURLINGTON, Ontario - Strikers picketing the Maple Leaf Foods meatpacking plant here just outside of Toronto explain that the company is demanding cuts in pay and benefits of up to Can$9 (Can$1= US$0.70) an hour. Maximum holidays would be reduced from six weeks to four, and workers would be allowed a maximum of 20 minutes a week during work hours to go to the bathroom. After using up that allocation, their pay would be docked for each trip to the toilet. Currently production workers' average wages are Can$17.50 an hour.

The 900 members of the United Food and Commercial Workers here hit the bricks November 15, and have since been joined by a further 900 who struck the company's plant in Edmonton, Alberta, November 17. The Edmonton local members are already docked pay for every bathroom visit. They earn Can$14.13 an hour after five years of service.

Almost 500 workers at two other Maple Leaf plants have been locked out for weeks in Hamilton, Ontario, and North Battleford, Saskatchewan.

One day into the Edmonton strike, Maple Leaf, Canada's largest food-processing company with more than $3 billion in annual sales, announced that the plant would close for good.

The company has taken out full-page ads in some of Canada's major dailies to push its demands. "If Canada's pork industry doesn't start working together, nothing will save out bacon," declares the headline, over a drawing of pigs heading "To USA." The text asserts that "Canadian labour costs in wages, benefits, and work rules are cripplingly high - $3 to $9 an hour more than the average in the United States, even amongst members of the same union! So available dollars go to unionized plant workers instead of farmers who earn up to $6 less per hog in Canada than in the US."

"We're here for a fight, and we're here until we win," said Greg Zikos, president of striking UFCW Local 1227 in Burlington.

Katy LeRougetel is a member of United Steelworkers of America Local 5338. Guy Tremblay contributed to this article.  
 
 
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