BY KATY LEROUGETEL
TORONTO - "Why is everything else increasing and wages are decreasing? We want an explanation on this," said one striking member of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 743. "They just want more and more from us. I'm on the line and they push me like an animal - like in Roman times. We have to fight the rich up there. At the end, is this capitalism - who can be the biggest dinosaur?"

The 800 meatpackers at Quality Meat in Toronto and nearby Bramalea have been picketing since December 7, opposing wage cuts of up to $6 an hour.

On January 12, the unionists voted 58 percent against another contract proposal from the company. Since then, there have been no negotiations and the company has stepped up threats of closure. These include appeals to strikers picked up prominently by the Portuguese radio station. Many strikers are Portuguese.

The January 19 strike update issued by the union negotiating committee declares, "The last offer was not good enough, and until the company understands this and takes us up on the offer to continue negotiating, there is nothing to be done."

Five members of United Steelworkers of America (USWA) local 5338 visited the Bramalea picket line on January 20 after work. Marco Constantine commented afterwards, "The same thing happened to my brother who worked at Canada Packers. They rationalized and shut down plants. If Quality closes, well, I tell you, at least they are doing something for the rest of us. We're going to be in negotiations soon, you know. And Harry [the company owner] is going to get ideas from this."

"You can always go get another job," said Fitzroy Card who had also visited the line with Constantine. "After all, we're the ones who make the money for them."

His friend, also a Quality butcher on strike, is working part-time at Maple Leaf Foods, where workers' wages were cut by 40 percent after a four and a half month strike last year. He said, "At Maple Leaf, butchers make Can$14.25 (Can$1 = US$0.66) an hour - 35 cents less than the last Quality offer. And at Maple Leaf you only get overtime pay after 44 hours a week. Quality offered it after 42 hours. From my point of view, we need to work. Our big mistake was not to go out on strike at the same time as Maple Leaf last year."

The Quality Meat workers accepted a one-year extension of the contract at that time.

Sunil Dat Pariagh, one of the members of USWA Local 5338 who visited the picket lines, said, "The strikers are doing what they've got to do. We should come back with 20 Steelworkers and hold up the bus carrying scabs for four hours, not just half an hour. Then those people wouldn't come back."

The union has responded to attempts at driving a wedge between strikers and Ontario hog farmers. Hog producers currently lose roughly $60 on every hog sold and have been mobilizing to demand government aid.

Taking issue with the accusation in a December 22 Toronto Star article that union strikers "don't care" about the farmers and "are only after themselves," the union responded in a letter to the editor: "[T]o lash out at hard-working people without whom the industry would simply not exist is grossly unfair. Perhaps...the Toronto Star...should be taking a closer look at how the rollbacks to producers and workers alike are being reflected in the price of pork to consumers."

Katy LeRougetel is a member of USWA Local 5338.
 
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home