Some 2,500 workers are employed at Lakeside Packers in Brooks, Alberta, southeast of Calgary. Owned by U.S. food giant Tyson Foods, the company processes a million carcasses a year, which accounts for one in every three cows slaughtered in Canada. It is the largest beef slaughterhouse in the country.

In the April 27 phone interview, Rehan described how 170 workers met in the plant parking lot and elected representatives to organize a meeting with the company to raise their demands about “the treatment of injured workers, being able to leave the line to go to the bathroom, and the rights of women workers to return to their jobs after maternity leave.”

Rehan said the company had agreed to meet with the workers’ representatives because it said it had “an open door policy.” The bosses cancelled the meeting on the arranged day, however, and then issued disciplinary warnings against leaders of the protest.

Rehan said the bosses wanted them to sign disciplinary warnings that required them to not participate in any more protests. When leaders of the fight refused to sign the warnings they were fired. Then 70 workers walked off the job in solidarity with those who had been fired. An article in the Toronto daily 24 hours reported that Tyson claimed they had fired the workers for refusing to work.

Manout Deng, a fired airknife worker from the kill floor, told the Militant that the fired workers have formed the Lakeside Workers’ Committee, which is seeking support to help get their jobs back.

On May 23 the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation aired a documentary on this fight that showed the fired workers holding a protest outside Lakeside Packers with banners demanding their reinstatement and chanting, “We need a union.” The workers also organized a march to the offices of Mayor Don Weisback, whom they asked to broker a settlement to the dispute. Rehan said a United Food and Commercial Workers union lawyer is currently seeking to overturn a government decision denying the workers unemployment insurance benefits.

Rehan said he thought bosses at Lakeside had only fired Sudanese-born workers to make it look like this was “just a Sudanese thing,” but that in fact the abuse and mistreatment by the company are opposed by many of the workers in the plant, including “Canadians and those of other nationalities.”

Rosemary Ray is a member of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 175 at Maple Leaf Pork in Burlington, Ontario.  
 
 
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