Unionized foreign workers at Maple Leaf Foods brought up to speed on new contract with translations, long meetings
It took four languages and almost 16 hours to explain a new contract to the nearly 2,300 employees at Maple Leaf Foods’ hog processing plant in Brandon, Man. Three-quarters of the pork plant’s workers are new immigrants who were fast-tracked under a provincial nominee program. The information sessions started at 5 a.m. and ended at 11:30 p.m., with some gatherings lasting more than three hours.
The meetings highlight the challenge of managing several cultures and languages in a workforce, said Blake Crothers, communications director of UFCW Local 832, which represents the Maple Leaf workers.
“You’re going through the changes to the collective agreement, explaining it to them — then doing it again and again in a different language,” he said. “But anywhere where a company has foreign workers — and a union represents them — you have to put this protection in there. You have to make sure that they feel empowered just like the person standing next to them.”
Accommodating such a diverse workforce also requires internal communication be accessible, he said. Under the terms of the new agreement, Maple Leaf is required to translate the employee handbook if more than 100 members’ first language is not English. They’re small but significant changes, said Crothers.
“A lot of these workers coming into Canada have never been represented by a union. In some cases, where they’re coming from, joining a union can get you shot,” he said. “Their initial impression is very leery.”
Another tricky area for supervisors has been scheduling vacation time for workers who want to see their families back home. In the past, employees weren’t allowed to carry over holidays. They can now carry over two weeks from one year into the next.
“There are people there who left when their child was three months old and now they’re three years old,” he said. “Allowing them to go back for a month of vacation is huge.”
Probably the biggest challenge, according to Crothers, has been dealing with employees who were terminated. It’s not uncommon for the arbitration process to take up to one year, he said. But unlike their Canadian counterparts who can wait it out and find a new job in the meantime, most foreign workers take the next plane home.
“A few times — it’s not something that happens very often — someone is terminated and they don’t believe the union is going to be there for them or they don’t believe they have a chance,” he said. “They’ll just buy into the system and pack up and leave. Then we realize we had a really strong case but they’re not here to give testimony. It’s a huge deal.”
Under the new agreement, terminated workers can stay in the province until an arbitrator reaches a decision, which is expected within about six weeks.
Companies often struggle with keeping an ethnically diverse workforce in the community. Foreign workers feel the draw of larger centres, such as Toronto, or they grow frustrated navigating the bureaucracy that allows them to work in Canada, said Crothers. Many leave after their two-year contract is up because they must reapply. Maple Leaf is now responsible for handling all necessary paperwork.
While agreements such as the one at the Brandon plant will buffer some of the problems inherent in a multi-ethnic workplace, they are not an ideal solution, said David Camfield, a professor of labour studies at the University of Manitoba.
“It’s better to make these improvements than not make them but there needs to be a two-track approach,” he said. “The first track is to try to actually make major changes to federal immigration policy.”
Allowing large corporations to bring in employees on temporary work visas, and then expecting them to channel these employees into landed immigrant status, creates an extra tier within the immigration system, said Camfield.
“If they’re good enough to work in Canada, why can they not be permitted as permanent residents and then go through several years until they can actually become citizens?” he said. “Why bring them in on this temporary track instead of bringing them in the way most people used to come to Canada?”
Unless the trend toward using temporary workers reverses, it will be up to unions to preserve workplace rights and “overcome the myths and the racism and the prejudices” that can exist among a diverse workforce, said Camfield.
Danielle Harder is a Whitby, Ont.-based freelance writer.
