What's at Stake
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Tyson has forced a strike with UFCW Local 401 workers at its Brooks, Alberta, packing house, where working conditions are dangerous and unsanitary, and where workers are asking for basic workplace protections such as an end to harassment, improved safety training, and better handling of biological hazards. Workers want nothing more than the standard industry contract and safeguards in place at other Canadian packing houses.
Workers have been waiting for their first contract agreement since the summer of 2004. Under Alberta labor law, if the company and union workers can not agree on a contract, an impartial mediator is appointed by the province to draw up a proposal. While workers voted 90 percent to accept the provinical mediator's agreement, Tyson rejected it.
For more than a decade, Tyson has operated Lakeside Packers with some of the highest injury rates of any industrialized plant in North America. Many workers have been seriously injured and over the years scores of workers have been left with permanent injuries and disabilities from working the Lakeside line.
With a union voice, workers have asked Tyson to accept the same kind of collective agreement that protects workers at the nearby Cargill packing plant and at other plants in Canada. Tyson can easily afford to upgrade the working conditions at Lakeside to the level of its competitors in Alberta, but Tyson has refused.
Instead, the company is leaving workers with the bleak choice of having to strike, or returning to work at a reprehensible workhouse that has chewed through 100,000 workers over the last ten years.
Unfortunately, Alberta’s labor code does not provide first-agreement arbitration, so Alberta workers are often forced to strike as their only way to get a fair first contract. That is the situation Tyson has forced at Lakeside.
Here are some of the protections Tyson Workers at the Lakeside Packers plant are fighting for:
- The right to refuse processing suspect product which might be dangerous to the worker or the general public. Workers have been harassed for trying to report unhygienic products.
- The right, without loss of pay, to refuse dangerous work that could injure you or a fellow worker.
- The “whistle-blower” right to report an unsafe or unsanitary work environment to an outside authority without risk of losing your job.
- The right to up-to-date and ongoing health and safety training.
- The right to a full time Health and Safety Committee, including the right of a professional union representative to inspect the workplace for health, safety or contract violations as required.
- The right, without loss of pay, to stay off work if sick.
- The right to dignity in having washroom breaks. Some workers actually wear diapers because Tyson doesn't guarantee breaks to use the bathroom. Godwin Iwanegba, a Lakeside worker, said, "I begged to use the washroom and my boss said, 'No,' so I ended up wetting myself and standing in my own urine for the rest of the work shift. Later, I was disciplined for filing a complaint about what happened."
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