Cargill workers to vote

Thursday, February 2, 2012

by DAVE PINK

The nearly 800 unionized employees at the largest beef processing plant in Ontario are to vote on new collective agreement Sunday, says Luc Lacelle, a spokesperson for Local 175 of the United Food and Commercial Workers.

An Ontario Ministry of Labour mediator met Thursday with representatives of Guelph-based Cargill Meat Solutions and the UFCW in an attempt  to work out a new contract and avoid a strike that could have started as early as Friday midnight

Union members had already rejected an earlier company offer that called for wage rollbacks.

Minneapolis-based Cargill has a world-wide workforce about 140,000 people in the food, agricultural and financial industries. It operates two beef production plants in Canada – the one in Guelph formerly known as Better Beef, and another in High River, Alta. The Guelph plant processes up to 2,000 animals a day, most of them from Ontario farms, and employs a total workforce of about 1,900 people. BF