Cargill plant set to reopen despite union opposition

An Alberta meat-packing plant that is the site of Canada’s largest COVID-19 outbreak appears set to reopen Monday despite intense opposition from the union that represents its workers.

Operations at Cargill Inc.’s major slaughterhouse and cutting facility in High River have been on pause for two weeks after an outbreak saw nearly half of its 2,000 employees test positive for the virus.

The Cargill plant, which processes 35 per cent of all federally regulated beef in Canada, said it was ready to restart slaughtering on Monday at a reduced capacity, after adding extra safety measures and

conducting a thorough cleaning of the plant.

But the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 401 wasn’t convinced the changes went far enough, so it filed a complaint on Friday asking the Alberta labour relations board to intervene and stop the Monday reopening.

Over the weekend, the labour board held mediation talks between union representatives and Cargill.

But as of Sunday evening the two sides had not come to an agreement.

“They’ve been going at it hard.

“Both sides and the mediation have been working hard at it,” said William Johnson, chair of the labour relations board.

“I don’t know what the outcomes are going to be.”

An official labour board hearing on the union’s complaint isn’t scheduled until Thursday. So if Cargill doesn’t agree to postpone the reopening in mediation talks Sunday, the plant is clear to reopen as planned Monday morning. At the time of print deadline on Sunday night, there was no resolution, the union said.

“We shouldn’t have to go through all of this in order to have a voice. We shouldn’t have to engage in all these legal proceedings in order to be heard,” UFCW spokesman Michael Hughes said Sunday.

The High River outbreak was the worst in a series of outbreaks in cramped meat packing plants across the country, a problem that has imperilled supply chains and threatened the livelihoods of Canadian cattle ranchers who now have far fewer places to send their cows to slaughter. As of last week, 921 workers at the plant had tested positive for the virus and one employee had died.

Cargill said last week it had the support of the province’s provincial health authority, Alberta Health Services, which advised the company on adding extra safety rules at the plant, including a ban on carpooling — which had been common among Cargill workers before the outbreak. Instead, the company is providing a retrofitted bus with protective barriers between riders. Cargill also sanitized the plant, added protective barriers in staff washrooms, and reassigned lockers to prevent crowding in locker-rooms. The company said the changes are on top of measures that were in place before the shut down, including temperature checks before workers can enter the plant. The plant will also only run one of two regular shifts.

Cargill declined to comment on Sunday about UFCW’S attempts to block its plant from reopening. In a statement on Friday, Cargill said it was engaging with the union “in good faith.”

“We are eager to sit down and have a meaningful discussion about our shared focus — keeping our workers safe in the midst of this global pandemic,” the company

said in a statement. “We care about our employees and are working around the clock to keep them safe, deliver food for local families and provide market access for ranchers.”

The union, however, said Cargill and Alberta Health ignored its input on the new measures and thus overlooked on-the-ground realities for workers at the plant. For instance, the union worried that sick leaves at the plant will force staff to fill unfamiliar roles, requiring face-to-face training. And on the noisy cutting floor, the union wrote, it’s hard for employees and supervisors to communicate without “close contact.”

In addition to its complaint to the provincial labour board, UFCW also appealed directly to Alberta’s

labour ministry to issue a stop-work order. The union said it wasn’t optimistic about getting a stop order before Monday morning, since it had only received a letter from the provincial government acknowledging its request. A spokesperson for Labour and Immigration Minister Jason Chopping on Sunday declined to answer questions about the situation, saying the matter was between the union, the labour board and Cargill.

“They’ve had the jurisdiction and the power and the ability to shut down playgrounds and malls,” Hughes, at UFCW, said. “So we’re asking for them to use the same authority to ensure that meat packing plants are safe as well.”