030626 Maple Leaf Foods Locks Out 660 Workers

Winnipeg, Manitoba - Maple Leaf Foods Inc. locked out about 660 workers and shut down a pork-cut plant in Winnipeg on Monday after workers rejected a tentative contract agreement, the company said.

Members of the United Food and Commercial Workers union voted on Sunday night 55 percent against the deal, details of which were not disclosed, a union spokesman said.

"Wages were definitely an issue," Grant Warren said in an interview.

The closure will affect three small pork-slaughter plants in the province, resulting in 10,000 to 20,000 additional hogs per week moving to U.S. slaughter plants, a hog market analyst said.

The locked-out plant processes carcasses from a Winnipeg plant owned by Maple Leaf, along with a small independent Winnipeg kill floor, both of which have closed, the said.

It also buys part of the production of a small plant in Neepawa, Manitoba, which may close sometime this week, the analyst said.

Maple Leaf's large slaughter plant in Brandon may buy some of the extra hogs, the analyst said. The Brandon plant imports hogs from Saskatchewan and Alberta, but may stop buying from the spot market during the lockout, the analyst said.

Maple Leaf officials were not available for comment.

Maple Leaf said in a release that it wanted to lower the high end of wage rates, and create a single-tier wage structure. The proposal involved a wage rollback for fewer than a third of employees, it said.

The company said the expired contract compensates unskilled and semi-skilled workers at the same or higher rates than skilled employees.

The contract expired on April 30, but negotiations continued until June 19, when the two sides came to a tentative agreement.

"We are disappointed with the vote. We put forward what we believe was a fair offer," said Randy Powell, president of Maple Leaf Pork.

The tentative agreement is now "off the table," Warren said.

"Clear as we can tell, we're starting from square one," he said, adding that the union has asked the company to agree to bring in an independent third party to help restart negotiations.

Maple Leaf employs 2,500 people in Manitoba, mostly at its Brandon plant.

It bought the Winnipeg pork-cut plant from Schneider Corp. in 2001.

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