051121 Tyson Workers in Canada End Strike

Union workers at a Tyson Foods Inc. beef plant in Alberta approved a new contract, ending a three- week strike that had slowed the company's production from Canada.

The new 51-month contract for 2,100 hourly workers includes an increase of C$1 an hour in starting production wages, Arkansas-based Tyson Foods said in a statement. The agreement also calls for an increase of $1.60 an hour in base pay, or as much as 12 percent for some workers, over the course of the contract, which runs through 2009, Tyson said.

Full operations at the Brooks, Alberta, plant, about 115 miles (185 kilometers) southeast of Calgary, will resume Nov. 7, Tyson said in the statement.

During the strike, Tyson had been running one of its two regularly scheduled daily shifts at the facility, which processes about 10 percent of Tyson's weekly slaughter of 240,000 cattle, company spokesman Gary Mickelson said in an interview.

About 1,000 of the 2,100 hourly workers represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers union at the Brooks plant had been on strike since Oct. 12. Union members voted on the offer yesterday.

Tyson employs 114,000 workers worldwide, with about 30 percent of its production plants unionized.

The company's plants haven't run at full capacity for more than a year as the beef packer struggled with tight cattle supplies and a 22-month ban on beef imports by its two largest overseas customers, Japan and South Korea, prompted by a December 2003 case of mad cow disease in Washington state.

Tyson said Aug. 1 that third-quarter profit fell 19 percent versus a year earlier partly on higher cattle costs. The shares rose 28 cents, or 1.5 percent, to $18.52 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading, and have gained 22 percent in the past year.

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