Unionized workers at Olymel’s bacon processing plant at Drummondville, Que. have voted to accept a four-year deal, ending a three-week strike and serving as a “signal” to employers in the region, their union said.
Olymel announced Friday that CSN-represented workers at the Bacon Inter-America facility, who’d been on strike since May 26, voted 93.6 per cent in favour of the deal. The company said the agreement was proposed by provincial conciliator Diane Larouche.
Olymel said Friday the size of the vote in favour of the deal will allow for “a serene resumption of plant operations from the beginning of next week, after verification of the availability of the raw material” — that is, pork bellies.
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The company also said it believes the improvements in the agreement “will be a positive factor for the work climate, as well as for hiring and retention of employees.”
The new agreement comes during a particularly unprofitable spell for Olymel, which has already been in deep cost-cutting mode for months. Last fall it cut dozens of administrative and management positions through attrition and layoffs.
Since then, the company has closed three pork further-processing plants in Quebec and has plans in place to shut its hog slaughter plant at Vallee-Jonction, Que. before the end of the year.
Further west, where Olymel operates a major hog slaughter plant at Red Deer, Alta., the company more recently announced plans to dial back its Prairie hog production by idling six company-owned sow units in Alberta and Saskatchewan starting sometime in the next several months.
The workers’ union local, the Syndicat des travailleuses et travailleurs de Bacon Inter-America–CSN, in a separate release Friday, said the deal gives the Drummondville plant’s 500-odd workers a $4.55 per hour wage increase over four years, including $1.75 an hour in the first year.
The deal also calls for a 9.6 per cent decrease in employee contributions to insurance, plus improvements to pensions, the union said.
Pascal Bastarache, president of the Conseil central du Coeur du Quebec–CSN, said in the union’s release that Olymel “had no choice” but to take inflation and shortages of available labour into account, adding that this deal represents “a signal for the other employers in the region.”
The union, in a separate release June 13, cited Scotiabank data showing the average retail price of bacon has risen by about 30 per cent between December 2019 and December 2022.
Melanie Cloutier, president of the Drummondville union, said the plant’s business is profitable, bacon is a growth market and the company “cannot put all of Olymel’s difficulties on us.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network
