The Rural Voice, 1988-05, Page 30ORGANIZED LABOUR
AND AGRICULTURE
Workers at an Ontario hatchery are pushing for the
right to unionize — they say they'll go all the way
to the Supreme Court. If they succeed ...
The United Food and Commercial
Workers Union has taken up the cause
of workers at a hatchery in Jarvis,
Ontario, and if the attempt to unionize
the hatchery employees succeeds, the
whole of agriculture could be affected.
Last year, working with a group of
employees at Cuddy Chicks Ltd., the
Food and Commercial Workers Union
took the case to the Ontario Labour
Board. The final hearing before the
board was held April 28, 1988, and the
workers and management at Cuddy
Chicks Ltd. are awaiting the board's
ruling. The workers hope that they
will be released from "agricultural
worker" status, which some of them
say makes them second-class citizens.
Under Ontario's Labour Relations
Act, farm workers are excluded from
unions, but the Food and Commercial
Workers Union is arguing that Cuddy
workers should be able to organize.
Under the Employment Standards Act,
agricultural workers are exempt from
provisions governing minimum wage,
overtime pay, vacation pay, public
holiday pay, and hours of work. If the
union succeeds in organizing the chick
hatchery workers, it could lead to
more protection for farm employees
under the Employment Standards Act.
Valerie Needham, who lives in
Port Dover and commutes to the hat-
chery eight miles away, says the issues
are wages and hours. She was one of
14 workers who first met with repre-
sentatives of the Food and Commer-
cial Workers Union in April of 1987.
That meeting, says union represen-
tative Don Dayman, just happened to
coincide with a "serious look" that the
national union had been taking at agri-
culture. Others attempts to organize
"agricultural" workers had failed; the
Labour Board had always upheld the
agricultural provision of the Labour
Relations Act. But under the new
Charter of Rights, the union sees an
opportunity to challenge the Act. Ag-
ricultural workers, the union says,
should have the right of association.
The executive, Dayman says, de-
cided that if agricultural workers were
turned down again, the union would
"go all the way with the case. It just
happens that poultry was the first one
that came up." The union's plan is to
wait for the Labour Board ruling. If it
follows board precedent, the union
will go as far as the Supreme Court.
According to Bill Richardson, a
union organizer who has been working
with the Cuddy employees, more than
35 workers at the hatchery would be
affected. These workers operate on
two shifts. They service the birds,
tray up eggs, set them into incubators,
transfer them to hatchers, service them
from the hatchers, get them off to the
farms, and clean up.
Neither the union or workers have
any complaints about the working
environment at Cuddy's. The hatch-
ery, says Richardson, is a "very effi-
cient operation." Management is "ex-
ceptionally health -conscious" and the
plant "exceptionally clean. I wouldn't
hesitate to eat anything with a Cuddy
label on it."
Valerie Needham, who says she
and a co-worker spend two hours to
clean up the room they work in after
every hatch, agrees. But, she says, "I
feel we're part of the processing."
"We don't feed them (the animals).
We don't water them. We service
them and send them off to the farms."
Cuddy's processing plant in London,
she adds, is unionized.
According to Needham, who has
been an employee at Cuddy's since
September, 1986, wages are one point
of contention. She makes $6.10 an
hour, and says that's the highest she
can go: "We don't get paid very much
money for what we have to do."
A second complaint, Needham
says, is that she and her co-workers
were hired to work a day shift. Then
a night shift was put on. "Now," she
says, "the night shift is getting all the
work." Needham adds that she
recently got only two days of work in
three weeks. Management reasons
that the night shift is needed so truck-
ers can deliver birds to farms during
the day, Needham says, but she argues
that the day shift worked fine before.
"A union is needed down there.
They just do what they want. They
don't care about the workers."
Needham also says that during the
Labour Board hearings it was argued
that the Cuddy operation is a family
industry. "I can understand the person
who does have the small family farm.
I can see how they would be worried
about a union coming in. But this is a
major industry. Cuddy's is big. It's
world-wide." And, she says, if the
Cuddy workers don't do it, "some-
body else is going to anyway."
Initial meetings with the union,
Needham says, resulted in cards being
signed by 24 out of 32 workers. Now,
she says, she can't give an accurate
count of the workers in support of the
attempt to unionize because she
doesn't know the people on the night
shift, there has been a "big turnover"
of workers, and more people have
been hired (she estimates that about 45
work out of the hatchery building).
The Rural Voice was referred by
Cuddy management to Dr. R. W.
Stevens, Cuddy Farms' corporate
spokesperson, but a message left for
Dr. Stevens was not answered before
press time.
Catherine McKinley, president of
the Ontario Hatcheries Association
and co-owner of McKinley Farms St.
Marys Ltd., was one of the witnesses
called at the Labour Board Hearings.
The work done at Cuddy Chicks, she
says, "most certainly is agriculture."
"I don't know how you can yank
the middle of the chain out and call it
non -agriculture."
"I'd be very surprised if they (the
union) didn't take it to court under the
constitution ... Obviously the entire
agricultural community has concerns."
The industry and the Ministry of
Labour are, she adds, aware of work-
ers' concerns, and have been talking
for two years now about the law.
"These discussions are ongoing and
have been for quite some time."
But for Valerie Needham, the
issues of wages and hours are press-
ing. She says the union's chances of
getting a non-agricultural'ruling from
the Labour Board "look positive."
"If not, we go to the Supreme
Court."OLG
28 THE RURAL VOICE