Hi, I’m Jeff Traeger, president of UFCW Local 832, and after five years, we are back, bargaining with Maple Leaf in Brandon. Your bargaining committee made up of 17 members from a variety of departments and shifts across the plant met with the employer on July 10th and 11th.
We also had a short meeting with them on the day when all of you were told that Maple Leaf is in the process of splitting up their company into the pork division and the Maple Leaf Consumer Foods division and creating two separate companies, and they don’t even have a name for the new company yet. I know that you all got a letter from Maple Leaf on this, and many of you were in attendance at the town hall meetings, but your bargaining committee is going to make sure we work out exactly what this means for all of you working in the plant.
On the 10th, we exchanged proposals with the employer. There are over 125 proposals combined that the two parties have to get through, and on the 11th, we just did an initial response to each other on those proposals. We sorted out which were monetary and which were not. As is normal in bargaining, we’ll move all the monetary proposals to the back part of negotiations and first deal with all of the workplace issues that you brought to us when you responded to our survey. A large number of you did respond, so thank you for that.
your committee did an excellent job over the three days of, representing you at the bargaining table and speaking to the issues that you wanted us to address in the proposals. And they should be commended for that.
We have another total of 22 bargaining dates set between now and when your contract expires
on December 31st. And our next set of bargaining dates is not that far off on July 22nd, 23rd and 24th. So I will give you another update after those bargaining dates.
We will then have, about a four or five-week break and pick it up again in early September. So stay tuned to this website to get regular updates, and thank you for being involved in your union.
Jeff Traeger
President, UFCW Local 832
Lead Negotiator for Maple Leaf Bargaining.