After a 48-hour voting period at the Maple Leaf Plant in Winnipeg, UFCW 832 members have voted YES to ratifying their new collective agreement by 85%. The agreement is a five-year term with an expiry date of December 31, 2025.
“Our bargaining committee has done an exceptional job of landing this deal,” said Jeff Traeger, President of UFCW Local 832. “There are many great improvements in this deal for our members that provide good wages with flexibility for their personal lives.”
This new collective agreement brings a long list of improvements, highlights among them include:
- Union members will now be able to bank up to a week’s worth of overtime to be used for non-production days or pre-approved unpaid personal leaves.
- More full-time jobs for union members. Currently the company can have 47.5% of their employees be part-time, and over the next two years that will drop down to 30%.
- A significantly improved job posting process that will help members move to a different shift, move to a different department, or get a full-time posting.
- A complete rework of the harassment, discrimination and bullying language in the agreement to give members a much clearer process for dealing with complaints.
- Increased contributions to the Dental Plan.
- This Collective Agreement now includes paid domestic violence leave. This language matches the current provincial legislation, but if the language is ever removed from legislation it will continue to exist in our collective agreements.
- The Company and the Union have agreed to start a joint employment project to employ and support persons with disabilities.
- Increased wages, and higher shift premiums, including retroactive pay back to January 1, 2021.
The previous agreement expired on December 31, 2020, but due to the surge in positive cases of COVID-19 and the extra complications that COVID-19 brought with limited gathering sizes, both sides agreed to extend the bargaining period.
Maple Leaf Consumer Foods Inc (Winnipeg) is one of many food manufacturing facilities owned by Maple Leaf Foods. Located in Winnipeg, this facility employs over 1,500 UFCW Local 832 members who produce and package pork products.