Lakeside?

[cowman]

I suspect this strike is going to be over real soon? Just as soon as Alberta Justice can sign the papers that allow the busses in...enforced by the government goons...the RCMP!
These strikers can't win. Not with a lot of them already crossing the picket lines. Once the busses start rolling in you will see an abandonment of the union? And who can blame them? This is a no-win situation?
You can bet there is a list at Tyson of who is NOT coming back! All the trouble makers and rabble rousers will be gone!
Hopefully this whole fiasco will help some people realize that, if they want to be free and not a slave they need to get out of there? Go work somewhere that allows you to be a man and not a dog?
Tyson is achieving exactly what they want: a union free sweat shop where they can treat their slaves however they want? But in the big picture you can only be made a slave if you go along with it?

[farmers_son]

While I tend to agree with your comments I think for cattle producers the issue is not whether Lakeside is a sweat shop or if the union will win or is Lakeside trying to break the union.

For producers the issue is we have allowed our industry to be dominated by two mega players of which Lakeside is the largest. Lakeside kills 2/3 of all Alberta production in that one plant. From an industry standpoint much less a producer standpoint that is very foolish. Economy of scale is one thing but that much control in one place of a major primary resource industry should never been allowed to happen.

If there was any doubt that the two packers were acting as a monopoly before there can be no doubt now that Cargill is a monopoly buyer of live cattle in Alberta. Rather than calls for the Alberta government to step in and settle the strike I think producers should be calling for more packing plant capacity in this province, said capacity owned by other than these two monopoly players and preferably by producers themselves.

[pmckenna]

I remember a lawyer freind of mine saying that he worked his way through University (in Winnipeg) at a packing plant in the 60's.

So - in balancing rights vs. production necessities (would you like a shutdown, possibly even permanent, in the wake of BSE, and can Alberta really afford it?) - does working at a packing plant give you a life sentence? I would think some if not many senior employees started at the bottom - and I'll bet working conditions today are a lot better than they were then. Not saying I'd be great at it, but it's a start for new Canadians, and education can follow.

My dad came from Ireland, as far as I know his education was grade 5, and he became a clean room pressure welder.

We still need people who want to be Canadians. The race card don't add up to me.

[cowman]

Well I don't think anyone mentioned race?
I worked in a packing plant when I was young and I will tell you it isn't for the faint of heart! You won't have any trouble sleeping at night and you won't have to worry about being fat!
The point here is if Cargill and XL can afford a certain contract then why not Tyson? Are they poverty struck or something?
Tyson will break this union if that is their desire, but in the long run they will lose because you can't treat people like dogs and expect them to give a rip! Shoddy work, a demoralized work force...no one will care? Eventually it spreads to management?
How do some industries/businesses keep out a union? One way is to treat your people better than if they had a union. Involve them in the business so they have a stake in the succcess of the business? It's simple human relations 101!

[cowman]

i read on the globe and mail, about
lakeside strike! it is bad news that
garnet-altwasser leading plant official
has been charged !
if he is american he be charged and send
back.
this is going to far and the big us giant got large sum of subsidie from our
country! made huge profit while b-s-e
crises.and starting at 12 dollar/hour
it is time mr klein brings this to an end.

[cowman]

I heard on the radio that 4 Tyson employees, in three vehicles, had ran the union guy off the road and he was in the hospital! The report said three men had been charged with dangerous driving and later I heard something about maybe charging them with attempted murder!
And meanwhile Ralph sits on his hands...! Is this crazy or what? How long until some mentally unstable guy on the other side decides to retaliate? We already know there are four nutcases on the Tyson side?
I wonder how the management at Tysons, in the USA, will view this? Will they condone the criminal acts of their employees...or will they can them? I would suggest if they are a legitimate law abiding corporation they will have the pink slips in the mail?
How would you like to work in that kind of hole when this is all over?

[kpb]

cowman is right on the mark in his posts on this topic. Most of the employees who work at Lakeside are new Canadians who cannot work in other places. They are doing jobs that long-time Canadians will not do because the job conditions are out of the 19th century.

Now just because these employees are new Canadians is no reason to treat them like animals. If Klein had a shred of human decency he'd work on some legislation to make the working conditions at Lakeside tolerable for a human being to work in in the year 2005.

And any of you out there who have mentioned that these people should be happy for whatever job they can get, should work in the plant for a week and then see. So what is it--Tyson doesn't have the money to pay wages that match Cargill, or they want to take advantage of new Canadians, or they just don't like unions?

What's happening is just the same as when the packers took advantage of every opportunity they had when the border was closed to grab every penny they could from the ranchers. It's the same old story, boys, the big packers will maximize their profits every chance they get and as long as we have no meaningful legislation to protect either the ranchers or the Lakeside workers, we're both in the same position--that is under the heel of the multi-national company. Like it or not, the ranchers of this country are in the same power position as the workers at Lakeside and, like cowman says, the union there is likely to be broken. So how does that make you feel about our business?


kpb

[Willowcreek]

This is why I have said that all the new slaughterhouses and Co-ops better have deep pockets. These are supposed to be their own people, their own employees and they are fighting over a few bucks-- think how they will treat anyone who goes into competition with them and starts to hurt their profits.

[farmers_son]

Deep pockets? Packer gouging costs Alberta producers $200 million each year. Producers are paying for 2 brand new modern super efficient packing plants each year through uncompetitive bids by our two big packers and it continues today.

Whether we want to realize it or not we are in competition right now with the packers for our fair share of the consumers beef dollar but we are loosing the battle. The fact that we are surviving proves we have deep pockets but if we could inject a measure of fair pricing for our live cattle into the marketplace there would be something in those pockets for a change.

A Canadian producer selling a fat steer this week received Canadian $290 less than an American producer would receive selling the same steer in the U.S.

[pmckenna]

I'm not going to try to correct Cowman, or Farmers_Son, or others. I'm just suggesting some possible alternate viewpoints. Lakeside, was begun in Alberta, by Albertans. It evolved over time, as I understand it, to where it is today. As you don't complain about Cargill as much (and I work with both, moreso with Cargill) also remember that in neither case did majority Canadian dollars build those plants. With all the petroleum revenues, did people just sit on their hands? For years and years? I bet a lot of folks got into cattle when it was more likely to be profitable, but was any of that made easier by production capacity being made available? Not taking away from their cattle expertise. How many of the picket line crossers in the Brooks area have farms they would like to keep, but have to work off farm to make ends meet? I wonder. I think there is a whole picture to see, or maybe I'm blind myself. I think we Canadians have been bad in investing in ourselves.

[cowman]

Well I'm old enough to remember what happened and was employed in the packing business, as well as owned shares in Canada Packers.
When Cargill came in the writing was on the wall for the Canadian packers. There just wasn't enough cattle to support the existing packers and Cargill. Cargill was state of the art but some of the Canadian plants weren't slouches either! CP Red Deer and CP Moosejaw were very modern up to date plants that were highly profitable(remember I owned shares). Quite literally I tripled my investment in three years when I sold those shares!
Lakeside Packers was a dog and so was XL, propped up by provincial money! No way should either of them survived but the government bailed out XL and Lakeside was bought out by IBP.
Cargill introduced some pretty revolutionary practices. They cut out all the local Canadian suppliers and bought all their supplys in the US. They got rid of all the local truckers and brought in a big American trucking firm.
The end of the CROW freight rate signalled the increase in the Canadian cattle herd as grain farmers scrambled to find a viable market for their grain. This created the real problem we have today...the need to export massive amounts of cattle and beef. Before that we couldn't even supply the domestic market? In other words our governments failure to fight the grain wars spilled over into the cattle and hog industries.
I will tell you that Cargill and IBP got a sweetheart deal from the Tory government in Alberta. Grants and concessions that were NOT available to the already existing Canadian packers! I believe if the government had not given Cargill a competitive advantage Canada Packers would still be here today? Oh and incidently, most of the management at Canada packers now work at Cargill and I believe their CEO in the USA is Bill Buckner...a Canadian and former manager at CP Red Deer! I will add Canada Packers was a very good employer and a good corporate citizen. They had a union but everyone got along just fine. We worked piece work and I was taking home over $1,000/week which was pretty decent for 1982!

[kato]

Another thing that came with the big Cargill plant was the death of the Manitoba packing industry. Winnipeg used to be the main place to slaughter livestock. There was a massive stockyard, plus Burns, Swifts, and Canada Packers. All gone now.

My worry now with this Lakeside thing is where are heifers going to be slaughtered now? Moose Jaw seems to be moving to cow slaughter, the border is basically closed for the next 40 days or so until the segregation time is up for exporting them, and Cargill won't take anything that hasn't been on vitamin E.

That leaves a lot of fat heifers without a buyer. Some of which we own! We sold some fat heifers today for about 120 dollars less than steers that were not of as good a quality as the heifers. A 10 cent discount hurts on a 1200 pound animal.

As it is, we were lucky to get what we did, because we've been told it's going to get a lot worse.

[cattleman2]

Kato: Why wouldn't you feed them a little longer to see how things shake down??? If they only weigh 1200# you should have room to go before discounts...

[cattleman2]

well have been feeding cattle long before1980 so makes me old enough to
know how the packers work there system!!
hope cowman as you stated you have shares in lakeside and take home more
than a 1000 dollar/ week as you did in
1982 this is better than raising calfs at 1.45/ lbs. quite literally the feeding busenis has not been that bad .hope we get the plant going again !
and we both make a fair return on our free enterprice beef operation.

[cowman]

No shares in Lakeside. A few in a petrofund. Incidently CP paid a 4% dividend a year and the stock split three ways and climbed right back up within 3 months! This was when the owners were getting ready to sell so I suspect there was some "manipulation" going on!
It looks like Lakeside has effectively broke the union as they are back killing cattle. I suspect they might take quite awhile to get rolling at full speed again? I wonder where they will get the workers if some are so disgusted they refuse to return? Lots of jobs out there?
Jerry: you say it costs about $100/animal to ship to the states? How much of that cost is transport and how much complying with US regulations? Do you actually do better than selling to Lakeside/Cargill?