By Jim Selby, AFL staff

The 900 workers at the old Gainers plant in Edmonton knew they had a long tough road ahead when they went on strike in November 1997. The new company, Maple Leaf Meats, was owned by a branch of the McCain family from the New Brunswick food processing empire. McCains don’t usually deal with unions – and it quickly became apparent that simple economic good sense would not rule the day at the negotiating table. Add to that a plant badly in need of an infusion of capital to bring it up to modern production standards, and the mixture becomes toxic for workers.

Despite the fact that the plant was making a profit, and that the Edmonton plant workerrs were $1.24 an hour behind the workers at the Fletchers plant in Red Deer, Maple Leaf CEO Michael McCain made good on his threat that he would close the plant permanently if workers went on strike.

The question for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 312A was how to create some protection for their members – many of them older workers – now that the plant and their jobs were gone.

The most important thing the union did was to remain on strike and continue boycott actions until the employer agreed to severance measures – including partial funding of the soon to be created Action Centre.

Heading up the new Action Centre was John Ewasiw, a long-time UFCW 312A member, President of the UFCW Provincial Council, and member of the AFL Executive Council.

"All of us who were going to work at the Centre went through a month of training starting March 1, 1998," says Ewasiw. "We started serving the members on March 29th, and the Centre has been busy every day since then."

Out of the 800 workers who had remained on strike until the end, 500 came for a needs assessment. "That assessment alone took about a month," says Ewasiw. "We individually interviewed each person to assess what transferable skills they had, and what training each might need."

The biggest identified need was English-as-a-second-language (ESL). "We found that one out of four workers couldn’t read or write English," says Ewasiw. "We immediately set up a five month, full-day ESL course for the sixty members who took advantage of the training.

"We also ran First Aid courses, WHMIS and dangerous goods courses, forklift training – as well as more standards courses on resume writing, job search and career planning," notes Ewasiw. "We’ve also had people in custodial training, learning warehousing and working on their Class 1 licenses with Big Rig Training."

For the ESL courses, the Action Centre got permission from the Employment Insurance program so that students would not have to look for work while they were in the class. The Centre also organized job fairs where employers talked to workers about what skills were needed and how to go about getting them.

John is proud of the accomplishments of the staff at the Centre. "I’d say we were very successful in helping everybody who wanted help," he says. "Out of the 800 strikers, 550 have found meaningful employment. About 50 more have part-time jobs – but are looking for something better. Another 50 are in some kind of school or training program, and we still have 50 in some kind of upgrading at the Centre."

"If you add the 100 people who took the early retirement package the union negotiated, that takes care of everyone," says Ewasiw.

John is quick to credit the staff at the Centre for the success of the program. "We’ve had some wonderful people working here, like Peter Hohlbein – who still goes out every day talking to employers to find placements for our people," says Ewasiw. "There was Sandy Tarabin, who did as masterful job with computer training, and from Advanced Education and Career Development, we had Jacqueline Wallace and George Boudreau who did employer and community liaison work." John credits Linda Harris, who was the Advanced Education liaison with the project, with the efficient cooperation between Department and Centre. And, of course the hard work of his wife Mary Ewasiw, who supplied the administrative support for the Centre.

John admits that there have some bumps in the road for the project. "There was a lot of friction between the union and Maple Leaf at the beginning, but UFCW began negotiating through the Canadian Grocery Producers Council – using Emma Post, a representative of the Council, as an impartial sort of mediator."

Eventually, an ‘adjustment committee’ made up of three representatives from the union, three from the company, and an impartial Chairperson was struck. It met every two months to oversee and approve the activities of the Centre.

"We could have done things a little better," he says, "but this was a pilot project for all three parties: UFCW, Advanced Education and Maple Leaf. We learned as we went." He points out how they now fax resumes in bulk on job postings – they have every member still looking for work categorized by skills and type of job wanted, and simply send all suitable resumes to employers. At the start, they would contact every single person and send them individually to apply for jobs – a time-consuming process.

At the end of the day, though, Ewasiw believes that the Union has done its job and met the needs of its members one last time. "I’m not happy about the plant closing, but life goes on," says Ewasiw. "Our union did its job when the plant was running – and it did its best to help every one of us when McCain closed the plant down. The UFCW negotiated Maple Leaf support for the Centre, the union put in its own money and got help from the government."

"The Centre was one last union benefit," concludes Ewasiw.