by Tom Price

When the last little piggy went to market at Worldwide Pork in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan in May 2005, it looked like the company would shut down forever.

But most of the 270 members of the Retail, Wholesale, Department Store Union, ILWU Canada didn’t give up. They would demonstrate, lobby, invest their own money and hold on to save their jobs.

The company had gone bankrupt last year, leaving its workers jobless and owing them money. A bankruptcy judge froze its assets, but gave the workers time to try to resuscitate the business. Their effort would go down to the wire.

The workers, who slaughter hogs and process and package the pork, had maintained standards high enough to have earned the company permits to sell to Japan, the world’s toughest food market. But those permits would expire April 28, 2006 if the workers couldn’t raise the funds to continue running the operation.

Union members had a deep investment in the plant and their community. Most had worked there a long time, some for as many as 30 years. So they formed a Labor-Sponsored Venture Capital fund, a financial organization founded under provincial law that allows investors tax credits for a portion of their investment. The 20-year old law is designed to set up an investment fund sponsored by labor unions that can bail out companies like Worldwide. It also gives workers ownership rights. The workers put in their own money and attracted other investors. They felt they had a stake worth protecting.

“We would lose our back pay if the company went into receivership, so we said, ‘Why don’t we start a new company?’” RWDSU Local 455 Chief Steward Greg Tanner said. “So 106 people ploughed their notice [severance] pay in. It was our last chance.”

Still, it wasn’t enough, so the workers took to the streets to apply political pressure. They demonstrated April 25 in front of the local offices of Glenn Hagel and Debra Higgins, New Democratic Party members of the provincial legislature. The workers explained that investors didn’t want to come in without provincial help, yet the province wouldn’t commit without private investors.

“Over the 30 years we’ve injected lots into the economy, we’ve never had our hands out,” Tanner said. All they were asking for is some of their tax money back.

The worker-supported NDP provincial government of Premier Lorne Calvert finally broke that nasty cycle. At the last minute, on April 27, the Province came up with a $1.5 million investment to put the restructuring plan over the top. The workers voted unanimously to accept the deal April 28 and 29. The union had held together.

“We’re a pretty tight bunch. We were locked out five years ago in a labor dispute where they wanted millions in concessions, we gave them the first million and that wasn’t enough,” Tanner said. “We lasted out that and that welded the unit.”

The company will still have to come up with customers since it hasn’t been functioning for a year, but the workers plan to expand and expect that by the end of the first year they will have majority worker ownership of the company. The workers have plans for expansion and capturing more of the processing work, including refrigerated packaging.

“If we get into the fresh chill like we should have ten years ago, do more value-added processing in the plant with the product we have, the advantage right away is that no one else is in on your product,” Tanner said.

It was a long, difficult year for the workers, but they are hoping it will pay off in the near future.

“We have families where both husband and wife worked at the plant. They had employment insurance, but by now it’s run out,” Brian Haughey, staff representative for the 6,000-member RWDSU, said. “I give them a lot of credit for hanging on and not giving up.”