Aristocrats and Outcasts: The Old and New Union Geographies of the

Canadian Packinghouse Workers

Ian MacLachlan

Structure of Lecture

• Cattle butchers as aristocrats • Cattle butchers as outcasts• Organizing the kill floor from coast

to coast• Towards national standards• Structural change & transformation• New union geography of meat

packing

Cattle butchers as aristocrats

• Among the most skilled and highest paid of all meat packing occupations

• Intrinsically more difficult than other meat-cutting occupations due to difficulty of hide removal, size of carcass, and awkward position on killing beds

The Carcass: Laid out like a map…

•Cattle butchers: aristocrats of the packinghouse

•Among the most skilled and highest paid of all meatpacking occupations

Division of Labour in Meat Packing• “It would be difficult to find another industry

where the division of labor has been so ingeniously and microscopically worked out. The animal has been surveyed and laid off like a map; and the men have been classified in over thirty specialties... The 50 cent man is restricted to using the knife on the most delicate parts of the hide (floorman) or to use the axe in splitting the backbone (splitter); and, wherever a less skilled man can be slipped in at 18 cents... a place is made for him, and an occupation mapped out. ... Skill has been specialized to fit the anatomy.”

John Commons, 1904

Meatpacking wages as a pct. of mfg.

80

85

90

95

100

105

110

115

Perc

ent

of

manufa

ctu

ring a

vera

ge w

age

1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995

Inherently difficult, requiring strength and stamina Knifework: Semi-skilled precision labour Comparatively well paid!

Meatpackers as outcasts• Ethnic segregation:

– Burakumin– Metropolitan ethnic succession

• Gendered work– “What kind of a woman would work in meat

packing, anyway?” (Deborah Fink 1995)

– Brutalizing influence on children and women

• Dangerous work– Machinofacture, variable chain speed– swinging meat– muscle cutting, dismemberment, evisceration– slippery/chilly/steamy/smelly….turnover

Immigrant workforce• Latina workers on

strike in 1948 in St Paul, Minnesota

• UPWA was among first unions to act on behalf of minorities e.g. racially integrated locker rooms

Women working on meat packaging line

Organizing the Kill Floor I• Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher

Workmen – 1897– Craft union– all men who use a knife

• Imagine all the crafts in industrial meat packing!

• Cattle butchers, teamsters, coopers, oleo workers, sausage makers

• AFL – Federation of craft unions

Organizing the Kill Floor II

• In the United States:– Depression and FDR’s “New Deal”– Wagner Act (NLRA) 1935/37– Industrial Unionism sweeps the U.S.– PWOC(1937)/UPWA (1943) & CIO leads way

• The United States sets a precedent for meat packing unionization that has a powerful influence in Canada…

• But it takes war to have full effect

Organizing the Kill Floor III• Canada at war:• Full employment, buoyant economy• P.C. 1003 in 1944• National Wartime Labour Relations Board

– Goal: To reduce labour turnover by “taking wages out of competition”

– Industrial Disputes Inquiries

• UPWA organizes rapidly from coast to coast– 42 locals representing 10,500 workers by 1945 – Strike vote strategy and popular support– Aggressive committed leadership

Union Transformation

• United Packinghouse Workers of America

(1937) CIO/TLC

• Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen (1897)

AFL/CCL

United Food and Commercial Workers (1979) AFL-CIO, CLC

Canadian Food and Allied Workers CLC (1968)

Retail Clerks

Corporate Transformation

The Big 3 - 1950Canada Packers

Burns & Co.

Swift Canadian

Armour & Co.

Cudahy Packing

Swift and Company

1854/1927

1890

1908

1866

1890

1875

The Big 3 - 2000

Cargill Foods

Maple Leaf Foods

IBP-Lakeside Packers Excel (Cargill)

IBP Inc.

ConAgra1989

1992

1974 1978

1966

1983

Towards National Standards• Master agreements by 1947 (After big strikes!)• National bargaining protocol• Pattern setting by industry leaders - Big Three• National standards for brackets by 1958.• Intraregional base rate convergence by 1969.• Elimination of interegional base rate

differentials (except for west coast plants) by 1980.

Labour grades at Burns & Co., 1955

Wage convergence 1947

Wage convergence 1969

Wage convergence, Canada Packers

Working conditions improve!

1942• 56 hour week• 1.5 after 10 hours• 2 week vacation

for those with 5-20 years seniority

• 8 statutory holidays

• No guaranteed benefits

1983• 40 hour week• 1.5 after 8 hours• 3-5 week vacation

for those with 5-20 years seniority

• 11 statutory holidays• Life/sick/disability/

pension/health benefits

Turning Point

• Recession & hyperinflation c. 1981• A Kondratief trough• Meat packing plants are

hemorrhaging• Industrial plant closures are

changing the urban fabric and economic base across the rust belt of the U.S.

Structural change and transformation

• Corporate structural change• Union structural change• Firms demand wage concessions while plant

closures are threatened• Transformation to lower cost structure in the

U.S.• Declining beef consumption/cattle cycle bottom• Technological change = deskilling…• Locational change...

Technological change = deskilling

“Indeed, the division of labour had gone so far in the industry that it made the skilled workers no more indispensable than the unskilled; e.g., cattle butchers, who were thought to be the aristocrats of the trade, were the easiest men to replace. The second reason, following closely on the first, was that the technique of the industry allowed the use of hordes of unskilled negroes and non- English-speaking laborers offering themselves at the gates.” Rudolph Clemen 1923

Locational changes• Large scale feedlot sector in Alberta • Structural shift in cattle production from east

to west • Boxed beef by truck supplants carcass sides

by rail• Plunging per capita beef consumption• Alberta becomes even less hospitable to

organized labour• Beef packing and processing shifts from

Ontario to Alberta• All are gradual, incremental changes

Evisceration of the Old Union Geography

• In 1984 Lakeside Packers breaks a UFCW strike with replacement workers,

imposing concessions.• Concessions imposed at Canada Packers

and Master Agreement split: East and West.

• Burns ends national bargaining• In 1986 wage differentials and local

bargaining re-established - reversion to pre 1947 structure!

• Growing divergence between hog and cattle plants by 1988. Canada Packers closed all its western beef plants in 1991.

New Union Geographies of Meatpacking

• Pork packers briefly become the new aristocrats of the packinghouse

• Mix of union and non-union plants• New packinghouse workforce:

seasonal, part time, migrant work force, young and feminized, finders’ fees, two tier wage structure

• Pork packing is next to be transformed

• Current wage pattern seems chaotic!

Meatpacking Wages in 1993

Beef plant wages in 2000

Aristocrats and Outcasts

• Complexity of industrial restructuring• Interplay of economic and social

forces played out in space with sharply regionalized impacts

• This is a case study, every industry is both different yet fundamentally similar

• What have you learned?