Potential for workers to transfer after plant closure

The union representing 153 workers at Maple Leaf Foods in Brantford will meet with company officials next week to work out a closure agreement.

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Maple Leaf Foods announced Wednesday it will close its Brantford facility by early 2025, saying the aging facility cannot be upgraded to meet today’s operating standards.

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“We didn’t see it coming,” said Sam Caetano, regional director for United Food and Commercial Workers Local 175, who attended the meeting when workers were told of the impending closure. “Closures are never a good thing to go through.

“There were a lot of mixed emotions, tears, and a lot of employees worried about where do they go from here. Some of them worked here for 30 to 40 years.”

Caetano recalled a Maple Leaf facility in Brampton closing in recent years and noted that quite a few those employees were able to transfer to other facilities including one referred to as the Heritage manufacturing plant on Glover Road on Hamilton mountain.

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“I believe there is a lot of potential for these employees to go to those facilities,” he said, adding that commuting or relocating is an option for work at other plants.

Maple Leaf Foods operates 22 manufacturing plants across Canada, including 12 in Ontario.

A new 660,000-square-foot poultry plant in London opened in 2022 that currently employs about 1,500 people.
“I think their final goal, once they get to full production and both shifts running at 100 per cent, they are going to be up to 2,000 employees there,” Caetano stated.

The 115,000-square-foot plant on Canning Street in West Brant was originally built in 1899, then rebuilt in the early 1940s following a fire. The plant produces 9.4 million kilograms of product annually including chicken wings; chicken, turkey and beef fajitas; and chicken tenders.

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Caetano said the closure agreement will give workers options to stay to the end if they choose, leave early, or try to find different employment. He added that Service Canada would get involved, and an action center would be created at the facility.

“The good news is they didn’t make the announcement two or three weeks before the facility closed, they gave us nine months,” he said. “That gives us time to prepare and get to an agreement and do the best we can to help out the members we have.”

Caetano said workers transferring to other Maple Leaf Foods facilities would maintain their benefits, pension, and years of service with the employer.

“It’s unfortunate,” Caetano said. “A closure agreement (will) put some ease in the minds of members to say, ‘I know it’s a bad thing but there are other good things that might come out of this.’”

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