By Andrew Bates | Telegraph-Journal
Employees at the Sussex-area Agropur Cooperative dairy plant have joined Unifor, the union announced Tuesday.
In a press release, the union said 40 employees, including skilled trades, work at the plant manufacturing butter, skim milk powder and custom milk powder blends. Unifor Atlantic religion organizer Patrick Murray said that the certification was announced Nov. 15 once the automatic threshold for union cards was met. The drive started in June 2024, according to the release.
“We’ve been talking to this group off and on here for the last five or six years,” Murray said. “It’s been non-union since 1987, so … with the result of the number of workers that signed cards, it was clear that they needed a union for support.”
The union also represents Agropur workplaces in Bedford and Truro, N.S. Murray said the union in Bedford and the employer negotiated a four-year deal with a 16.5 per cent wage increase.
“They felt like they were getting behind the eight ball (in Sussex) in regards to wage increases,” Murray said, saying there had also been concerns over changes to benefits and policies by the employer.
The bargaining unit, a part of Unifor Local 506, includes all employees, including lab techs, with the exception of truck drivers and those who qualify as supervisors, Murray said. The union has been electing a bargaining committee and sending out welcome packages and bargaining surveys since then, Murray said.
In a statement, Agropur spokesperson Guillaume Bérubé said the cooperative “respects the right of its employees to become unionized” and is in the process of finding dates to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement.
“With Agropur we represent other facilities so we do have a working relationship with that employer,” Murray said. “We’re looking at this as an opportunity to build on what they currently have. Workers don’t join a national union to go backwards, so we’re going forward.”
Agropur Cooperative is based in Longueil, Que., and manufactures brands including Northumberland, Island Farms and Natrel. It acquired the plant, located northwest of Sussex in Roachville, in a merger with Dairytown Products in 2014.
