Date: 2014
Location: Edmonton
Profile: When Ellen Bullock became a pork cutter at Burn’s from 1969 to 1980, doing “men’s work,” she endured endless male chauvinist teasing to earn wages to raise her three children on her own. Bullock grew up on a farm in the almost exclusively Ukrainian community of Waugh, Alberta, on the Redwater River. The daughter of two poor Ukrainian immigrants, her dad had worked as a coalminer before taking local jobs to subsidize their farm income. Bullock left school early to support her family, working as a domestic in Edmonton and then at a Chinese grocery store. She worked at the Burns plant in Edmonton from 1961 to 1965 cutting wieners and packing them because Burns offered decent wages. Though she left Burns to raise her kids, she returned after separating from her husband in 1969. Her former job having disappeared to automation, she took a physically demanding “men’s job” that offered daytime work and higher pay. Elected secretary of her United Packinghouse Workers of America local (predecessor of UFCW) for an 8-9 year period before the plant closed in 1980, she fought both Human Resources and her union to win insurance coverage for married women lacking coverage through their husbands.
Keywords: Burns, Edmonton; Male chauvinism; Domestic worker; Insurance coverage; “Men’s work”; Pork cutter; Ukrainian immigrants; United Packinghouse Workers of America.
Interview Transcript: Download PDF
See also: Meatpacking Workers in Alberta; United Food and Commercial Workers; Women and Work in Alberta