Year: 1998
Location: Edmonton
Profile: John Ewasiw worked for Swifts in Edmonton and its successor, Gainers, from 1957 to the plant closing in 1997, and was a UFCW activist. Ewasiw arrived in Edmonton in 1957. After working briefly as a parts man at Burrow Motors, he joined two siblings at Swifts which his wife, Mary, joined in 1974 when their children were older. He worked in the assembly packing cooler. He says that Swifts was a good employer before Peter Pocklington bought the plant in 1979. “We took a hell of an ass-kicking in 1984 as far as wages and benefits were concerned,” Ewasiw says, explaining why a strike became inevitable in 1986 when, despite the company’s economic recovery, Pocklington demanded further concessions. Pocklington ruined the company by diverting its profits to other investments, forcing a government takeover in 1989. The government sold the company to Maple Leaf in 1993, which imposed humiliating rules on workers. Ewasiw coordinated the Action Centre to retrain workers after Maple Leaf shuttered the plant. His challenge was that a third could not read or write in English.
Keywords: Action Centre; Assembly packing cooler; Gainers; Maple Leaf; Parts man; Peter Pocklington; Retraining laid-off workers; Swifts.
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John Ewasiw appears in ALHI’s video about the meatpacking plant here. He also appears in the documentary, “Alberta’s Summer of ‘86 here.
See also: Meatpacking Workers in Alberta; Occupational Health and Safety in Alberta; Summer of ’86 in Alberta; United Food and Commercial Workers