escaped chicken joins picket line

[Guest guest]

and becomes 'metaphor' for striking poultry workers

 

Company says chicken is a union plant, not a real runaway

 

Siobhan Roberts

National Post

http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?f=/stories/20000803/361648.html

 

 

A chicken on the run from a poultry plant in Coquitlam, B.C., has joined a

picket line of striking workers outside the factory in an apparent show of

solidarity.

 

The bird, who is believed to have escaped from Superior Poultry Processors Ltd.,

has been adopted by the workers as a symbol of their grievances and has become a

pawn in the labour dispute over working conditions.

 

Approximately 225 of 260 workers from the plant are on strike seeking better

working conditions, including seniority rights, job security and higher wages.

 

" This staggering chicken is a metaphor for how these workers are treated, " said

Andy Neufeld, spokesman for United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1518. " They

work as long as 14 or 16 hours a day without overtime. They have been bullied

and harassed and absolutely exploited. I think [the chicken] is a very apt

symbol of what those people have experienced in there. "

 

Management at the plant say the escaped bird is not their chicken and was

planted by the strikers.

 

" Chickens don't get out of our compound, " said Bruce Arabsky, the plant manager,

after whom the workers have named the bird.

 

" We believe someone brought the chicken. The day before, someone brought a

chicken as well, " he said. " They yelled out to management across the picket

line, then they put two hands on [the chicken's] neck and wrung it and stuffed

it under our fence. "

 

" It's cruelty to animals, " he said. " We do not condone anything like that. "

 

Mr. Neufeld denied that Bruce the chicken was brought in by the strikers.

" That's absurd, " he said. " We've got better things to do than look after poor

animals. "

 

Since the chicken joined the picket line, it has been adopted as a pet by the

picketers, many of whom have been bringing it food from home. Workers say it is

putting on weight and is in good health.

 

" They're trying to help this poor thing out. They're tending it and looking

after it, " Mr. Neufeld said. Strikers, who are on the picket line 24 hours a

day, have been cradling the chicken overnight in an attempt to keep it warm, he

said.

 

Paul vanPeenen, who works for the local paper and who photographed the bird

outside the plant, also refutes the company's claim that the chicken was a

set-up.

 

" There's trucks pulling in there all day. Big trucks with probably 5,000

chickens on them. When they unload them, some of them invariably escape.

 

" This chicken was just wandering around. I sat there waiting for it and it

walked out of the gate. "

 

Critics of the plant say it is not the first time chickens have escaped.

 

A number of years ago, Mike Bohnert, who became known as the " chicken man, "

rounded up escapees and saved them from the slaughterhouse in his " long live

chickens " campaign.

 

 

http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?f=/stories/20000803/361648.html

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