Dairy workers prove lactose intolerant

DARTMOUTH, N.S. — About 240 full and part-time employees at one of the biggest Maritime dairies — Farmers Dairy in Bedford, N.S., — went on strike earlier this month.

Now, the strikers are complaining because some of the farmers who supply the dairy with product continue to do so.

The thing is, those same farmers actually own the dairy. The Farmers Dairy is a cooperative of about 125 dairy farmers.

So what are the boys on the farm supposed to do? Milk their cows, boycott their own facility and throw the stuff out?

Good sense aside, it was reported in the Halifax Chronicle Herald that Local 40N of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union are upset that trucking companies are hauling milk and therefore doing work that would otherwise be done by striking employees.

Union President Brian Bennett said it is “upsetting for the 250 full-time and part­time workers represented by the union to watch trucks driven by non-unionized workers pulling in and out of the Hammonds Plains Road plant.”

Many of Bennett’s members are local and long-haul drivers who bring milk in from around the province.

According to the newspaper, three companies were singled out by the union: David Brown United of Cambridge; Fisher Transport from Milford Station, and Tom MacDonald Trucking, out of Sydney.

Ken MacDonald, president of Fisher Transport, summed up his position thusly:

"We provide an essential service for hundreds of Nova Scotia dairy farmers and we are contractually obliged to pick up milk that would otherwise be left to go bad."

A spokesman for the dairy says they’ve been able to meet about 94 percent of their orders, despite the strike.

The only problem so far is that they’ve been unable to meet some ice cream orders, which have been extraordinarily high because of the hot weather.