MPO Labour Market Survey - Sneak Peek

By Daphne Nuys-Hall, Technical Director, Meat & Poultry Ontario

The Meat & Poultry Ontario Labour Market Survey (LMS), launched in 2011, aims to capture vital information on the labour needs of the meat and poultry industry. The LMS is comprised of questions that collect occupation-specific data on current staffing needs, compensation, turnover, and forecasting as well as gather general information on recruitment and retention, training and human resource strategies. Although the 2022 MPO Labour Market Survey Report is provided exclusively to those members who participated in the survey, due to the on-going, industry wide labour challenge facing all meat plant operators MPO is sharing some key findings.

Finding labour, let alone skilled labour, is still one of the biggest challenges facing meat plant operators. According to the survey the current number of vacant positions ranged from 1 to 25, with the majority of respondents indicating vacancies of 4 or more positions. One respondent noted a vacancy rate of 15-25% depending on the location.

When asked to identify what they consider to be their biggest hiring challenge is, operators responded -

• Too few applicants .........................................32%

• Applicants lack of specific skills or training .........15%

• Applicants lack of motivation / poor attitude .......21%

• Applicants lack of relevant experience ................12%

• Other (please specify)......................................21%

Respondents also identified the following as challenges to hiring -

• Location, lack of public transportation

• Hiring locally is our biggest challenge

• Combination of them all

• Isn’t perceived as a career

Positions in which the respondents experience the most difficulty hiring for are meat cutters, both industrial and retail, general labourers, kill floor workers, sausage makers, and smokehouse operators. There is a noticeable increase in the percentage of employers who are unable to fill certain positions from 2020.

In order to continue to manufacture and grow, industry must overcome their hiring challenges by utilizing alternative strategies to fill the gap. From the survey it appears meat plants are forced to function with fewer employees, hire people who don’t meet the job requirements, recruit from outside their community and pass on responsibilities to other employees. Unfortunately, 52% of respondents have had to pass up on new business opportunities because of their hiring challenges.

The adoption of new technology was also identified as a means of overcoming the hiring challenges. In the last 2 years 47% of respondents indicated that they had adopted new automation or technology to replace labour. These included software systems that make staff work easier, packaging machines, auto linking systems on stuffers, portioning machines and slicers, modern semi automated higher capacity machines, and automated washing equipment.

53% of respondents indicated that they are planning on adopting new automation or technologies in the next 3 years including conveying systems, automated packaging equipment and lines, robotics and line integration, software systems and automated slaughter equipment and lines.

However, many operators face barriers to adopting the new automation or technologies including the following:

• Access to capital ....................13%

• Physical limitations of facility ..50%

• Return on investment .....................................9%

• Unaware of what is available ............................13%

• Time ...........................................................16%

There is no one silver bullet to solving the Ontario meat industry’s labour challenge. With our current workers aging out of the workforce, lower labour participation rates and other factors make demand for skilled labour more acute. Without a consistent, national labour solution, meat processing plants will continue to face employment gaps and labour shortages. The meat industry needs to engage in a two-pronged approach of investing in measures to retain and attract staff, while also introducing more automation and technology into the production process.