Maria Cabral, Local 1000A

Maple Leaf Poultry
Brampton, Ontario

Maria Cabral has learned lots about being a good union steward through the many courses she has taken. But the drive behind it all comes naturally, which is how she got to be a steward in the first place.

“In my country, it was the same,” she says, referring to the Cape Verde island where she was born, hundreds of kilometres out in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of West Africa. “I’m the kind of person who loves to speak up. If I don’t like it, I’m going to tell you straight. And I never give up. If I ask you to do something, I’ll ask you today. I’ll ask you tomorrow and I’ll ask you until it gets done. That’s me.”

Her persistence has carried her from the schoolrooms on St. Vincent where she taught for 11 years to Canada at age 30 where she worked first as a cleaner and then at Maple Leaf Poultry. It’s what helped her through those early days in a new country with her two young daughters still in Cape Verde. And it sustains her in her own work as a steward as well as bringing others into the fold of union and social activism.

If she thinks you’ll make a good steward or wants you to contribute to a fundraiser, it’s easier to say yes the first time she asks because she’ll come back and back until you do.

Cabral is the chief steward at the Maple Leaf Poultry plant in Toronto’s northwest end. The plant employs about 600 workers in shifts, and Cabral is one of 12 stewards.It’s a culturally diverse workforce with many languages.

When not on union business, she’s on the production line, cutting, weighing, and packing chicken.

Kevin Benn is head of UFCW CanadaLocal 1000A’s industrial sector, and has worked with Cabral for several years. She’s compassionate, direct, and a quick study, he says. She’s also “somewhat of a magnet” and a natural leader, according to Benn.

“People tend to gravitate to her strength and her personality,” says Benn. “She’s absolutely a strong, no-fluff, cut-to-the-quick type of an individual with a very high degree of integrity.”

As is often the case, whether or not they hold the official title, there is such a thing as a natural steward. Cabral was constantly speaking up to management for mistreating co-workers. When the co-workers asked her to be a steward, she said no because she didn’t know anything about how to do the job.

“They said, ‘It’s what you’re doing every day’.” And they signed something like a cross between a letter of reference and a petition and sent it in to their union.

At the time, they were members of a small union with few resources. Shortly afterward, they became members of Local 1000A, which has a solid, multi-course education program.

Cabral has taken many courses in being a steward and occupational health and safety representative. She is the union’s certified representative on the workplace Joint Health and Safety Committee. She represents the Maple Leaf production workers at the bargaining table. And in 2007, she was honoured with the local’s Pearl Award for her leadership as a woman and for women. She is a member of the local’s networks for women’s issues and political action. Her days and weeks are full with her job, steward’s work, union conferences and education, and her own business selling skin products from a catalogue. Then there’s taking her granddaughter to ballet.  And time with family and friends.

“I’m busy all the time,” she says. What she doesn’t say – and doesn’t need to because you can hear it in her voice – is “and I love it.”

“I have time for everything,” she says.