KPEP
Goodbye Schneiders
Article from the KW Record
It literally marks “the end of an era” for Waterloo Region.
That’s how Waterloo historian Ken McLaughlin reacted to the news that the Schneider Foods plant is closing in 2014, resulting in 1,200 people losing their jobs.
Of all the manufacturing plants that have closed over the years, the Schneiders plant on Courtland Ave. is the one that “most defined Kitchener’s identity in the 20th century,” McLaughlin says.
The business started almost by accident after John Metz Schneider hurt his hand in an accident at the Dominion Button Works factory in 1886. Home for a month and needing money, he and his wife Helena began making country-style sausages from their home and selling them door-to-door. They kept it going even after he went back to work in the factory.
In 1890, he founded the firm when he became a full-time butcher and set up a “pork shop” in a residential-style building near his home. In 1895, he hired a German-trained butcher, Wilhelm Rohleder, whose secret sausage recipes created a thriving business in the largely German community.
In 1911, J.M. Schneider bought a 16-acre parcel of land on Courtland Avenue, initially erecting an abattoir there. In 1924, the original 100,000 square foot processing plant was built and started production the following year.
In the decades that followed, all around Courtland Avenue, generations of Kitchener residents built their lives and the community.
“There were generations of the same family working there,” McLaughlin says.
“They were fathers and mothers and sons and daughters, even grandfathers and aunts and uncles working there. It was a family business, not only for the Schneiders, but also for many local families who were there for generations,” he adds.
In the decades that followed, there were ups and downs but the plant continued to grow and sustain Kitchener. Even in the Great Depression, despite slower sales and reduced hours, no one was laid off from Schneiders.
When J.M. Schneider died on Feb. 23, 1942, at 83, hundreds of employees lined the street outside of Courtland Avenue to pay silent tribute as a 32-car funeral cortege passed in front of the plant.
Over the next several decades, his sons, then his grandsons kept the business in the family. Kitchener defined the Schneiders as much as the Schneiders defined Kitchener.
“Whenever anything was happening in the community, the first instinct was ask the Schneider family to donate, and it was done,” he says. “Their identity was in Kitchener, in a very real way.”
By the end of the 1950s, the Schneiders name was on 160 different products. The company was also on the cutting edge of technology changes and was one of the first food companies in Canada to introduce vacuum packaging.
It thrived through the 1960s and into the 1970s, undergoing major expansions and acquiring businesses from Thunder Bay to Vancouver. At its peak, Schneiders was a 4,000-employee firm with sales of more than $800 million a year.
But by the mid-1970s, growing global competition began to take a toll on profit margins. Layoffs followed. In the 1980s, the company reorganized a couple of times. In 1988, the plant was hit by its first strike.
Even so, while other plants were organized by big labour unions, employees at Schneider’s had their own internal organization, the Schneider Employees’ Association, something that spoke to the relationship between the family and the workers.
The Schneider family tried hard to protect the company’s presence in Kitchener, even when it sold the company in the late 1990s, McLaughlin added.
The family turned down two takeover bids from Maple Leaf, before selling to Smithfield Foods of Norfolk, Va., in 1997. They wanted to see the Schneider plant carry on into the 21st century. “They took a financial loss to try to maintain the presence of the company here in a very real way. I was impressed by the family’s determination to do that,” McLaughlin says.
But it didn’t last. Smithfield bought the rest of the shares in 2001 and then sold the company to its larger rival Maple Leaf Foods in a transaction valued at $510 million Cdn.
Last year, Maple Leaf Foods announced it was closing some plants, but workers at Schneider’s in Kitchener remained optimistic, saying with three shifts a day and a new five-year contract, they didn’t think the plant would be hit. But on Wednesday, they got the bad news that the plant will close in 2014.
McLaughlin said it is sad because even though there is still the Piller’s food processing plant, it only dates back to 1957 and Schneider’s is the last of the local plants from an era known as “busy Berlin” for its thriving manufacturing sector.
The special relationship between a company like Schneider’s and the local community “is something we might never see again,” McLaughlin said.
Goodbye Schneiders
Article from the KW Record
It literally marks “the end of an era” for Waterloo Region.
That’s how Waterloo historian Ken McLaughlin reacted to the news that the Schneider Foods plant is closing in 2014, resulting in 1,200 people losing their jobs.
Of all the manufacturing plants that have closed over the years, the Schneiders plant on Courtland Ave. is the one that “most defined Kitchener’s identity in the 20th century,” McLaughlin says.
The business started almost by accident after John Metz Schneider hurt his hand in an accident at the Dominion Button Works factory in 1886. Home for a month and needing money, he and his wife Helena began making country-style sausages from their home and selling them door-to-door. They kept it going even after he went back to work in the factory.
In 1890, he founded the firm when he became a full-time butcher and set up a “pork shop” in a residential-style building near his home. In 1895, he hired a German-trained butcher, Wilhelm Rohleder, whose secret sausage recipes created a thriving business in the largely German community.
In 1911, J.M. Schneider bought a 16-acre parcel of land on Courtland Avenue, initially erecting an abattoir there. In 1924, the original 100,000 square foot processing plant was built and started production the following year.
In the decades that followed, all around Courtland Avenue, generations of Kitchener residents built their lives and the community.
“There were generations of the same family working there,” McLaughlin says.
“They were fathers and mothers and sons and daughters, even grandfathers and aunts and uncles working there. It was a family business, not only for the Schneiders, but also for many local families who were there for generations,” he adds.
In the decades that followed, there were ups and downs but the plant continued to grow and sustain Kitchener. Even in the Great Depression, despite slower sales and reduced hours, no one was laid off from Schneiders.
When J.M. Schneider died on Feb. 23, 1942, at 83, hundreds of employees lined the street outside of Courtland Avenue to pay silent tribute as a 32-car funeral cortege passed in front of the plant.
Over the next several decades, his sons, then his grandsons kept the business in the family. Kitchener defined the Schneiders as much as the Schneiders defined Kitchener.
“Whenever anything was happening in the community, the first instinct was ask the Schneider family to donate, and it was done,” he says. “Their identity was in Kitchener, in a very real way.”
By the end of the 1950s, the Schneiders name was on 160 different products. The company was also on the cutting edge of technology changes and was one of the first food companies in Canada to introduce vacuum packaging.
It thrived through the 1960s and into the 1970s, undergoing major expansions and acquiring businesses from Thunder Bay to Vancouver. At its peak, Schneiders was a 4,000-employee firm with sales of more than $800 million a year.
But by the mid-1970s, growing global competition began to take a toll on profit margins. Layoffs followed. In the 1980s, the company reorganized a couple of times. In 1988, the plant was hit by its first strike.
Even so, while other plants were organized by big labour unions, employees at Schneider’s had their own internal organization, the Schneider Employees’ Association, something that spoke to the relationship between the family and the workers.
The Schneider family tried hard to protect the company’s presence in Kitchener, even when it sold the company in the late 1990s, McLaughlin added.
The family turned down two takeover bids from Maple Leaf, before selling to Smithfield Foods of Norfolk, Va., in 1997. They wanted to see the Schneider plant carry on into the 21st century. “They took a financial loss to try to maintain the presence of the company here in a very real way. I was impressed by the family’s determination to do that,” McLaughlin says.
But it didn’t last. Smithfield bought the rest of the shares in 2001 and then sold the company to its larger rival Maple Leaf Foods in a transaction valued at $510 million Cdn.
Last year, Maple Leaf Foods announced it was closing some plants, but workers at Schneider’s in Kitchener remained optimistic, saying with three shifts a day and a new five-year contract, they didn’t think the plant would be hit. But on Wednesday, they got the bad news that the plant will close in 2014.
McLaughlin said it is sad because even though there is still the Piller’s food processing plant, it only dates back to 1957 and Schneider’s is the last of the local plants from an era known as “busy Berlin” for its thriving manufacturing sector.
The special relationship between a company like Schneider’s and the local community “is something we might never see again,” McLaughlin said.