boucher

shipper

chef d’équipe conditionnement

millwright

laborer

Conestoga Meat Packers

I would not recommend Conestoga Meats as an employer.

The Good
My teammates were wonderful and made working their better! They were the only reason I stayed as long as I did. They helped me out with any scenario/task that I was not equipped to handle due to training gaps.

Free lunches on long weekends.

The Bad
Training. I was a salary staff employee and can confidently say, at least for the department I worked for, training is extremely poor and does not equate the performance they expect from you. That is, the expect a perfect job performance with very, and I cannot stress this enough, little training. In fact, they basically expect you to train yourself. Hope you are a pork expert or have industry experience, because there are very little internal resources (e.g. training manuals, SOPs) to reference if you have not be trained. 

Senior management. It felt like an senior management club. Figuring out what your manager needs from you or getting answers from them is extremely difficult due to them always being at meetings and not very present for their own team. 

Communication. For all this company  preaches about communication being a "pillar", it fails spectacularly at communicating. Everything is a secret and you will not know vital information until during or after the fact. This happens at both a company and departmental level. 

Salary. My coworker, with similar work experience, made >$10k more than I did. We were encouraged to not discuss our salary with other employees. I wonder why.

Conclusion
I hope this helps you in decision making process about whether to apply to a job this company offers. As I stated previously, I would not recommend working for this company until serious structural changes happen.



This took place in a very cold environment below -10 degrees Celsius. The day would start at 6am and during the day I would obtain a list of certain parts I had to pack and how many bags. During the day I would push around heavy tins in order to have somewhere to put the packed product and would then drop off the packed product to a croyvac which would seal the bag and would continue with the rest of the order. Once the order was done, I got to work on the packaging side where product would come onto a conveyer belt where people grabbed the pieces they needed for their order, which was then wrapped individually and placed in a box. The hardest part of the job was the physical endurance you had to have to make it through the day. It was long 8 hours on your feet which would sometimes cause back pain. The most enjoyable part of the job was the people you would meet and even though we are all in the freezing cold, everyone always has a smile on and will yell good morning across the plant. 

I enjoyed working for Conestoga Meat Packers. If you have a good work ethic you can really grow with in the company. There are tons of opportunities. I always felt comfortable to ask questions. The management team was a great support. I started off in the box room, to the production floor, to the kill floor, to the barn in receiving, then finally to working with the live haul and logistics teams. I have learned so much working with Conestoga Meat Packers. The only reason I left the company is because I moved provinces. If I had not moved I would still be with the company. I am working with another large food production company now and I do credit Conestoga Meat Packers for a lot of my knowledge that got me the job I have today. I am truly grateful to have had the opportunity to work for Conestoga Meat Packers.

Prepare for 3 interviews before you get the job and make sure you NEGOTIATE everything so you don’t get stuck with the below cons:
- not fair pay AT ALL for the amount of work that’s expected of you, including numerous surveys and monthly check ins for self improvement that you have to do on top of your actual job
- if you want to advance, you have to inquire and if you do get promoted, they won’t raise your pay, you have to fight for the raise
- you’re expected to fix things that are not in your control 
- pointless meetings literally everyday that have nothing to do with your job role, which puts you behind on your work
- benefits are pitiful 
- they have events that you have to pay into yourself and then when the event comes, you still have to pay more out of pocket to attend
- if you’re scheduled until 4:30 and you leave right at 4:30 because you’re done all your work, they’ll reprimand you for it

As a shipper/receiver, a typical day will include driving a tow motor they call it, but they don't use forklifts in the shipping/receiving role. You will be driving a crown electric walkie rider single pallet jack slugging various sizes of boxes, palletizing orders for customers and loading the pallets onto trailers, or you will be expected to help receive trucks that come from the Breslau plant. You will notice that you are expected to keep busy working while some of the more established workers will get to slack off and have a more relaxing workday. The atmosphere is very cliquey-like. You will be expected to work with a co-worker who only does receive and is hard to work with and has an unpleasant demeanor. 

Constant clock in clock out work. Everyday it's the same, which can be very boring and mentally exhausting. 
Management are generally good people and can have a great relationship with, but from experience, no one is a real leader that inspires to improve the place. It sticks to the status quo, and though they give off the impression that they care about the opinions of workers, its all false. Claim to have open door policy, but can't really have a civil conversation and it all comes back to the employee is in the wrong. Told to report soreness or any injury and request "light duty" to no cause further injury but is frowned upon by management and they give you a hard time. Can go to Human Resources for issues that cannot be resolved but typically they go against you and make it very difficult. MANY new employees walk out in the middle of their first shift and do no return.

This job is good for the short term while you look for something else.
It SEEMS to be employee geared, until you realize its not. They will go out of their way to seem to help you in the beginning, but when the real problems start they become unbending and disinterested in what the employees have to say unless it benefits the company first and foremost. Favourtism is rampant and you will not advance unless someone wants you to. If you are a great worker, you may be held back in a position because you pick up the slack and help the line run smoothly. Physical ailments due to heavy repetitive work are treated fairly in the beginning, after a while, they consider that you have been "work hardened" and are not as willing to provide alternate work to alleviate repetitive injuries.

In every day at work you have to wash off the the barn to avoid contamination or to keep hygiene promotion, so that the pigs could be clean and healthy. What I  learnt the most is that employees  worked as team all the time n they get friendly.The  management was so good ..... such that whenever you need help the lead hand or the  supevisor is right there with you. In term of mechanical problem the maintenance group  will arrive quickly to fix what went wrong.At conestoga safety is first  at any work station n It was well conducive.The hardest part of the job whenever there is many dead pid in the barn you have remove them and also dump them in the garbage bin. The enjoyable part is that when there is no dead one in the barn.

The company has grown too large too fast. When I signed on it was just starting to grow. Work was easy and simple and everybody worked together to get the job done. After a few years and a few changes in management however, things went downhill. The mentor-style training I received vanished along with the "old guard" who served as mentors. The new employees brought in saw no reason to take training seriously, and thus the quality of workers declined rapidly, to the point where the few remaining "old guard" workers were doing most of the work for no extra benefit to themselves.

Conestoga Meats is a very unique place to work - I was given the opportunity to learn a number of different jobs which gave me good versatility within the plant. The pay and benefits are really good, especially for the general labour sector. The management is generally very good. Despite what the few bad apples might say, the management seems to want everyone to enjoy their jobs and their take complaints seriosly. There are alot of social activities that HR puts together so you can actually get to know your coworkers really well. For my retirement they even gave me a gift! Conestoga was a great place to work and was a rare find where it felt like the company cared about everyone.

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Boucher 16 salaries reported	$25.97 per hour
Shipper 7 salaries reported	$24.56 per hour
Chef d’équipe conditionnement 7 salaries reported	$22.73 per hour
Millwright 6 salaries reported	$44.27 per hour
Laborer 2 salaries reported	$22.63 per hour

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