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(Red Deer) Now that a bitter strike at Alberta's largest slaughterhouse has been settled, Labour Minister Mike Cardinal says he's ready to look at ways of preventing similar disputes.

Workers at Lakeside Packers in Brooks, Alta., voted Friday to approve the plant's first union contract. The vote ended a three-week strike marked by division among the workers and violence on the picket line.

Cardinal said he will now look seriously at whether Alberta should enact a law that would force both sides to accept an arbitrated settlement for a first contract if they can't agree on one through bargaining.

"What I want to do first thing is to pull together all the information that's out there from other jurisdictions," Cardinal said Saturday from Red Deer, Alta., where the province's Progressive Conservatives have gathered for the party's annual convention. "I want to review what works and what doesn't work, what could possibly work in Alberta."

That will be followed by some "pretty intensive consultation with the public, because it will be a reasonably sensitive issue," Cardinal said.

The earliest Albertans could expect any legislative change would be spring 2007, he said.

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