But for some insight into how the corporation has been able to keep a union election away for so long...
"Despite worker dissatisfaction over safety, pay, hours, security, and conditions, union organizers Bustos and Hernandez find that many workers are reluctant to openly support the union. After their visit to the Ortiz family, they go back to borrowed offices and hotel rooms to rank potential recruits: "/magazine/winter_2003/smithfield/one" for strong supporters and organizers, "two" for those who sign union cards, "three" for doubters, and "four" for hardcore objectors.
"Few of the workers fall into category one, and Bustos and Hernandez blame a climate of fear and intimidation, both inside and outside the plant. It dates back, they say, to the earlier union drives, including a 1994 campaign in which the UFCW targeted the company's smaller plant in Wilson, N.C., and narrowly lost. The union's next attempt, three years later at the larger Tar Heel plant, was far more bitter and it, too, was ultimately unsuccessful.
"During that 1997 campaign, the company moved four trailers onto plant property and pulled workers off the lines to attend meetings in them. Latinos went to one trailer and non-Latinos to others, said senior ""UFCW representative Randy Tiffey, over lunch at a local steakhouse where even an order of green beans was cooked with meat. "These were basically union busters, who would give their pitch to workers about not signing cards and then report back to the company who was pro-union."
<clip>
"The union-busting also took on a racial character, according to Buffkin, who said she was instructed to aggravate tensions between African American and Latino workers by giving Latinos the impression that the union was conspiring to replace them with an all-black workforce.
"In a climate of rising unemployment — where Latinos, especially undocumented workers, have little leverage — the rumor carried a fearful resonance. There is always someone else willing to step in and take a job.
"
knew what they were doing," says Tiffey, the union representative. "Smithfield came to a place with the highest poverty rate and highest unemployment in the state," he says. "People here think $8 an hour is really making it because now they can get a double-wide for $30,000."
<clip>
"In December 2000, the NLRB ruled that Smithfield committed "egregious and pervasive" violations of workers' rights during the 1997 election, including conspiring with law enforcement officials to instigate violence during the vote count, intimidating union supporters, and colluding with attorneys and company witnesses who lied under oath.
In addition, the NLRB granted reinstatement and back wages for 11 workers who were illegally fired during union campaigns. It also ordered the company to make several changes during any future campaigns.
Yet those NLRB mandates may never come to pass. First, because the decision is under appeal and will be considered by new NLRB members — Bush appointees. Second, because the First Circuit Court of Appeals, which would hear the case if the NLRB rejects the appeal, has a history of overturning NLRB rulings. And third, because in order for another vote to come to Tar Heel, the union will need signed cards from at least 30 percent of the workforce: a quota that is particularly difficult for the union to reach given the extremely high turnover of workers."
http://www.amnestyusa.org/Winter_2003/HogTied_Battling_it_Out_again_at_Smithfield_Foods/page.do?id=1105525&n1=2&n2=19&n3=429
============
"SMITHFIELD: JIM CROW ECONOMICS ALIVE AND WELL
"Smithfield, the largest pork producer in the United States, has appeared twice before on the Monitor’s 10 worst list — once for factory farm pollution, once for its takeover of the former number two pork producer, a move that dramatically worsened agribusiness concentration and left small farmers increasingly at the mercy of the remaining giant processors. This year, Smithfield is on the list for its labor practices.
"Jim Crow economics is alive and well at Smithfield’s Tar Heel, North Carolina pork processing plant, the largest in the world.
"For more than a decade, the more than 5,000 workers there have attempted to organize a union, only to be met by a vicious anti-union campaign that has included organized beatings of union supporters, operation of an official company police force within the plant (not a private security operation, but a governmental police force) with the power to arrest workers and detain them at the plant, the deployment of the local sheriff’s department to intimidate workers, racist slurs, and use of the Immigration and Naturalization Services department to harass Smithfield’s increasingly immigrant workforce."
http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/mm2006/112006/mokhiber.html
-------------
"In December 2004, the NLRB upheld the order for a new union election at the plant and the findings that the company has engaged in unfair labor practices against employees. But Smithfield continues to deny justice as it drags out the appeals process through the courts.
"In January 2005, the internationally recognized Human Rights Watch issued a report that documents many of Smithfield's human rights abuses. This report, titled "Blood Sweat, and Fear: Workers Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants," highlights the community's outrage. The report documents how Smithfield workers are being threatened and even fired for defending their civil rights on the job.
"While Smithfield's anti-worker practices have not changed, the face of the workforce has. Eight years ago, the plant was majority African-American. Current estimates place the workforce at about 55% Latino, while African-American workers now make up 30-35%; the remainder is split fairly evenly between White and Native American workers."
http://www.ufcw.org/working_america/case_against_smithfield/case_against_smthfld.cfm
"Modern Day Pinkertons: the Smithfield Company Police
"Smithfield uses its own police force, with the power to arrest and detain workers, to deny basic civil rights to workers at its Tar Heel plant.
"Smithfield Foods in Tar Heel is the only meatpacking plant in the United States to have its own private police force. Under a somewhat obscure North Carolina state law, Smithfield has created a company police force that patrols the plant, carries concealed weapons on and off duty, and has the power to arrest workers and detain them in an on-site jail cell.
"Since its founding in 2000, Smithfield Company Police have arrested at least 90 workers and charged them with a variety of crimes. Ultimately, many of the charges have been dropped by the Bladen County Court—although arrested employees are forced to hire attorneys and pay court costs.10
"The Chief of Smithfield Police is Danny Priest—previously the head of security—who was found guilty of violations of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 for arresting and beating union activists after the 1997 election at Smithfield. Other company cops were also involved in the violence following the 1997 election, and some are still Bladen County Sheriff Deputies."
------------
Typical USAmerikan capitalist corporation...
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
