Smithfield workers force company to the table

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/11659/1/389

1,000 rally for union rights and end to immigration raids

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — A thousand workers and activists demanding unionization of Smithfield’s Tar Heel, N.C., plant shook the walls of the Williamsburg Lodge Conference Center here Aug. 29 as they massed outside the annual meeting of the company’s shareholders, shouting slogans, chanting and blowing whistles.

Company executives inside agreed to a key union demand, the call for the two sides to meet. Meetings were taking place as the World went to press on Sept. 5, according to Leila McDowell, communications director of the United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW). The union has been working for 14 years to organize the world’s largest hog slaughtering plant.

As the crowds roared outside the shareholders meeting, Terry Slaughter, a livestock worker at the Tar Heel plant, presented the hog bosses inside with a petition signed by thousands of workers — a majority at the plant — demanding that the company recognize the union.

“We are tired,” CEO C. Larry Pope told Slaughter and 10 co-workers who presented the petition. He agreed that employees need a union chapter at the plant but said that the company and the union remain at a standstill on how to create it.

McDowell told the World that union negotiators are seeking “an arrangement that insures complete neutrality on the part of the company and defined sanctions if the company violates that neutrality.”

“This could be done in a variety of ways,” she said, “including not only card check but perhaps a community-monitored election. Card check and elections are not enough — our key positions are company neutrality and sanctions.”

FULL story at link.

[Virginia Dare]

1. What a struggle this has been..

Another speaker, Vanessa Reeves, worked for years on the plant’s kill floor, removing the spinal cords from hogs. “As the hogs come down the line, they bump up against you and sometimes fall on you,” she said.

“That’s what happened to me on May 29,” she said. “I went to the ER. I had a miscarriage. I lost my baby in the hospital, and they fired me for being off the job.”

“The only way these people will get help is to get them a union,” said Jim Lowther, president of UFCW Local 400.


So much for those compassionate conservative/culture of life Republicans down in Bible country!..

[waiting for hope]

2. Edwards has tried to help -

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070622/nc_edwards_smithfield.html?.v=1&printer=1

Maybe he'll make a stop.