On Nov. 16, over 1,000 North Carolina meat packers stopped work and walked out of the largest pork processing plant in the world. Smithfield, the company that owns the plant, is a billion dollar transnational giant and one of the biggest corporate criminals in the country.
Workers walked out to protest mass firings at the plant. They stayed out for two days, slowing down plant operations
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Just two days after the walk out, on Nov. 18, plant managers caved. Fired workers were reinstated and the bosses agreed to stop discriminating against immigrant workers. The walkout was sparked by the firing of 75 immigrant workers who, according to Smithfield, provided false Social Security numbers when they applied for jobs.
The mass firing of immigrant workers coincided with a big push by the United Food and Commercial Workers to unionize the Tar Heel, North Carolina plant. Firing these workers was merely another act of intimidation from Smithfield.
Workers at the plant have been trying to organize the plant for over a decade. Smithfield, which earns $11 billion each year, has engaged in every kind of criminal activity against workers at the plant in order to keep wages low and the union out. Smithfield’s crimes have included beating up workers, numerous safety violations, favoring workers based on race and firing pro-union workers.
Sixty percent of the workers at Smithfield are Latino. Many of them are undocumented immigrants. Smithfield has actively recruited undocumented workers in order to threaten and intimidate them and lower all workers’ wages.
Multiple union organizing drives have been met continually with violence from Smithfield bosses who, until 2005, had a private police force at their disposal.
But the workers continue to fight back. Winning a union at Smithfield would be an important step in the fight against racist exploitation and for working-class unity.
