Following a courageous 16-year struggle against the corporate bosses, 4,000 Smithfield workers have voted to join the United Food and Commercial Workers. Held on Dec. 10 and 11, the election marks the climactic defeat of a concentrated anti-union campaign by the owners of the world’s largest hog-killing plant.
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Since the workers first started organizing in 1992, Smithfield’s owners have intimidated and fired union organizers, threatened workers with job loss and benefit cuts, conspired with the sheriff’s department to assault organizers, and spent millions of dollars to undermine two previous elections. The bosses even moved the plant to rural Tar Heel, N.C., where unions are weaker, in hopes of escaping the workers’ campaign.
The Smithfield plant garnered a reputation for numerous violations of worker and human rights over the years. The National Labor Relations Board—hardly a pro-worker institution—recorded threats of retaliation against employees who demanded their rights; harassment and intimidation of workers; physical assaults and false arrests by the company-run police force; the pitting of African American and Latino workers against each other; and threats of cuts in wages and benefits. Until March 2007, Smithfield workers did not have regular access to clean drinking water or hot running water for hand washing.
After Smithfield was ordered to pay $1.5 million in back pay with interest to illegally fired workers in 2006, the bosses sued the union. Smithfield claimed the union’s leafleting campaign, rallies and boycotts were “racketeering,” a ridiculous proposition.
But when the capitalists and the workers confront each other, the justice system unambiguously reveals whose interests it serves. Judge Robert Payne found that the union’s statements on unsafe plant conditions and illegal anti-union tactics, though true, still constituted racketeering. Even with the courts on its side, Smithfield was forced to reach a settlement in October that established the union’s ability to hold the December elections.
Workers successfully resisted the corporate efforts to use racism as a divisive wedge—perhaps the most decisive factor behind their success. The Smithfield workforce is three-quarters Black and one-quarter Latino. When Latino workers were threatened with deportation proceedings and targeted in a Homeland Security raid of the plant, more than 1,000 workers walked out in united protest the following day. Smithfield workers participated in the momentous 2006 May Day political strike for immigrant workers’ rights.
Smithfield workers used a diverse tactical arsenal throughout their many years of struggle. Boycotts, rallies, limited political strikes, propaganda campaigns and legal challenges were all employed to combat the Smithfield owners. Workers refused to be overcome by harassment, intimidation, assault, layoffs and legal suits.
The Smithfield struggle should be a source of inspiration to workers, who are now bearing the burden of the capitalist economic crisis. Despite their seemingly limitless resources, the bosses still cannot run the plants, factories or other businesses without workers. That fact alone guarantees that, through determination and organization, workers can defeat the onslaught from the corporate bosses.
