The Smithfield processing plant in Tar Heel, N.C., employs 5,500 workers who slaughter over 32,000 pigs a day. It is the largest pork processing plant in the world and is the focus of an intense campaign to organize workers as part of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.
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“I have had three operations and I don’t know what is going to happen next,” said Abel Cervantes, who was permanently disabled in a plant accident. “I have eight siblings and my parents, and I am their only means of support.”
Smithfield’s crimes have been catalogued by the National Labor Relations Board. The list includes threatening retaliation against employees who speak up for their rights on the job; harassing and intimidating employees; physically assaulting and falsely arresting employees with its company-run police force; pitting African American and Latino workers against each other; and threatening cuts in wages and benefits.
A U.S. Court of Appeals ruling upheld a previous NLRB decision against Smithfield and prohibited its management from threatening employees’ promotion opportunities or job changes because of participation in union organizing. The decision is a setback for the management-led campaign of harassment and intimidation against Smithfield workers.
The court ruled that Smithfield must post a notice for 60 days in a conspicuous place, in both English and Spanish, guaranteeing that employees will not be threatened, physically assaulted, or denied job changes or advancement for union activity.
Workers threatened, harassed
The ruling stemmed from the case of Smithfield employee Dan English. An NLRB order asserted that Smithfield had acted illegally when it threatened not to consider English for promotions after seeing a photo of him at a UFCW rally.
According to the UFCW, “Smithfield’s threat constituted unlawful coercion in violation of federal labor law, as it pressures employees not to exercise their right to engage in union activity for fear of suffering adverse consequences on the job if they do so.” The UFCW has been trying to represent the Tar Heel workers for more than 10 years.
English is one of many employees who Smithfield has intimidated and harassed for fighting for union representation. The UFCW states, “Smithfield in Tar Heel has been found liable of physically assaulting an employee, falsely arresting an employee, firing or threatening termination for engaging in protected, concerted activities (like organizing), and threatening bodily harm.”
Maria Angelica Rodriguez is one of the workers fighting for the union. After she fell from a ladder and injured her foot, the company gave her medication and told her she was in pain because she had “flat feet.” When a private doctor told her she had a serious problem with her bone, Smithfield told her not to see him again and keep working every day, or she would be fired.
“I asked the trade union lawyer to fight this case, because what they are doing is not fair,” Rodriguez said. “At the clinic, they said I was a troublemaker and they laughed at me. They said, ‘Fight all you want, you’ll never win!’”
The NLRB decision that favored English also declared Smithfield’s private police force guilty of “assaulting QSI employees, threatening QSI employees with arrest by federal immigration authorities, and causing QSI employees to be falsely arrested.” QSI is Smithfield’s plant cleaning contractor.
In a sick twist of justice, Smithfield has recently filed a lawsuit against the union, alleging that the union’s efforts at winning justice for Smithfield workers constitute extortion. The baseless accusations are yet another attempt by the Smithfield bosses to bully workers and halt unionizing efforts.
Under capitalism, the only chance workers have at winning even the most modest concessions from the bosses is union organization and collective bargaining. The role of a union is to fight for workers’ rights and to expose those who profit at the expense of the workers’ wages and working conditions. Smithfield’s attack against the UFCW for carrying out this most important and basic union task is a deplorable tactic that must be defeated.
The struggle to organize Smithfield is important not only to its employees but to the entire labor movement. If Smithfield can continue to force workers to labor under the most miserable and unsafe conditions, threaten and assault employees, and ultimately, defeat the union organizing campaign, it will represent a setback for workers in general and specifically immigrant workers and other workers in the South.
If, on the other hand, a concerted, fighting campaign is able to beat back the bosses’ attempts at intimidation and form a union at Smithfield, workers will have scored an important victory.
