SMITHFIELD WALKS OUT OF TALKS
OVER NEW VOTE AT TAR HEEL

Smithfield Company managers, continuing the firm’s years of intransigence against their Tar Heel, N.C., plant workers, walked out of talks with the United Food and Commercial Workers on Oct. 15 on procedures for a new union recognition election there, the union said.

The walkout disappointed UFCW, which has been trying for years to organize the 5,500 workers at Tar Heel, the nation’s largest pork-processing plant. In talks over the last several months, UFCW dropped its key demand, card-check recognition. But it refused to yield to Smithfield’s demand that a third election at Tar Heel be run without previous management intimidation, illegal firings, propaganda and labor law-breaking.

Indeed, the UFCW added, management has gone so far as to show newly hired workers a video “that lies about the company’s role in attacking workers’ rights” during the prior two election campaigns. Smithfield also illegally asks the new workers at Tar Heel to sign a letter demanding an NLRB-run election under the exact same conditions as the previous two votes--which UFCW lost due to management labor law-breaking.

All that, plus firing of union supporter Jose Ozorio Figueroa on August 4--allegedly for being four minutes late to his shift--led UFCW to file a new set of labor law-breaking charges against the firm, the union added.

“Smithfield even has signs up in the plant that say union organizers are like roaches,” the Tar Heel workers said in their lengthy explanation, posted on the Change to Win website. And it has been running ads on English and Spanish radio stations in the area comparing union organizers to Mafia thugs.

“Our movement is not about outside union organizers. Our efforts are led by workers like us who continue to organize for a union voice. Our employer is calling us ‘roaches’ for wanting a union in our workplace,” the Tar Heel workers added.

The Tar Heel plant is majority-minority and workers there toil in some of the most oppressive conditions in the U.S., including 100-degree temperatures. Workers have also been fired after returning from job-related injuries. And Smithfield has tried to divide the workers by race, in addition to threatening Hispanic-named workers with immigration checks.

The firm’s massive labor law-breaking in the prior two election campaigns led not only to NLRB decisions against Smithfield, but to a stern verdict against the firm from the very conservative 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va. It ordered back pay and damages, and banned the law-breaking, but did not order recognition.

“Smithfield’s actions during the 1997 election”--the second NLRB-run vote, that led to the court ruling--“terrorized the workforce. Years later, workers still clearly remember how workers were fired, threatened and harassed,” the union added. Later in the week, Smithfield sued UFCW, trying to stop its statements.