8-14-07, 10:25 am

Labor union activists from around the country and workers at Smithfield Foods' Tar Heel, North Carolina plant will converge on the Smithfield Foods' 2007 Shareholders Meeting on August 29th in Williamsburg, Virginia.

The protest will demand that Smithfield Foods recognize the workers' right to a union. 'The main message is that Smithfield workers want a union and they need it badly,' says Gene Bruskin, spokesperson for Justice at Smithfield, a union and community coalition that is campaigning in support of the Smithfield workers.

Smithfield workers have been fighting since the early 1990s for union representation. In 2006, workers at the Tar Heel meat-packing plant walked off the job in protest of poor safety conditions and threats and harassment by factory managers illegally leveled against workers who advocated union membership.

Workers filed an unfair labor practices complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in June accusing the company of engaging in ongoing illegal anti-union activities. The NLRB had already ruled in 2004 that Smithfield Foods had violated workers rights to organize a union by harassing and intimidating workers during the 1990s, forcing the company to pay over $1 million in back pay to illegally fired workers.

Bruskin says that recent investigations of health and safety conditions at Smithfield plants have revealed a horrific situation. Workers at Smithfield complain of losing their fingers in industrial accidents and of receiving inadequate emergency care.

One woman, Bruskin says, was fired after complaining about the company's failure to provide time off during her pregnancy. While working she was hit by a pig and sustained injuries that forced a termination of her pregnancy.

Last May, 16 plant workers filed a complaint with the Department of Labor's Occupational Health and Safety Administration about the lack of access to sanitary water.

'There's a litany of these kinds of mistreatments that is very typical, unfortunately, inside the plant that have been the fuel that has energized the workers in the plant to want to have a voice, so that when they have a problem, they have somebody that can stand up for them,' Bruskin adds.

The United Food and Commercial Workers, which is the union leading the organizing campaign at Smithfield as well as a co-sponsor of Justice at Smithfield, has not called a boycott of Smithfield products. 'What we've done is talk to people around the country,' Bruskin notes, 'about the conditions in the plant and urged them to communicate to Smithfield and in a lot of cases to the grocery stores carrying their products, saying that these products are packaged with abuse.'

Justice at Smithfield's website carries information for consumers on Smithfield products, how to tell which products were made at the Tar Heel Plant, and how to talk to grocery store owners about the issue.

One of the leading voices in solidarity with the Smithfield workers has been Jobs with Justice (JwJ), a national coalition of labor and community organizations. JwJ has launched a nationwide campaign jointly with Justice at Smithfield that includes passing resolutions in city councils in support of the Smithfield workers and holding demonstrations at grocery stores that carry Smithfield products.

Last month, JwJ activists organized a public demonstration at an Atlanta Publix grocery store that included faith community and labor leaders. The goal was to talk with consumers and the grocery store manager, who promised to send the message about Smithfield to the store's owner. Activists in Chicago, Columbus, and Nashville held similar events over the past two months.

'It's more of a consumer education campaign to try and get the company to hear the message from consumers that it won't listen to from its own employees,' Bruskin says.

And while the union and the Justice at Smithfield campaign haven't called for a boycott, Bruskin says that when people hear about what's happening to workers at Smithfield, they have decided on their own to refuse to buy Smithfield products.

Hundreds of people have sent letters to Smithfield urging union rights. One such person was presidential hopeful and North Carolina resident John Edwards who wrote to the company's CEO last April urging union recognition: 'I hope and expect that you will protect the right of your workers in North Carolina and across the country to form a union and bargain collectively.'

--Reach Joel Wendland at

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