Paula Deen and Smithfield Foods

[pberq]

There will be a rally in Savannah, GA on Monday December 10 protesting Paula Deen's support of Smithfield Foods in spite of their record of worker abuse.

Here is a message sent out by our local labor council:

While Paula Deen promotes her buttery recipes and family values, we
fear she is unaware of the brutal working conditions at Smithfield Foods’ largest pork processing plant in Tar Heel, NC, where some of the meat she cooks comes from.

Paula Deen is a paid spokesperson for Smithfield Foods.


At Tar Heel, workers suffer crippling injuries due to excessive line speeds and inadequate training. A research Associates of America report, using company data from federal safety and health reports, reveals that injuries at Smithfield Tar Heel went up 200% between 2003 and 2006.

Additionally, The National Labor Relations Board found that the company assaulted, used racial epithets, intimidated, harassed and threatened violence against the Tar Heel workers. Human Rights Watch published two reports which documented dangerous conditions and numerous abuses that workers at Smithfield Packing’s Tar Heel plant faced.


AS FANS OF PAULA DEEN, AND ADVOCATES FOR HUMAN DECENCY,
WE ASK THAT PAULA DEEN HAVE A HEART AND STOP PROMOTING PRODUCTS THAT ARE PACKAGED WITH WORKER ABUSE.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE GO TO WWW. SMITHFIELDJUSTICE.COM
JUSTICE A SMITHFIELD IS A PROJECT OF THE UNITED FOOD AND COMMERCIAL WORKERS INTERNATIONAL UNION

[murielm99]

1. I heard her on NPR the other morning,

deflecting questions about Smithfield from Diane Rheems. Hmmmm.

[pberq]

2. Jim Hightower commentary on Paula Deen

http://www.jimhightower.com/node/6124

PAULA DEEN, COOKING FOR SMITHFIELD
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Posted by Jim Hightower


You can't get much syrupier or chirpier than Paula Deen. She's the ebullient celebrity queen of Southern cooking, with a buttery drawl, a downhome manner, and her own very popular TV show on the Food Network.

These days, however, the temperature in Paula's kitchen has become red-hot, for she has cooked up a big ol' mess of political controversy for herself. Last September, she signed a lucrative endorsement deal to be a spokeswomen for America's biggest pork producer, Smithfield Foods Inc. "When I was looking for a company to partner with, " she recently gushed, "I wanted to make sure it was someone who shares my family values and traditions."

That's a mighty sweet sentiment. But, unfortunately, Smithfield is not at all sweet. It is notorious as a massive factory farm polluter of its neighbors' air and water, as a monopolist that squeezes out small family farmers, and as an anti-union abuser of working families.Family values? Try these: In recent years, Smithfield has been cited by federal regulators, courts, and other independent monitors for spying, coercing, beating, assaulting, illegally arresting, intimidating, harassing, illegally firing, and racially insulting its employees.

. . .

[undergroundpanther]

3. Reccomended!

Pig farms are very destructive and coupled with the worker abuse ,racism..Smithfield deserves no support,and should instead be FORCED to compensate the workers,NC and beyond for their crimes against humanity, pigs and the environment. No more corporate farms.Fuck you Springfield!

How bad is it? click the link below.. Working at Smithfield must be hell too.And some workers at the pig farm are getting sick from the brain spray caused by the air gun that kills the pigs..

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12840743/porks_dirty_secret_the_nations_top_hog_producer_is_also_one_of_americas_worst_polluters/1

[pberq]

6. thanks for that link - unbelievable!

[BobRossi]

4. I can't stand that redneck.

Giada is my fav.

[Frances]

5. I heard the interview too

It was very revealing.

I think that Deen doesn't want to know the truth about Smithfield.

I grew up in the South and no one I knew supported unions.

And while everyone I knew loved to criticize the federal government, no one was willing to speak out against corrupt, but powerful local or state authorities.

As for family values, Deen admitted she'd had a 10-year-affair with a married man. She says she knows it was wrong and she would advise against anyone doing what she did.

I believe Deen is sincere in her beliefs, but I don't think she is willing to look at the facts.

[Rock_Garden]

7. Thanks, all of you, for this information.

It's all news to me. Hopefully, Paula's situation will cause enough blowback to influence endorsement decisions by other food network stars.

[pberq]

10. Link with more details

http://www.smithfieldjustice.com/aboutthecampaign.php#3

[Rock_Garden]

11. Amazing, pberq. The more I read, the worse it gets.

Guess we'll see what means the most to Paula in the long run.

[pberq]

8. Human Rights Watch report on Smithfield

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2005/usa0105/6.htm#_Toc88546760

. . .


A Supervisor Speaks Out

During the trial, Sherri Bufkin, a supervisor in Smithfield’s laundry department in 1997, testified that company officials and consultants instructed her to probe the union sentiments of employees under her and report her findings to management.248 In 2002, a U.S. Senate committee held hearings to examine obstacles to workers’ exercise of their right to organize. Bufkin testified before the committee, telling senators that

he company brought in attorneys to tell us what to do and how to react . . . the company told us that the attorneys were there to make sure that the union did not get in . . . the lawyers told us what to say to workers to keep the union out . . . Management hired a special outside consultant from California to run the anti-union campaign in Spanish for the Latinos.249

At the NLRB unfair labor practice trial in 1999, Bufkin testified that management’s outside attorneys told supervisors to apply disciplinary rules harshly against union supporters but not against union opponents and to deny overtime to union supporters but grant it to union opponents. “We were told that we were no longer to give the leniency and leeway that we had given previously and to make sure employees knew that if the Union came in we would not do the things that we had done previously to help them such as being late and excusing it without writeups, things of that nature,” she said.250

Bufkin’s account to the committee of what happened to Margo McMillan, a laundry room attendant under Bufkin’s supervision, is a stark example of Smithfield’s deliberate interference with workers’ rights. According to Bufkin, when the chief company attorney learned of McMillan’s support for the union, “He then looked me in the face and told me, ‘Fire the bitch. I’ll beat anything she or they throw at me in Court.’”251

According to Bufkin’s testimony,

I told him we could not do that. There was no disciplinary action in her file. I mean there was no grounds for it . . . Margo worked for me for years. I knew Margo. I knew her as an employee. I knew from dealing with her that she had family problems. She’s got kids. She’s got bills she’s got to pay and I begged not to do it.252

Nevertheless, management did it. In his 2000 decision in the case, the judge specifically noted that that Sherri Bufkin was truthful and that Smithfield illegally fired Margo McMillan. But the judge had more to say in the matter. He found that a company attorney “intentionally lied under oath at the trial” about an affidavit signed by Bufkin under pressure from management. The affidavit did not correspond to the lawyer’s notes of the interview with Bufkin, indicating that the affidavit was concocted by Smithfield attorneys to justify the firing of Margo McMillan. The judge said that a second Smithfield attorney “left himself some ‘wiggle’ room” in connection with the affidavit matter, but “I do not credit testimony,” said the judge. He recommended that the NLRB refer the attorneys’ conduct to the NLRB’s General Counsel to possibly seek disciplinary action on the grounds that “there is a question of whether suborned perjury or otherwise violated federal statutes involving criminal penalties.”253

[Omaha Steve]

9. A BIG R

Great post.

[pberq]

12. Thanks Omaha Steve

Received by email from Working Families:

Monday, Dec. 10, is International Human Rights Day--the day
commemorating the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights in 1948. The declaration states, "Everyone has the right
to form and join trade unions for the protection of his
interests."

Unfortunately, here in the United States, this fundamental human
right is under attack.

When you look at what employers are permitted to do, and when
you look at what the Bush administration's Labor Board has done
to roll back workers' rights, it is clear workers in America
don't have freedom to protect their own interests.

The freedom to form a union to bargain for a better life is an
internationally recognized human right, yet workers in America
are denied that right each and every day.

[pberq]

13. SMITHFIELD: JIM CROW ECONOMICS ALIVE AND WELL

From - The 10 Worst Corporations of 2006:

http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/mm2006/112006/mokhiber.html

. . .

SMITHFIELD: JIM CROW ECONOMICS ALIVE AND WELL

Smithfield, the largest pork producer in the United States, has appeared twice before on the Monitor’s 10 worst list — once for factory farm pollution, once for its takeover of the former number two pork producer, a move that dramatically worsened agribusiness concentration and left small farmers increasingly at the mercy of the remaining giant processors. This year, Smithfield is on the list for its labor practices.

Jim Crow economics is alive and well at Smithfield’s Tar Heel, North Carolina pork processing plant, the largest in the world.

For more than a decade, the more than 5,000 workers there have attempted to organize a union, only to be met by a vicious anti-union campaign that has included organized beatings of union supporters, operation of an official company police force within the plant (not a private security operation, but a governmental police force) with the power to arrest workers and detain them at the plant, the deployment of the local sheriff’s department to intimidate workers, racist slurs, and use of the Immigration and Naturalization Services department to harass Smithfield’s increasingly immigrant workforce.