Smithfield workers win legal victory

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2/626368276?page=NewsArticle&id=8663&news_iv_ctrl=1261

Friday, March 14, 2008
By: Stewart Stout

Battle for union representation continues

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.


The UFCW continues its celebration of Women's History Month this week by highlighting Wanda Blue, a Smithfield employee fighting for a union voice at her plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina.


The plant has also garnered a reputation for numerous violations of worker and human rights by its capitalist bosses, many of them detailed in the Justice at Smithfield campaign website.

"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.

FULL story at link.