After a decade-long battle, the folks who bring home your bacon have a vice on the job.
This is huge news. After more than 10 years of organizing and struggle, workers at Smithfield Foods in Tar Heel North Carolina have voted in union representation. This is probably the largest union election in North Carolina history and comes on the heels of a boycott, mass protest at a shareholders meeting, and charges of racketeering against the union by Smithfield for these lawful activities. If you want an in-depth account of the horrors of working at Smithfield, you can't do better than In These Times, which chronicled it in depth. Here's a taste of what the workers dealt with:
According to the [National Labor Relations ]board, the corporation “assaulted workers, threatened them with bodily harm, threatened them with arrest by immigration authorities, and caused workers to be falsely arrested.”
But that's not all, oh no sir:
Key to Smithfield’s success in defeating the union was their policy of dividing the workers by nationality. Smithfield has reportedly long practiced a policy of placing Black, Latino and white workers into separate stations inside the plant. During the union drive, UFCW organizers and workers vocal in their support of the union were publicly attacked as “n----- lovers” by local police and management and some Latinos were threatened with deportation.
The fight at Smithfield is People's Exhibit A for why we need the Employee Free Choice Act. People shouldn't be threatened with arrest and beaten for exercising their legal right to form a union and bargain collectively.
Congrats to these workers, and the ones who won their sit-in this week. Without a union, they would have had no voice at all to fight for their legal right to back pay.