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Packinghouse workers expose unsafe plant conditions

Published Jul 20, 2005 10:11 PM

On July 14, a public hearing by the North Carolina Workers Rights Board was held at Pullen Memorial Baptist Church in Raleigh. Organized by the Triangle Justice for Smithfield Committee, this latest hearing dealt with conditions at Smithfield Foods, the largest pork-processing plant in the world.

Based in Tar Heel, N.C., Smithfield has a notorious reputation as a ruthless, oppres sive employer, regularly cited for violations against the health, safety and basic dignity of its workers.

Even by the atrocious standards of the meatpacking industry, Smithfield Foods has a reputation as one of the worst offen ders. Both current and former Smith field workers speak about the harassment, dangerous conditions and unfair treatment that they receive on the job.

Union organizer and Smithfield veteran Ronnie Simmons put it this way: “What people should know about Smithfield Foods is that it’s nothing but modern-day slavery.” Because of the company’s gross history of racist harassment and manipulation, workers at Smithfield’s Tar Heel facility have lost two major United Food and Commercial Workers Union elections over the past 11 years, in 1994 and 1997.

The first speaker at the hearing was Dr. Lance Compa, author of the Human Rights Watch report “Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Workers’ Rights in the U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants.” In his report, Compa described dangerous and unsanitary conditions inside the Bladen County facility, including blood-drenched floors, hog carcasses hung directly above workers’ heads, unsafe cutting-line speeds and lethal hog-processing machines.

These conditions have led to numerous workplace injuries and accidents, includ ing several deaths. According to the UFCW, the Tar Heel plant has the highest accident rate in the entire industry.

The National Labor Relations Board has cited Smithfield several times since 1997 on repeated violations of labor law, including worker intimidation, physical assault, race and gender discrimination, workers’ compensation violations, and union busting. Each time, Smithfield’s lawyers appealed the decision. The latest ruling against Smithfield was in 2004, when the company was found guilty on 42 counts.

The most compelling testimony at the hearing was from the workers themselves. Gwen Mullins, an African American orga ni zer for UFCW, worked in Smithfield’s packing house for over six years. Mullins described the racist “divide-and-conquer” tactics that the plant’s management used to weaken worker unity, thus crippling union organizing drives.

Management would tell Black workers that undocumented “illegal” immigrants were “taking their jobs,” then tell a segregated audience of Latin@ workers that the Black workers were trying to get them fired and deported back to Mexico. Mul lins counteracted the boss’s manipulation by bringing all workers together and pointing out their shared experiences as exploited workers and stressing their collective needs and class interests.

Manuel Plancarte, a Latino immigrant who worked for Smithfield subcontractor QSI Janitorial Services, was assaulted by Smith field’s private police force after he tried to intervene in the vicious assault of his son, another Smithfield worker.

Bladen County Sheriff’s deputies participated with the company police in the assaults against father and son, and both men were subsequently fired from their jobs. Plancarte and his son were threatened with deportation back to Mexico after they reported the assaults to the local authorities.

Two members of the seven-person panel at the hearing were State Sen. Janet Cowell and State Rep. Rick Glazier. Many of the workers, like Simmons and her fellow UFCW organizer Roberto Mancha, were hopeful that the presence of these officials at the hearings would put pressure on Smithfield to change its ways and treat workers with fairness and respect.

Indeed, Smithfield workers have testified in the North Carolina General Assembly, in front of the NLRB, at numerous public hearings around the state, and even in the U.S. Senate in 2002. Despite all the public attention given to this issue, Smithfield’s management continues to exploit, harass and disable its workers in Tar Heel.

The only way that Smithfield workers will realize justice is to come together and organize in their own name for better work conditions and wages. The workers must resist the racist, sexist and xenophobic attacks from management that are designed solely to turn people against each other rather than against the boss.

In their fight for justice, the Smithfield workers of Bladen County need and deserve the support of a conscious public that will no longer stay silent about the abuse of the very people who put food on their tables.

Carrington is a member of Raleigh FIST—Fight Imperialism, Stand Together. Contact the youth group at [email protected] for more information.