Smithfield Packing Company, Tar Heel, NC

From a July 16, 2000, article by Charlie LeDuff in the New York Times, “At a Slaughterhouse, Some Things Never Die; Who Kills, Who Cuts, Who Bosses Can Depend on Race.”

World’s largest pork processing plant. “A leviathan of pipe and steel,” 973,000 sq. ft. into which about 38,000 hogs arrive each and every day, on a schedule, planned from birth.

On the “picnic’ line with 18 workers lined up on both sides of a loudly roaring conveyor belt where you cannot hear anyone speak, 16 million pork shoulders fly down the line each year. That is:

32,000 hogs per shift, 63/minute going by, one every 17 seconds for each worker to chop for 8-1/2 hours/day

Jobs are filled by race:

Safe and clean

Whites—not many, and most are supervisors or mechanics, make boxes, etc.

Native Americans—a few supervisors, most get “clean, menial” work like warehousing..

Dirty and dangerous; with this general breakdown (with exceptions)

Blacks and Latinos—the cutting floor.

Black women--chitterling room, scraping blood and feces from intestines.

Black men—butchering.

Mexicans—knife work, preparing various cuts, and trimming

Knife work starts at $7.70/hour; workers stand all day in 42-degree air that “causes your knees to lock, your nose to run, your teeth to throb.”

On the kill floor, wages get as high as $12/hour. It is “hot, quick, and bloody,” as hogs are stunned, killed by slitting their necks, shackled and lifted, run through a scalding bath, then dumped on a table to be chopped. The men are stripped to the waist, sweating.

In 1995, the plant was 50% black, 20 % white and Indian, 30% Latino. In 2000, it was 60% Latino, 30% black, and 10% Native American and while. Undocumented workers are less likely to protest poor conditions; the company claims to not knowingly hire illegal aliens.

Annual turnover is 100 %: 5,000 quit and 5,000 are hired every year; most “white” workers have left. While Smithfield’s profits nearly doubled in 1999-2000, wages remained the same ($8/hour and up).

Why a union is needed:

The meatpacking industry has been in the north, Chicago and Omaha, where workers are unionized and get $18/hour. To save money, Smithfield moved to NC, the least unionized state in the union.

Workers asked Local #204 of the United Food and Commercial Workers tried to bring in the union; in 1997, they lost the vote 2/1, after company intimidation with local law enforcement backup and cooperation.

Human Rights Watch has documented a pattern of abuse and discrimination by the company against those who exercised their legal right to organize a union.

In 1998, the union brought an unfair labor practice suit before the National Labor Relations Board. Sample charges: The company threatened plant closure if a union came it; spied on workers who were involved in organizing; fired 5 workers for their support for forming a union; beat up one employee on the day of the union vote; played Latinos and blacks against one another, fomenting racial discord; paid some workers to spy on others and report on their union activity, etc.