BY AUTUMN KNOWLTON
WALLULA, Washington - After a month on strike, members of
Teamsters Local 556 narrowly approved the latest contract
offer by meat processing giant IBP, in a vote here July 7.
Union members from the plant ratified the contract 276-258,
and the majority of workers returned to work July 9.
Their fight began June 4 when the meatpackers walked out of the Wallula plant in protest over the firing of 30 workers who had protested the line speed. The union officially declared a strike June 8, after a 847- 291 membership vote. All 30 fired workers were offered their jobs back as part of the settlement.
About 80 percent of the workers are from Mexico and Central America. Others are from Bosnia, Laos, and many other countries. About 800 of the 1,200 Teamsters members at IBP stayed out for the entire strike.
Though several hundred workers crossed the picket line from the start of the strike and IBP was able to continue processing some meat, the walkout crippled production at the plant. The company was forced to ship cattle to plants as far away as Idaho and Nebraska to be slaughtered, and truck the meat back to Wallula for processing.
On June 21 strikers rejected a new company proposal by a vote of 688-51. The company had increased its wage offer slightly - to a $1.57 an hour raise over a five-year contract.
As the strike continued, IBP mounted a campaign to hire scabs and pressure the unionists to return to work. The bosses raised the starting wage to $8.50 an hour and ran hiring ads widely on local TV and radio stations.
Strikers countered by maintaining their picket lines, organizing a support rally of 700 people in nearby Pasco June 19, and sending small teams of workers to Seattle, Portland, and other nearby cities to publicize their fight.
The new contract was approved at a stormy meeting of more than 500 strikers July 7.
"The day of the vote on the contract, the Teamsters officials told us we had no choice, that we had to accept the contract," Violeta de la Cruz, a processing worker, told the Militant later. "Many of us thought the strike could have continued longer if the union had supported us, but when the Teamsters said they wouldn't support us any more, many people lost hope. We had no choice then but to end the strike."
The strikers' contract demands included a $1-a-year wage increase during a three-year contract, workers' control over the line speed, and higher sanitary standards.
The approved contract guts the trust fund that workers previously had, replacing it with a 401(k) plan that is based on employees contributing up to 6 percent of their pay to the plan. IBP will contribute half the amount of the employees' contribution. The previous offer, which workers overwhelmingly voted down June 21, maintained the pension plan.
The maximum wage increase under the ratified contract is $1.82 over five years for workers in the processing department. These workers will get an immediate raise of $1.32 and the other $.50 of the raise will be spread out over the five years of the contract. Other workers will receive raises ranging from $1.57 to $1.74, with the bulk given as a raise up front. The company is also distributing a signing bonus to the relatively small number of workers who were hired before December 1982, to be paid in three increments of $700 over two months.
The only provision included in the contract about safety is the addition of two union-selected people on the plant safety committee. Both before and after the meeting in Pasco to vote on the contract there was lively debate about what was accomplished by the strike and what workers will do next to continue their fight.
Janine Dukes and Harvey McArthur, a member of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 100 in Chicago, contributed to this article.