Vol. 71/No. 30      August 20, 2007

The active solidarity of the unions and of workers, both organized and unorganized, across the United States can make a difference.

The stakes are high. A victory for the bosses would be a blow to other meat packers in the Midwest who face similar and often worse conditions. It would be a setback to the entire labor movement.

Unsafe working conditions, intolerable line speed, and abusive bosses sparked a seven-hour sit-down strike by Dakota workers on June 1, 2000. The strike was the opening act in a two-year struggle for union recognition and a contract. In the process the meat packers forged a fighting local and exercised union power—the only way to defend themselves against harsh conditions and low pay.

The fight stood out in the power of its example. “Workers took ownership of their struggle,” Bernie Hesse, director of special projects for Local 789, described it last year. Local 789 at Dakota became a center in the Midwest for organizing solidarity with labor struggles across the United States.

That is why the bosses want so badly to get rid of the union there, and why the stakes are so high for the working class. The company wants to reimpose the conditions workers fought against seven years ago. They want to shatter the confidence workers won in struggle to defend themselves against abusive bosses. They hope to take enough ground by breaking this local to make it easier to go after the unions and the conditions at other plants.

The fight to defend the union at Dakota is connected to the battle for legalization of immigrant workers, especially because of the composition of the workforce there and at slaughterhouses throughout the Midwest. The decertification drive comes at the same time as immigration raids at packing plants and other worksites, including the arrest of Braulio Pereyra, UFCW Local 1149 vice-president at the Swift plant in Marshalltown, Iowa, for “harboring illegal aliens.”

The fight for legalization puts workers on a stronger footing to fight for union rights. It undercuts the divisions on the job that the bosses foster to weaken the unions and workers’ abilities to fight back. These struggles can help strengthen each other.

A victory by Dakota workers can help push back other attacks by the bosses and their government. It can inspire workers and farmers in the region and beyond.

Many of the workers at Dakota are battle-tested, but it’s much more difficult for them to defeat this assault if they’re doing it on their own. Solidarity can be decisive to their struggle—as was the solidarity they organized with other labor struggles over the years. The story of their fight needs to be told as a first step in winning support. Militant supporters will make a special effort this week to reach out with this issue of the paper to workers in the Midwest and elsewhere. Join them!
 
 
Related articles:
Minnesota meat packers fight to defend union
Dakota Premium Foods bosses campaign to decertify local won in two-year struggle  
 
 
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