OTOC is an organization of 38 religious congregations. Announcements have been made at religious services about the organizing drive, and union approval cards have been distributed at the churches, according to workers in the area.

Union organizers, community activists, and a group of workers from several plants have been meeting every week to discuss the campaign. A worker at Nebraska Beef who has attended the meetings told the Militant that 40 percent of the employees have signed union approval cards so far. The organizing drive has generated discussion among some workers on the benefits of joining the union.

Students organized by the national AFL-CIO's Union Summer program have been passing out leaflets and union authorization cards at meatpacking plants for several weeks and will continue to do so throughout the summer.

The meatpacking bosses have launched their own campaign. A forklift driver at ConAgra said that the company had circulated an antiunion letter in the plant. This worker said that the letter claimed it wasn't telling workers not to join the union, but that they were encouraged to ask how much union dues would be, and that it was not necessary to join the union because the employees could get a better deal talking to the company directly.

The UFCW has filed unfair labor practice charges against the ConAgra Beef Co. plant in Omaha. They accused the company of searching employees' lockers for union literature, questioning employees about their support to the union, and of videotaping the license plates of workers who took union leaflets at the plant gates.

Mark Denier, communications director of the UFCW, said that the union has put the Immigration and Naturalization Service on notice that a labor dispute exists in a number of packinghouses in the area. In a press release, the union also criticized the INS Operation Vanguard, in which la migra requests employee records from a company and then sends notices to workers the INS suspects of not having documents, hoping to drive them out of the plant.  
 
 
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