At the origin of the conflict is the speed of the production line. Over a period of time in the spring, the company increased the rate of processing from 450 cattle in 10 hours to 700 cattle in seven and a half hours.

The slaughterhouse workers responded June 1 with a seven-hour sit-down strike, demanding that the line speed be decreased and workers not be forced to work while injured.

The company granted some concessions on these points, and workers launched a campaign to organize a union to safeguard and extend these gains.

On Monday, July 24, the first workday after the July 21 union representation vote, the company cranked up the line speed beyond the 95 cattle per hour it had agreed to on June 1.

The workers' designated monitor raised a complaint and the company was forced to turn down the line speed. But workers say the company continues to increase the line speed.

"On the average, people in the cut department are working only seven hours because of the speedup," said Amy Roberts, a worker in the department. "One day we worked only six hours, until 12:30 p.m. and processed 520 cattle. The company is trying to squeeze every penny of profit from our labor and punish us for voting for the union."

A special issue of the Workers' Voice, the bilingual newsletter of the in-plant organizing committee, urged workers to monitor the speed of the line and take action against the company for its violation of the agreement. "The commitment made by the company should be honored. They should be concerned about the number of injuries incurred when it is so high. You can help stop that. Each worker at Dakota Premium needs to become a protester of the speed of the line. This can only happen by working collectively. Both kill and processing need to watch out for unfair increases."

Some 220 workers are employed in the beef slaughterhouse, the big majority of them Spanish-speaking immigrants. The company is owned by Rosen Diversified Industries, the country's seventh-largest beef processor. It owns nonunion packing operations in Omaha, Nebraska, and Yankton, South Dakota; and a union-organized plant in Long Prairie, Minnesota, 100 miles northeast of the Twin Cities.  
 
Company challenges election
The company has filed a challenge to the July 21 election with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). It makes three claims. First, that a representative of the union was offering $10,000 to each worker at Dakota Premium who changed their mind and voted for the union. Second, that representatives of the union were threatening to turn in the names of undocumented workers to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) if the union lost the election. Third, that union supporters organized such a noise of pro-union slogans near the voting area that workers were prevented from having a free decision.

"Absurd and baseless," was how Local 789 president William Pearson described the charges in an interview with the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

The Workers' Voice explained the falseness of the company claims. In an article titled "Workers Demand a Fair Fast Contract and Respect for Their Vote," the in-plant organizing committee replied, "The lopsided win (112-71) should have sent a loud, clear message to [company manager] Mr. Steve Cortinas and the owners of Rosen Diversified. Workers demand a fast, fair contract and they want to be members of Local 789. Unfortunately the company lived up to their self-fulfilling prophecy. They had repeatedly told workers they would not recognize the union and that they would never get a contract. Rather than begin to negotiate, they chose to use a legal system and pay attorneys out of Omaha bushel baskets of money instead of paying their own employees what we are worth."

Rebutting the charge that representatives of the union threatened legal enforcement action against workers by the INS, the Workers' Voice pointed out that the union has a record in defense of immigrant rights. Workers who came to the union hall for meetings heard speeches by union, community, and religious leaders that informed them of their rights. It is the company that has a long record of trying to use the immigration question to intimidate workers from asserting their rights.  
 
Company threatens immigrant workers
In fact, the company sent home two workers at the plant for alleged problems with their immigration papers. One, from the boning department, was sent home the day after his name was published in the Workers' Voice as a member of the leadership committee in the plant. The other worker, from the packaging area, was sent home from work the same day. Leaders of the in-plant committee organized to get another issue of the Workers' Voice in print to answer this attack.

"Yesterday morning, the management of Dakota Premium Foods sent home two well known union activists in a clear escalation of their efforts to destroy the fight to unionize the plant," the paper said. "Victimized because of alleged problems with their immigration status, both workers have been known as responsible and productive individuals. Since the beginning of the drive to organize the union in the plant, launched with a sit-down strike last June 1st, the company has been floating threats to workers about using potential immigration problems as a weapon against anyone who would consider supporting the union. It has now carried through with its threats. This attack, combined with the company's effort to overturn the election victory, is part of an effort to reverse the gains made by the workers' newly won union, and to intimidate and demoralize the union fighters in the plant. Their goal is to ignore the democracy of the vote and to try to take away from the workers any decision-making power."

In large, bold type at the end of the newsletter, it was added: "Yesterday's events are similar to what happened to the Holiday Inn Express workers. Our leadership committee will be working with the victimized union members to restore their jobs and we will go after the company with the same tenacity the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union did."

Eight workers at the Holiday Inn Express hotel in downtown Minneapolis who were active in a successful union-organizing drive were arrested last fall. The hotel manager called the INS and said he had just discovered irregularities in their immigration papers. Demonstrations by unions in alliance with organizations fighting for immigrants' rights prevented seven of the workers from being deported by the INS. The case received broad publicity both locally and nationally.

The day after the Workers' Voice exposed the company's whole scheme, the worker from packaging who had been sent home was recalled. The worker from the boning department has still not been brought back.  
 
More attacks on worker leaders
Meanwhile, two members of the in-plant leadership committee of the fight at Dakota Premium have been harassed in recent days. One is José Flores, a worker in the kill department. The other is Samuel Farley, in the cut department. On August 4 the supervisors loaded extra slabs of beef above Farley's station on the boning line and then threatened to remove him from the line for not being able to keep up. Farley, however, is known as a hard worker and faster than almost all the other boners in his area. The attack by the supervisors is an effort to remove Farley from the boning lines, where he is effective in gaining support for the union, and to move him back to work in isolation from other meat packers.

To keep up the pressure on the company and answer these attacks, supporters of the union have organized a 16-person interim Leadership Committee. Each of these workers can be relied on by workers in their areas to take notice of company attacks in their areas and help to initiate a response. There have been several meetings of the Leadership Committee since the July 21 victory. In addition, a general membership meeting was called for August 10 after work.

In a development related to the Dakota fight, 500 people participated in a vigil on Sunday, July 30, outside the Holy Rosary Church in Minneapolis to protest the forced resignation of Father Ed Leahy, a Catholic priest who has helped organize the demonstrations for the rights of immigrants in the Twin Cities area in recent years and has been outspoken in defense of the meat packers' cause at Dakota Premium. The congregation at Holy Rosary Church, led by Father Leahy, supported and defended the eight Mexican workers from the Holiday Inn Express after they were arrested by the INS.

Leaflets building the vigil, posted in areas around meat packing plants, cited his support to the meat packers' fight as a reason to defend him.

Among the speakers at the vigil was Local 789 president Pearson, whose remarks were received with an ovation and chants of "Sí se puede" (Yes we can).

Pablo Tapia, a member of the congregation and a leader of the local immigrants rights group ISAIAH, told the Militant, "This firing is a big blow to the Latino community. However, it is also just another battlefield for us."

According to Francisco Picado, a full-time union organizer for Local 789, members of the Leadership Committee have begun to talk to workers at Long Prairie Packing, the unionized sister plant of Dakota Premium in Minnesota, to discuss the need for solidarity and share experiences on how to answer the problem of the increased line speed. Workers at Long Prairie have told them that line speed there is a constant problem and that workers there are constantly getting injured. They are giving the workers from Dakota Premium a warm response.  
 
 
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