Workers at the meatpacking plant are members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 789. They voted to join the union last July after a seven-week organizing drive that began with a sit-down strike to protest conditions in the plant, especially the increase in line speed.

The company has appealed a National Labor Relations Board decision, handed down last month, to certify the union and to reject the company's charges that the union election was unfair.

The recent job action in the packaging department was organized by workers to protest being forced to work too fast. They explained that when one of the packaging lines breaks down--which happens frequently--the company's practice is to keep the other lines running. Once the line is started back up, the packaging workers have to pack both the piled-up meat and the meat coming down the line. In addition, supervisors were ignoring workers' requests to go to the bathroom.

On December 4, one of the women in the packaging department organized six other workers, three women and three men, to go to the manager's office and demand he stop the double work from the line breakdowns. They also said that workers must be relieved on the line so they could go to the bathroom. The boss promised their requests would be implemented.

The next day, the line was running more slowly. Each time it broke down maintenance workers would immediately get it going again, workers reported. A few days later, however, the bosses had increased the line speed again. The lead people who were supposed to relieve workers for bathroom breaks weren't doing so. In addition, the department was unusually and unbearably cold, with ice covering everything, even the floor.

Once again organized by the women, six packaging workers made two more trips to the boss' office, to demand that the company slow down the line, that workers be relieved to go to the bathroom, and that the employers do something about the overly cold conditions.

On the way back to their posts, workers marched through the boning department and got loud cheers from other workers who had seen them confronting the boss. The following day, the line was slower and workers were being relieved to go to the bathroom, reported Bobbi Negrón, a packaging worker.

"People are going to think, 'What those women did, we have to do too,'" said Celia Grande, a packaging worker with three years at the plant who was part of the mobilizations to the boss's office. "They will see our fight and how we are fighting, and the company will be scared because women are advancing," Grande added.

"These actions are very important because they help show how to build the union, the possibility to fight for workers to control the line speed and working conditions, and the capacities of workers who are women to play a leading role in taking on the company's practices," said Amy Roberts, a boning worker and member of the union's Communications Committee.

That committee was recently established to improve communication between workers in the plant about the ongoing fight for the union, especially between workers in the boning and kill departments, who work different schedules.

The committee is also responsible for putting out the Workers' Voice, a paper written and distributed by workers at Dakota Premium and Long Prairie Packing, also owned by Rosen's Diversified, Inc.

The previous week, Roberts and Obdulia Flores, a kill floor worker who is also on the Communications Committee, began visiting women workers at home to discuss ways they can get more involved in the union. One of the women they visited was part of the mobilizations to the boss' office, Flores noted.

"That was so great, wasn't it? Not to be afraid," Flores commented about the actions by the workers in the packaging department. "We're still fighting for the union. We don't have a contract yet," she added. Flores said that more house visits will be useful for the union and as well as recruiting more people to the Communications Committee.  
 
 
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