Robles said the workers had chosen United Food and Commercial Workers Local 271 (UFCW) to be their bargaining representative and would file with the National Labor Relation Board (NLRB) to request a union election.

Nebraska Beef represents the UFCW's biggest target in Omaha since the union began organizing more than a year ago. Union officials estimate there are some 4,000 packinghouse workers in the area of Omaha and Council Bluffs, Iowa, across the Missouri River.

At a news conference held at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in South Omaha, Donna McDonald, president of UFCW Local 271, said, "We accept and welcome the Nebraska Beef workers' request." She added that the UFCW would file with the NLRB the next day and asked the company not to interfere with the workers who want a union.

McDonald noted that meatpacking workers have won union elections at two ConAgra packing plants since the fall of 2000 and are now in negotiations for a contract there.

McDonald referred to a UFCW press release reporting that the union has filed a number of charges with the NLRB against Nebraska Beef. The union is protesting a December 2000 raid of the Nebraska Beef plant carried out by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) in the middle of the union-organizing drive. The immigration cops arrested more than 190 production workers and marched them onto buses in their work clothes.

Two days after the INS raid, seven workers led a work stoppage after Nebraska Beef attempted to maintain the brutal line speed with 200 fewer workers. The company fired the seven workers, all women, according to a worker at the plant. The UFCW is seeking to get them reinstated with back pay.

Robles pointed to the conditions at Nebraska Beef as the main reason workers need the union. He described several examples of the ongoing company intimidation and harassment. Supervisors yell at workers and sometimes stop them from using the rest rooms. Work hours are long--in some cases up to nine hours without a break. The line speed continues to be increased, and many workers are getting injured and threatened with loss of jobs if they complain.

The press conference was attended by Nebraska AFL-CIO officials, local union representatives, and members of Omaha Together/One Community (OTOC), an organization of religious congregations and political activists that back the union-organizing campaign.

Nebraska governor Michael Johanns and Omaha mayor Michael Fahey were among those speaking at the press conference. In his remarks, Johanns placed big emphasis on the first anniversary of a law he signed called "Nebraska Meatpacking Industry Workers Bill of Rights."

This state law supposedly guarantees workers the right to organize and join together for collective bargaining purposes, the right to a safe workplace by establishing "management/employee safety committees," and a few other provisions. This measure, like others adopted around the country, is designed primarily to try to convince working people that the pro-employer government will actually protect their rights, but in fact is crafted so as to protect the bosses. The text of this "Bill of Rights" begins by accepting that "Nebraska is a right-to-work state," referring to the open-shop legislation that weakens union representation.

At the press conference, Robles said the pro-union workers at Nebraska Beef will continue to talk to co-workers about the need for a union and organize meetings at homes and at the church "to involve workers to respond to what the company will do now that we are going to have a union election."
 
 
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Meat packers in Twin Cities mark first anniversary of sit-down strike  
 
 
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