Peña worked at the American Meat Packing Corporation (AMPAC) hog slaughterhouse for 27 years until the owner shut the plant without notice. He was speaking at an April 17 news conference here to announce the filing of a suit against the company in Federal District Court.

Fifty of the illegally terminated AMPAC workers who have been at the center of the fight to protest the closure joined Peña and other named plaintiffs at the press conference. Along with attorney Jorge Sánchez, they had just returned from filing the legal papers. WBBM-AM News Radio and Spanish television channel 66 reported on the news conference.

In their suit, the workers, most of whom are longtime members of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), charge AMPAC with violating the Workers Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN), which requires that workers be given at least 60 days notice of plant closings. The suit also charges that AMPAC violated the Illinois Wage Payment and Collection Act and breached the collective bargaining agreement with the UFCW. Many workers are owed wages, vacation pay, and other compensation.

UFCW Local 1546 vice-president Javier Ramírez joined José Landaverde, executive director of the Latino Union, and Father Brendan Curran of St. Pius Catholic Church, in a show of support at the news conference.

The officers and staff of UFCW Local 789 in South St. Paul, Minnesota, forwarded a message of solidarity from two dozen meat packers at Dakota Premium Foods, a packing plant in the area. The message declared, "An attack on one is an attack on all!"

Some 35 workers at ConAgra Beef in Omaha, Nebraska, sent their support and reported that "we are having an election May 3 to win UFCW representation in our plant and we hope to come out victorious in our fight. We wish you victory as well."  
 
Rymer workers join fight
Also attending the press conference to demonstrate their support for the AMPAC workers were UFCW steward Marguerite Martínez and five other workers from Rymer Foods, which closed down in February with no notice to its workers.

Martinez explained how the Rymer workers are fighting for compensation, inspired by the AMPAC workers’ struggle. The Rymer workers were called at their homes, she said, and told that they no longer had jobs. This is "totally unacceptable, we have rights as workers, as human beings. We are not animals. We are looking for something better than this," Martinez said.

Gladys Reyes, who worked at Rymer for 12 years, held a sign in Spanish that said, "They threw us out like garbage, without rights or respect for the years served."

The Rymer workers told the Militant that the company stopped paying medical insurance premiums a month before they were terminated, so nothing has been paid on medical bills they had submitted, leading to harassment from bill collectors.

Ana Rosa Solís, who worked at Rymer for 15 years, pointed to their signs saying that in 25 years, the minimum wage has only increased by $3.05. She explained that with the price of everything going up, workers have actually suffered years of pay cuts. "We all have to fight this too," she said.

Former AMPAC workers carried signs in Polish and Spanish as well as English. C.D. Quinn, a Black meat packer who hired into AMPAC in 1954, carried a Polish sign. Quinn told the Militant that due to an accident he missed work the day AMPAC closed last November. When he came back the next day, he said, "The personnel manager said, ‘Just throw that doctor’s note in the garbage.’ In all those years, nothing has ever happened like this."

Another former AMPAC worker, Lupe Peña, has been through a long struggle to get adequate compensation since he lost his hand in a machine at the plant in 1972. After he was fitted with a prosthesis he was placed in the sanitation department, but after 29 years was only receiving $8.70 an hour. He told the Militant, "When they shut the plant down, they threw the workers out like we were flies."

Joel Britton, who had worked in AMPAC’s Upper Kill floor, chaired the news conference and told reporters that the owner’s claim to have shut down because of actions by government inspectors is bogus. "The fights by the AMPAC and Rymer workers, and their families and friends, in opposition to the devastating losses of jobs, pensions, medical and other benefits, have set an example for others to follow, whatever the outcome may be in Judge Carrillo’s courtroom across the street."

The company has several weeks to reply to the suit of the AMPAC workers.  
 
 
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