"When I came to work that Thursday I could not punch in. My card had disappeared from the rack near the time clock," Samuel Farley said in an interview. "In addition, some co-workers asked me if I was going to be a supervisor. I told them ‘No!’, but I had no idea what they were talking about."

Farley, who works in the boning department, has been one of the workers leading the union fight at the plant since the June 2000 sit-down strike. He is currently one of five elected shop stewards in the plant.

"I was told to go upstairs and wait in an area around the manager’s office. I did. About two hours passed. I didn’t know what was going on. Other people seemed to know something was up," Farley said.

"Finally, I indicated I wanted to go to work at my usual job on the boning line. Instead, I was motioned to go into the office of plant manager Steve Cortinas. I went in. There were four company officials present, only one of whom I recognized. I was told, ‘We are offering you a position with the company. Pay would be somewhere between $80,000 and $125,000 per year.’ I immediately told them I wasn’t interested. I had thought for a split second whether to ask them to put the offer in writing.

"I left the room and went to work on the boning line. They had to make up a new time card for me. They had been so confident I would accept their bribe that they had thrown away my time card."

Farley reported that "when I went to my job, many co-workers in my area were standing around talking about my situation. They already knew I had been offered a supervisory position. The supervisors had already leaked this information to select workers and told them I would accept the bribe.

"The company supervisors and managers think workers are animals who will sell each other out for a few privileges. They have constantly underestimated us. Ten years ago they had been successful in buying off a leader of the union fight by making him a supervisor. But our fight is different now.

"Most workers were very happy I had turned down the bribe. Everybody could see the naked intentions of the company."  
 
Constant company harassment
Before this seeming overnight rise in the bosses’ appreciation for Farley’s talents, they had been waging a constant campaign to try to push him out of the plant.

In the fall of 2000, Farley reported, the company disqualified him from his usual job on the boning line, claiming he was too slow. They began moving him to a different position in the plant every day or so. He kept trying to qualify for jobs where he had started, in the boning room. The bosses made up lies to claim he could not do the work, and on a number of days they sent him to the cooler, to work in an isolated situation with one other co-worker. Supporters of the union organizing drive waged a campaign in the plant to beat back this attack.

Farley’s co-workers had good reason to think he would not sell out. In addition to being a leading participant in the union fight, he is well known among fellow workers for his socialist views.

He actively campaigned as the Socialist Workers candidate for lieutenant governor of Minnesota in the fall election campaign. A number of co-workers had signed petitions to help in the successful effort to get him on the ballot.

"The bosses think all workers have a price tag on them," said Farley. "They thought that throwing around salary figures of tens of thousands of dollars would spin my head. But to me and many other workers here, our union and our co-workers are priceless."
 
 
Related articles:
Minnesota meat packers discuss union victory  
 
 
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