Jim Provenzano, 28, who has nine years in the plant, expressed resolve to stand up to the bosses’ concession demands. “The concessions are way too much. There’s no reason for a company that makes that much profit to ask so much from us,” he said. “They want to cut our pensions, but the owner of the company has a pension and makes millions of dollars a year. What’s fair for one is fair for all.”

Some of the concessions the Tyson bosses are demanding include a two-tier pay scale cutting hourly rates for new hires from $11.10 to $9.00 and a four-year pay freeze for current workers, a freeze on pension benefits and eliminating them entirely for new hires, increased health-care premiums and deductibles that would take up to $4,600 a year out of families’ pockets, eliminating a health-care supplement for retirees, cutting sick leave and disability benefits by more than half, reducing vacation benefits by 33 percent, and eliminating severance protections that would give Tyson Foods license to cut jobs at no cost.

In 2001, Tyson Foods bought out the former Doskocil Food Services plant as part of a $3.2 billion cash and stock acquisition of the beef packing giant IBP Inc. The company raked in handsome profits with sales of $23 billion last year.

Local 538 president Mike Rice, who chaired the December 13 rally, announced that the company had offered to reopen negotiations December 17-18. “We are going back to the negotiation table,” he said, “but I don’t want you to build too much hope, the issues are the same as February 28” when the meat packers first walked off the job. Rice asked the crowd, “Are you willing to give up these issues?” They answered with a resounding “No!”

Rice noted the latest financial contributions to the strike, including two $5,000 donations from employees at two local companies, a contribution from Council 7 of the AFL-CIO, and an $8,000 donation from the UFCW in Canada. He announced that the total amount given to the strike fund, excluding food and clothes, came to $940,000. The fund included contributions from the United Auto Workers, Teamsters, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the Painters Union, and the Wisconsin Educators Association, among others.

A solidarity message was read from striking miners in Utah who are engaged in a battle against the owners of the Co-Op coal mine to win union recognition for the United Mine Workers of America (see Co-Op miners salute striking meat packers).

One of the rally speakers, Bill Roberts of UFCW Local 73A in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, noted how the Tyson strikers’ unity and determination had an impact on negotiations with other employers to win decent contracts. “Your efforts hit those companies and we have been successful in signing contracts with no cutbacks,” he said.

Tony Schultz, from the Students Labor Action Coalition at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, told rally participants that as a result of protest activities organized by students there, the university divested $200,000 it held in Tyson stock. Another student, Liana Dalton, said she supported the strike because “corporate domination is ever-increasing in the world and we have to stand up against it rather than just let them keep exploiting us.”

“We are just asking for a fair share for workers,” said Jim Kringer, 57, who worked at the plant for 37 years. He explained that he was one of about 30 workers who was forced to retire before the strike started because the company plans to increase the age that workers can retire with full pension benefits from 55 to 65.

“We want the company to treat us right,” said Mike Hill, who worked in the maintenance department for 17 years. Before starting at Tyson he said he quit a nonunion job because of the abusive treatment workers received from the bosses.

Meanwhile, the Tyson bosses were dealt a blow when a recent federal court decision ordered the employers to award $1.2 million in severance pay to more than 200 workers who worked for the company in Chicago, the Spanish language daily Hoy reported December 3. Tyson Foods had closed its doors there in January 2002 without any notice to its employees. The ruling was based on one of the first collective lawsuits filed in Illinois, under a new federal law that mandates companies to give 60 days notice before they close a plant.  
 
 
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