The miners at Co-Op are fighting for a union, for their jobs, and for safety and dignity, in what is currently the most important labor battle in the country.

A central issue in this struggle is safety. “Miners in general are outraged by the conditions Co-Op miners face: working with defective equipment, arbitrary wage incentives and bonuses, being forced to work while injured. Many meat packers will be outraged, too,” said Róger Calero, a Socialist Workers Party leader who reported to the meeting on the campaign in solidarity with the miners.

“Other workers will be inspired with what the miners have been able to accomplish,” said Calero. “Bosses at Co-op told workers they would never be able to do anything. They said the workers would get a raise ‘when pigs fly.’ Now there is no coal coming out of this mine, at least nothing compared to before the strike.”

Socialists in some meatpacking plants have worked with others in their areas to gain union support for the striking miners. “The union backed a plant-gate collection for the miners and as a result we raised $250 there,” said Lisa Rottach, a member of UFCW Local 271 at the Swift slaughterhouse in Omaha, Nebraska. “Later we sent a letter to the United Mine Workers of America solidarity rally on December 13 in Huntington, Utah, where it was read.”

Dean Hansen, a member of UFCW Local 342 in New York, said he and other union members had distributed fact sheets at their packing plant. “One co-worker’s reaction was, ‘This is outrageous. Someone’s got to do something about this.’ One guy put more money in the collection can after another worker took some time to talk with him to explain the importance of the strike,” he said.

Tom Fiske, a meat packer in Minnesota, reported on work in building UFCW Local 789 in St. Paul, which has been involved in a number of union-organizing drives, from the successful fight to organize the Dakota Premium Foods plant to ongoing union drives at poultry plants and retail stores in Minneapolis.

“Local 789 has also been involved in union solidarity actions and social struggles,” Fiske noted. The local played an important role, for example, in the campaign to defend Róger Calero—a former Local 789 member and currently a Militant staff writer—against deportation, lent support to the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride in October, and sent a delegation to a solidarity rally organized by strikers at Tyson Foods in Jefferson, Wisconsin.

The socialist workers at the two-day meeting noted that union-building openings exist in many UFCW local unions across the country.

“The unions are the basic mass defense organizations of the workers in this country against the offensive of the capitalists,” stated Fiske. “Building a revolutionary party goes hand in hand with fighting to advance the union, and working with others to help the union to come out of each struggle a little stronger.

“In order to defend our class against the mounting attacks of the bosses, the unions will have to be transformed along revolutionary lines in the course of massive class battles.”

“Today, participating in the life of the union—doing mass work—means working with people of many different views and contending with other political currents,” said Fiske. “In every place where we have trade union fractions, we can be more part of the life of the union as we carry out our political work as socialists.”

Anne Parker and Maurice Williams are meat packers in Atlanta and Chicago, respectively.  
 
 
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