“In one case the plant manager tried to force a deboner to do the jobs of two workers,” he said. “Some workers got angry. The entire boning department stopped work for a half hour in protest. Another time the plant manager yelled at us at the start of a shift. We didn’t start work for a whole minute. We know we sent the manager a message. The company loses $5,000 for each 20 minutes the line is down.” The meat packer asked that his name not be used.

In recent months there has been a union-organizing drive at the plant by United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 789. The workers’ anger against disrespect and other abuses by the bosses has fueled this resistance in the plant and the union-organizing drive.

A vote on union recognition took place May 5. The UFCW lost by 67-32.

“None of our problems are going to go away,” said the same worker. “They will just become worse. That’s what confronts us now.”

About a dozen meat packers spoke with Militant correspondents at a trailer park in town about the conditions they are resisting. They said there is no drinking fountain in the plant. Workers who do not come to work one day get their hourly pay lowered to entry-level wages, $7 per hour, for the rest of the week. For a qualified deboner, this is a reduction in hourly pay from $11 per hour to $7 per hour for the week. “Robbery!” is how one worker described this. In addition, in the boning department workers average only 34 hours of work per week. Several workers commented that it is difficult to support their families at this level of income.

They said the plant manager treats them like animals. Two workers in the kill department said that in response to one particular abuse by the manager, workers there carried out a slowdown for an entire eight-hour day. In both the kill and boning departments, workers said they have been forced to continue working their regular jobs while injured. All the workers interviewed requested that their names not be used because of company threats against union supporters.

Bernie Hesse, an organizer for UFCW Local 789, said the union plans to file an objection to the election with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). “Local 789 will be sticking with the workers at Minnesota Beef Industries,” Hesse told the Militant. “The workers showed a lot of courage. The vote showed only that a lot of workers were intimidated at the time of the election. The workers have already won in the sense that through their resistance within the plant they have sent a message to the company they won’t put up with the abuses going on. We will be appealing to the Labor Board.”

Prior to the election, the union had filed charges with the NLRB, alleging that management had threatened to call local police, who would in turn stop workers and take away their work permits and vehicles because they were “illegal.” Almost all the workers are immigrants from Mexico. The NLRB is investigating the complaint.

Four years ago UFCW Local 789 won a significant victory in a representation election at the Dakota Premium Foods beef slaughterhouse in South St. Paul, in a plant where similar conditions existed. The organizing drive was started during a seven-and-a-half-hour sit-down strike in the company cafeteria on June 1, 2000. More than two years of struggle were required by the workers after that vote—including many mobilizations of workers to the company offices, shows of support for the union, and collective acts of direct resistance—before the company, which had vowed never to sign a contract with the union, finally recognized the UFCW and agreed to a contract.

Tom Fiske is a meat packer in Minneapolis. Bob Sorenson, a meat packer in St. Paul, contributed to this article.  
 
 
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