About 1,800 workers kill and process hogs in two shifts at the plant in this Midwestern town, which is home to many meat packers from Latin America, Southeast Asia, Africa, and elsewhere.

Several years ago workers from the Tyson plant approached the UFCW to begin the organizing effort. For the last nine months a workers committee had met regularly with union organizers to prepare for the election. The meetings often included 40-60 workers, many of them women.

On August 22, some 65 workers met at the union’s organizing hall to discuss the outcome of the election and plan a response. Most were upset by the result, saying that the majority of the workers wanted the union. Many claimed the company won the election through fraudulently manipulating the ballots. “On some ballots, the company changed the ‘yes’ box to ‘no’ in order to confuse us,” Gloria Solís, a kill floor worker, told Militant reporters. Before the election, sample ballots had been distributed to workers with the box marked “yes” on the left and the box marked “no” on the right of the ballot. “We want a new election, and have begun to collect signatures to demand a new election,” she said.

Based on such reports, union officials are challenging the outcome, asking the NLRB to nullify the election.

Throughout the drive workers organized inside the plant to build the union. Many wore union stickers on their hard hats, and helped to distribute leaflets to their co-workers explaining the need for a union. “When the company harassed three women who supported the union, 40 of us went into the cafeteria, stopping the kill chain,” Solís said. “We won some respect, and showed the company what we could do.”

Tyson responded with a concerted anti-union campaign. Modesto Santana, a 42-year-old worker of Cuban origin with one year in the plant, described some of the tactics. “Supervisors wore ‘Union No’ stickers,” he said. “They fired some of our leaders, handed out lots of leaflets against the union, held anti-union meetings, and slowed the line down to show us how ‘nice’ they are. The company also tried to divide us, trying to pit one nationality against the other. Despite these attacks, he said, he was “surprised that we lost by so many votes. I know that a majority supported the union.”

Tyson’s divide-and-conquer tactics got a hearing from some workers. “The union only cares about the Latinos,” said a mechanic entering the plant on election day, for example. “What about me? Who will represent me if the stewards only speak Spanish?”

Union supporters in the plant report that very few workers who were not Latino attended union organizing meetings.

Three Swift & Co. workers traveled two hours from Omaha to help pass out flyers and talk to workers entering the plant on election day. “We learned to stick together during our organizing drive,” said one of these workers who participated in that successful organizing drive in 2002. “We also learned how the NLRB and the courts work, dragging their feet to frustrate workers. When we lost our first election, we started to organize again. We were stronger the second time around.”

Many workers said they are not ready to give up. “We have to keep fighting,” said kill floor worker Mario Martínez.  
 
 
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