Iowa Quality Beef is a partnership between the Iowa Quality Beef Supply Cooperative and American Foods Group of Green Bay, Wisconsin. Over 900 cattle producers from Iowa and surrounding states had invested in the operation, which opened in July 2003. It was the only cattle slaughterhouse in Iowa. According to press reports, American Foods Group, which operated the plant, now wants out of the partnership.

The Des Moines Register reported August 19 that Wythe Willey, a cattleman and lawyer from Cedar Rapids who is chairman of the board of the cooperative, blamed the closing “on bad market and financial conditions in the cattle industry because of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also known as mad cow disease (BSE).” Willey said the plant has lost $3.5 million to $5 million because of BSE. He also called the shutdown temporary and said the plant may reopen in about two months.

The plant closing will also hurt farmers. The shutdown “diminishes competition for cattle, which could mean lower prices for producers,” said an article in the Des Moines Register, adding that farmers will “incur the added costs of shipping their animals to more-distant markets.”

Workers first learned the operation was shutting down “temporarily” on August 18, when kill floor workers were told that it was their last day. Workers on the cut floor then worked the last two days of the week to process carcasses.

Many workers immediately began to prepare to move out of town. “I’m on my way to Joslin, Illinois,” said a worker as he loaded the trunk of his car. “We’re going down to try to get an apartment before I start work there.” He had been a sanitation worker in the plant. “When we found out the plant was closing, I called my landlord right away to say that we needed to work something out, because we had no jobs and I needed to get my deposit back. The landlord said that he needed 30 days notice. I told him that the company didn’t give me notice, how could I give him notice?”

He pointed to several young men standing on the porch of the house they shared. “We all worked sanitation in the plant for a company called Kaiser,” he said. “We’re all being transferred to other jobs in Dubuque, Waterloo, Dennison, and Joslin. I was a manager here, but they don't need a manager in Joslin, so I’ll be a worker like the others.”

“The employee handbook says the company was supposed to give 60 days notice about layoffs, but people got no notice at all,” said Gabriel Salazar. He and his friends had moved to Tama to work at the plant from Long Prairie, Minnesota, where they had been members of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 789. Salazar said he quit, however, because the bosses had him doing the job of three people. Salazar and other workers interviewed did not know about the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN), which requires employers to provide 60 days notification in advance of plant closings or mass layoffs. News coverage of the plant closing in Iowa has not mentioned the WARN act.

Salazar’s friend, Lorenzo Galvan, said that the company had shorted him wages for 14 hours, which the bosses never paid despite saying they would. Several workers told Militant correspondents similar stories about not being paid for all the hours they worked. Salazar, Galvan, and Marisol Garcia said they were going to Denison, Iowa, to try to get jobs there.

At a nearby apartment building, Militant reporters talked to several workers. “I’m going back to Mexico Friday,” said Umberto López. He hails from a rural area of Zacatecas and says that there are no jobs there. He will be going back to a farm to raise corn and hogs.

Laura Castellenos said that she had worked in the plant under the previous owners, who also shut it down. “They told us we would be rehired when it opened up again, but I wasn’t rehired,” Castellanos said, adding that some workers are afraid to apply for unemployment because they might lack papers.

Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Senate in Iowa, Edwin Fruit, who works at the Tyson plant in Perry, Iowa, and is a member of UFCW Local 1149, told workers that “the labor movement needs to come to the defense of the workers here in Tama.

“The labor movement here in Iowa should demand that since the company did not give workers 60 days notice required by the WARN Act and stipulated in the company hand book, it should pay workers wages for the next 60 days and continue their insurance coverage,” Fruit said. He also said that all workers should receive unemployment compensation, whether they have papers or not.

“The treatment of workers here in Tama shows why the SWP campaign’s demand to support workers’ right to organize unions and to defend ourselves from the bosses’ attacks is so important. We also demand a massive federally funded public works program to put millions to work at union scale.”

Kevin Dwire is a meat packer in Des Moines, Iowa.  
 
 
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