After a week into the strike, which also drew in the workers at the Tulip factory, the bosses gave in and voided the wage cut, and then announced they would shut down the sausage plant. The company began laying off workers in early January.

“It’s unacceptable to lower wages under the threat of closing a plant,” one young worker, who did not give his name, told the Militant in an interview outside the Danish Crown slaughterhouse in Ringsted, which is part of the same complex as the Tulip sausage factory there. “It is like revolver politics. They would have moved on to cut the wages of all of us if we had not acted.”

“All workers here are pleased we did this,” added Bjarne, a meat cutter at the same plant. “If we had not walked out, they would have lowered the wages of all workers. A 15 percent cut means a lot lower wages, a big difference. You just can’t live on pay like that.” Many workers interviewed outside the Danish Crown slaughterhouses in Ringsted, Esbjerg, and Grindsted during visits between January 17 and January 20 expressed similar views.

Danish Crown produces 6 percent of all exports from Denmark, and 55 percent of all agricultural exports.

As soon as details of the contract at the Ringsted sausage factory became known on December 8, the walkout started at Saeby. A day later, workers at the slaughterhouse in Grindsted voted 74-39 to go on strike and everyone walked out. At the slaughterhouse in Aalborg the vote was 65-7 in favor of a strike.

Union shop stewards at the plants owned by Danish Crown met December 10. Union officers said the agreement the local union had signed at the Tulip plant was not in line with the national contract, and they gave the company a deadline of December 13 to negotiate a new pact.

By the morning before the deadline, the bosses and the local union signed an agreement. Food workers union national vice president Jens Peter Bostrup said the accord was in line with the national contract. This new agreement, however, would have also meant a wage cut 14-15 percent on average.

“We met in the cafeteria on Monday [December 13], took a vote, and decided to walk out,” said Bjarne Nielsen, a worker on the kill floor in Esbjerg. “We met again on Tuesday morning and voted to continue the strike.”  
 
Strike spreads
On December 13, workers in Skaerbaek, Blans, Odense, and Rødding voted to go on strike as well. Over the next two days the strike spread among workers at Danish Crown plants across the country. By the morning of December 15, workers at the Tulip sausage factory in Ringsted walked out too. With that action, about 3,400 workers in 14 plants were on strike.

“It was the first time in our experience that all 14 Danish Crown slaughterhouses in Denmark struck at the same time: on Jutland, here, in Odense, all over,” said a worker outside the Ringsted slaughterhouse.

“It was quite a show of solidarity,” said another worker in Esbjerg, who is originally from Sweden. “The strike was effective because it was nationwide.”

After workers at the Tulip plant voted to reject the contract and joined the strike, the company backed off and cancelled the wage cut. On December 16, workers at all the struck plants returned to work.

“Yes, we won the strike,” said several workers at the slaughterhouse in Grindsted, as they rushed in to work the morning of January 20 in the middle of a heavy snow that fell on Jutland that day.

Peter Millsen, a worker in Esbjerg who is being trained as a butcher, said, “It was necessary to strike. We won what we wanted and stopped them from lowering our wages. I feel bad about the workers at Tulip who will now lose their jobs, but they would have lost them anyway.”

The day the strikers returned to work, the bosses at Tulip announced they would close the sausage factory in Ringsted and move production to a plant it owns in Germany. Having given the legally required 21-day warning, on January 7 the company started laying off workers.

“We had to do this!” said Kriste, another worker at the Danish Crown slaughterhouse in Ringsted. “All of us agree, including the workers at Tulip. The workers at Tulip will be offered further training and a chance to get jobs at Danish Crown. That’s part of the agreement. After all, lower wages would only have saved their jobs for 16 more months. They agree with us too that you can’t stop development. After all, the company has this factory in Germany.”

Workers at Tulip were more ambivalent. “I have no idea what to do now,” Carina Madsen, who had operated a sausage sprayer at the Tulip plant, told a union newspaper. “I hope I will get a chance for further education or training.” She and her husband had just bought a new house and the unemployment pay will make it hard to get by, she said. “In the beginning we were so confused and worried we agreed to the wage cut. But it was not the way forward,” she said, pointing out that the majority of Tulip workers came to the same conclusion.  
 
Discussions on what’s ahead
Many workers interviewed said they expected attacks from the employers to intensify as the bosses try to pit workers in one country against those in another to increase their profits. A number of workers said that labor solidarity across borders is needed to resist the offensive by the bosses.

“We must have similar wages all over the European Union if we shall have an EU,” said Kriste, in Ringsted. “Polish and German workers’ wages must go up.… You need to be able to live on your wages wherever you work.”

“We need the unions more and more but it seems they are getting weaker when we need them the most,” said Bjarne Nielsen, in Esbjerg. “What can you do when companies move out of the country to Poland, for example, because the wages are lower? Globalization must not only be for the employers but for us workers, too!”

“Danish Crown is not like the former owner, they don’t care about the workers,” said a butcher in Esbjerg. “They will try to lower our wages again. That’s just to be expected.”

Nielsen pointed out, however, that Danish Crown workers can be proud of what they accomplished. “And we will do it again, and again, and again,” he said.

On January 19, Danish Crown announced its decision to shut down its slaughterhouse in Hjørring in the north of Jutland. The next day, the 440 workers there walked out to protest the closure. Workers said they expected to be back on the job the following week.  
 
 
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