Vol. 71/No. 6      February 12, 2007

AP/Fayetteville Observer/Raul Rubiera

Workers walk out November 16 at Smithfield slaughterhouse in Tar Heel, North Carolina, to protest firing of coworkers for “false papers.”

With the company’s help, immigration cops entered the plant January 24 and arrested the workers on “administrative charges” of alleged immigration violations. The agents reportedly showed up plain clothed in unmarked cars. “We have cooperated fully,” Dennis Pittman, Smithfield’s director of corporate communications, told the Observer.

The arrests follow a company announcement that 541 workers face termination on allegations that their Social Security numbers do not match federal records.

Smithfield has joined the government’s IMAGE program, under which it cross-checks all employees’ names, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers against federal records.

About 1,000 meat packers at the Tar Heel plant walked out November 16-17 to protest the firing of 75 fellow workers, who the company claimed had false papers. The action forced the bosses to rehire those dismissed. Smithfield gave employees 60 days to provide proper immigration documents.

The Tar Heel plant employs 5,000 workers, who kill 32,000 hogs daily. For more than a decade, workers there have been involved in efforts to organize into the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union.

“Smithfield has a history of using threats of arrest by immigration authorities to intimidate workers and this is a continuation of that pattern,” said Gene Bruskin, a UFCW official and leader of the Justice at Smithfield campaign. “Most of the leaders of a walkout in November are on their list,” Leila McDowell, a UFCW spokeswoman, told the News Observer, referring to the workers the company is threatening to fire.

This week, Smithfield announced an agreement with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to pay $1.5 million in damages to workers fired while involved in union-organizing efforts. The company is appealing NLRB findings that it used violence and intimidation, including the threat of contacting immigration authorities, against workers who walked out in 2003 to protest working conditions in the plant.

After last weeks’ arrests, production plunged by up to 50 percent in some departments as many workers stayed away, said UFCW representatives and workers interviewed by the Militant. The company took out ads on Spanish-language radio to attempt to bring workers back.

“They are losing money, but it’s their fault,” meat cutter Consuelo Martínez told the Militant in a January 30 phone interview. According to Martínez, local television news reports have shown several workers selling their cars and trailer homes and packing to leave for their countries of origin.

Other workers who have quit say they are seeking different jobs in the Tar Heel area.

Amanda, another meat cutter at Tar Heel who asked that her last name not be used for fear of reprisals by the company, reported that a coworker whose husband had been arrested in last week’s raid received a phone call from someone claiming to be an immigration official, who made racist comments and threats.

Willie Tate, an African-American worker in the kill-floor cooler, said the company is trying to use the arrests and threatened firings to “divide and conquer.” Three days after the arrests, many Latino coworkers left work during the day when a false rumor circulated that la migra was returning to the plant, he said. After this incident, a Latino coworker accused some Black workers of calling immigration authorities. In response, the Black workers involved said Latinos “shouldn’t be here in the first place,” Tate reported.

About half of the workers at the Tar Heel plant are Latino, and a third are African American. Hundreds of meat packers refused to work January 15, Martin Luther King Day, to protest the company’s refusal to recognize this national holiday with a paid day off.

Tate said the company has promoted divisions along national lines as part of attempts to stop workers from defending their rights and organizing. “We need the union out there,” he said.
 
 
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