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Smithfield Returns To Bad Old Days With Treatment of Workers
By Gene Holleman
UAW Local 3520

One hundred years ago Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle graphically described the meat industry. The author intended to indict America for committing the offense of Wage Slavery with the treatment of immigrant workers on Chicago slaughter yards. Sinclair said “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach”. President Theodore Roosevelt coined the term muckraker when referring to Sinclair yet felt obligated to order an investigation of the meat packing industry that in turn led Congress to pass the Beef Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.

Today, there is a renewed interest with Sinclair’s book and its depiction of the horrid working conditions which, according to workers’, are similar to the Smithfield plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina. Smithfield is the number one hog producer and recently took over the poultry industry. They are in the top ten as holders of beef slaughter yards. Most of their company’s plants are unionized and practice fair labor with clean and safe working conditions. Therefore, there is no boycott of their products all together, just concerted efforts not to buy products processed at the Tar Heel Plant.

The Tar Heel Plant is Smithfield’s largest and most productive plant.

It is located within a community where the company-owned hog farms drive the economy. Smithfield owns the hogs from the day they are born until the hogs are processed.

The plant employment of over five thousand workers has ethnic ratios of 60 % Hispanic, 35% Black and 5% White. The work is divided along race lines with nineteenth century ideology. According to Charlie LeDuff, a NY Times reporter who worked at Smithfield undercover, the supervisors are mostly white, while the Latino workers complete the repetitive production line jobs, and the heavy lifting on the killing floor and freezer lockers is done mostly by Blacks. Smithfield runs two production shifts and one shift for maintenance and sanitary clean up. They slaughter and process 32,000 hogs a day in an atmosphere of intimidation and exploitation.

According to workers who spoke about conditions, workers must raise their hands and wait for a supervisor to give them permission to go to the restroom. Any work related injuries, the most common injury is a laceration from the wielding knives on the line, are treated at the company clinic and the worker in returned immediately to work their jobs in damp unsanitary conditions where in most cases they become subject to infections. The plant is policed by a special company police force which includes an on site holding cell.

The company police wear guns, have handcuffs and the authority to arrest. Some of these company guards also serve as local deputy sheriffs. Most of the hiring is done from the sheriff’s office.
Virginia and North Carolina have long histories of anti-union sentiment and are the only two states in the union that prohibit their state and municipal employees from collective bargaining. On August 30, 2006, Smithfield Foods held a shareholders meeting in Richmond, Virginia. Their task, among other things, was to decide how to handle 26 million dollars in bonuses. Labor was there in full force and solidarity all wearing yellow t-shirts with “Justice at Smithfield” printed in both English and Spanish. There were busses and vans brining protestors from Greensboro, High Point, Chapel Hill, Durham, Raleigh, Gastonia and Cleveland, North Carolina. Clergy and protestors came from as far away as Chicago, New York and Washington D.C.

There were UAW, NAACP, UFCW, CWA, CBTU, AFL-CIO, and Teamsters all united with college students and professors into a melting pot of yellow t-shirts and banners.
The atrocities at Smithfield are the concern of everyone with an interest in labor and the rights of workers. Please make an effort to stay informed of labor issues and the political climate in which we work.
Further information about the conditions at Smithfield can be found at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060911/schlosser.

In Solidarity,

Gene Holleman