Smithfield Workers Protest (MLK) Holiday Work

[Omaha Steve]

http://money.excite.com/jsp/nw/nwdt_rt_top.jsp?news_id=ap-d8mlqm300&



Smithfield Workers Protest Holiday Work

Monday January 15, 11:25 AM EST

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (AP) — Some workers at a massive Smithfield Foods Inc. hog slaughtering plant missed the first shift Monday to protest a company decision not to give them the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday as a paid day off.

The United Food and Commercial Workers Union estimated that 400 people among the 2,500 scheduled to work had walked out or not come to work Monday. About 100 to 150 people miss work for a typical shift, company spokesman Dennis Pittman said.

The plant in Tar Heel, about 80 miles south of Raleigh, employs about 5,000 people and is considered the largest hog processing plant in the world.

A large number of workers at the plant are black or Hispanic, union officials have said, although they did not provide numbers.

FULL story at link.

[cosmicdot]

1. knr for MLK Day n/m

[Mnemosyne]

2. kick and nom. for visibility n/t

[Taoschick]

3. Okay...

It's the union's responsibility to negotiate for which Holidays they want to be paid days. If the membership wants MKL day off, they need to press the union management to negotiate for it in their next contract.

[Omaha Steve]

4. This is a non union company

It happens to have union members that are fighting hard to get the UFCW in. Smithfield is the world's largest packing plant and has a long anti union and environment history.

http://www.smithfieldjustice.com/


http://www.dailypress.com/business/local/dp-26219sy0jan11,0,1242765.story?coll=dp-business-localheads

King Day sparks union's new fight with Smithfield
A group seeks a new paid holiday for workers at the Tar Heel, N.C., plant - or a walkout.
BY CHRIS FLORES
247-4738
January 11, 2007
The union trying to organize the workforce at Smithfield Foods' Tar Heel plant in North Carolina says thousands of employees have petitioned the company to make Martin Luther King Day a paid holiday.

If the company doesn't give the workers off on Monday, they will walk out, says the union. The labor officials said the holiday, which celebrates the civil rights icon, is important to the largely African-American and Latino workforce at the world's largest pork plant.

The union's sparring with Smithfield over the holiday is the latest in a series of events in which the labor leaders are setting themselves up as the workers' allies against the company. Smithfield recently told hundreds of workers with Social Security number problems that they would be fired if they couldn't prove the numbers are correct.

When workers walked out of the plant, the union joined them in protesting the Smithfield move. The company said it didn't want to fire the workers, some of its best, but it was forced by government immigration officials trying to clamp down on illegal workers.

Company spokesman Dennis Pittman said some workers had made the same request about a decade ago. Smithfield said it offers eight paid holidays, but it would switch one for Martin Luther King Day if the workers wanted to.

The employees voted 5-1 against the move, said Pittman. That offer will be open again, he said, but orders for hogs and the whole production cycle is scheduled months in advance and can't be altered for Monday, he said.

A survey amongst North Carolina employers found only 19 percent offering a day off for the holiday. An informal check by Smithfield only found two pork plants out of 62 closing Monday.

The union has used the immigration walkout in November, along with recent media coverage that included a PBS special on Tar Heel, to highlight rough working conditions in the plant. The union is now trying to tie the workers' environment to the civil rights struggle.

[Taoschick]

5. Do you know

Where I can find a breakdown of their wages and benefits? 8 paid Holidays, 12 personal days and vacation days doesn't sound like a sweatshop to me.

[LeftyMom]

6. It's not much when you consider the very high rate of injury in slaughterhouses

and the high rates of lung disease in people in contact with Smithfield's industrial hog farming operations.

[Omaha Steve]

7. Try the UFCW, then read some things at other links like....

http://www.smithfieldjustice.com/Document_Abuse.php

Or this from Rolling Stone: http://www.smithfieldjustice.com/Documentos/News/PDFs/Boss%20Hog.pdf