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After an expensive and emotional 15-year organizing battle, workers at the world’s largest hog-killing plant, the Smithfield Packing slaughterhouse in Tar Heel, N.C., have voted to unionize.

The United Food and Commercial Workers, which had lost unionization elections at the 5,000-worker plant in 1994 and 1997, announced late Thursday that it had finally won. The victory was significant in a region known for hostility toward organized labor.

The vote was one of the biggest private-sector union successes in years, and officials from the United Food and Commercial Workers said it was the largest in that union’s history.

The union won by 2,041 votes to 1,879 after two years of turmoil at the plant. As a result of a federal crackdown on illegal immigrants, more than 1,500 Hispanic workers have left the plant. Its work force is now 60 percent black, up from around 20 percent two years ago.

After the results were announced, Wanda Blue, a hog counter, was among the many workers who were celebrating.

“It feels great,” said Ms. Blue, who makes $11.90 an hour and has worked at Smithfield for five years. “It’s like how Obama felt when he won. We made history.”

“I favored the union because of respect,” said Ms. Blue, who is black. “We deserve more respect than we’re getting. When we were hurt or sick, we weren’t getting treated like we should.”

“The union didn’t win by a big margin, but it’s an important positive sign for labor,” said Richard Hurd, a professor of labor relations at Cornell University. “They may be able to use it as leverage to organize other meatpacking plants in the South. The victory may be tied to the political environment. The election of Barack Obama may have eased people’s concerns about speaking out and standing up for a union.”

The United Food and Commercial Workers maintained that it lost the 1997 election because Smithfield broke the law by intimidating and firing union supporters. In 2006, after seven years of litigation, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that Smithfield had engaged in “intense and widespread” coercion.

The court ordered Smithfield to reinstate four union supporters it found were illegally fired, one of whom was beaten by the plant’s police on the day of the 1997 election. The court also said Smithfield had engaged in other illegal activities: spying on workers’ union activities, confiscating union materials, threatening to fire workers who voted for the union and threatening to freeze wages and shut the plant.

The unionization campaign this year was conducted under unusual conditions and rules, intended to reduce the vitriol.

In October, the company and the union reached a settlement under court supervision in which the union agreed to drop its nationwide campaign intended to denounce and embarrass Smithfield and the company agreed to drop a lawsuit asserting that the union’s denunciations and calls for a boycott violated racketeering laws.

The union’s pressure campaign had been intended to persuade the company to let the workers decide on unionizing not through secret balloting but through having a majority of workers sign pro-union cards.

Under the settlement, the two sides could campaign in a limited fashion, and they could not denounce each other. The agreement also allowed union organizers on the plant’s property; union organizers are generally barred from setting foot on company property, even a parking lot, unless management consents.

“We won because that gave us more of a level playing field,” said Joseph Hansen, the union’s president. “That was probably the major thing.”

Dennis Pittman, a Smithfield spokesman, said: “It was close, and the people had a chance to do what we wanted all along, to speak their voice in a secret ballot, and they spoke. As we said all along, we will respect their decision.”

Mr. Pittman said he expected that the two sides would begin negotiations early next year.

Many unions are pushing Congress to pass legislation that would enable unions to organize workers by having them sign pro-union cards. “I would say in this case, it shows that the union can win without a card check,” Mr. Pittman said.

But Mr. Hansen said the 15-year unionization fight showed how hard it was to win under the normal system.

To win the election, union organizers pushed for the cooperation of the plant’s black and Hispanic workers. At lunchtime, outspoken workers sometimes wore T-shirts saying “Smithfield Justice” and gave speeches to hundreds of workers. Several workers said that in the days leading up to the vote, some 2,000 workers had “Union Time” written on their hard hats.

Professor Hurd said one factor that helped the union was the growing percentage of black workers at the plant. “African-Americans are the strongest supporters of unions,” he said.

Lydia Victoria, who helps cut off hog tails at the plant, acknowledged that many Hispanic workers were afraid of being seen as union supporters. Illegal immigrant workers are especially worried because they fear deportation.

“A lot of Hispanic people,” Ms. Victoria said, “were scared to support the union, sometimes because of the language, and sometimes because they feel they don’t get the same treatment like the people who speak English.”

“But people came together,” she said. “People wanted fair treatment. We fought so long to get this, and it finally happened.”

After 15 Years, North Carolina Plant Unionizes,
NYT,
13.12.2008,
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/
us/13smithfield.html

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