May 24 - One immigrant, non-union laborer at Nebraska Beef Ltd. in Omaha lost a finger on the job only to be placed back in the same position by management shortly after he recovered. Then he lost another finger. All within his first three months on the job.
"You hear about firemen and police having dangerous jobs, but [meatpacking] is probably the most dangerous of all," said Donna McDonald, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Union Local 271, which has been trying to help workers organize at the plant for four years. "You’re working with knives and saws all day long. People are losing hands and fingers."
On May 26, the workers at Nebraska Beef, one of the largest meatpacking plants in the country, will vote on whether they want to unionize, and organizers say the election comes during a campaign of worker intimidation conducted by management of the company.
McDonald told The NewStandard that managers had intimidated workers by telling them that if they unionized the plant, it would have to be closed down.
Company officials did not return calls for this story. Workers were also unwilling to speak on the record about events at Nebraska Beef.
This year’s election follows a highly contested August 2001 vote in which management allegedly stacked the voter rolls with supervisors and intimidated and harassed workers. The UFCW filed 41 unfair labor practices charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) regarding that election. That fall, a government hearing officer ordered another election, but it has taken nearly three years for the union to overcome the company’s repeated appeals.
Meatpacking, one of the country’s most dangerous jobs, is carried out almost completely by immigrants, including refugees resettled in the US from Africa and Asia and many undocumented workers from Mexico and other parts of Latin America.
According to the January 2005 Human Rights Watch report "Blood, Sweat and Fear: Workers’ Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants," the injury and illness rate for meatpacking was a "staggering" one out of every five full time workers in 2001 – four times the reported rate for private industry as a whole.
The Human Rights Watch report includes a chapter on illegal suppression of worker organizing at Nebraska Beef. It details intimidation and coercion of workers.
For example, one worker told HRW researchers: "Our supervisor called us in one-by-one. He told everybody that if the union came in, the contract would not let us go home to Mexico for important family events. For us, family is everything. If my grandmother dies or my sister gets married, I have to go home.
steady stream of bloody, dismembered body parts can be seen coming out on a conveyor belt and dropping into refuse bins outside the plant.
"The company would let us go and this was supremely important to us. When they told us the union contract would not let us go home, that frightened a lot of people who supported the union."
There are currently 894 workers on the voter rolls for the union election. McDonald says that again the company has put supervisors on the list, an issue the union is taking up with the NLRB.
While meatpacking will never be an easy or desirable job, McDonald believes that with union representation circumstances could be much better for workers. She said the union would battle for gains including better pay, better safety conditions and an end to retaliatory and arbitrary treatment from supervisors.
"We’re talking about hours of work, benefits and general respect and dignity," she said, describing how workers currently receive only one week of vacation benefits annually for their first three years at the plant. It takes nine years for workers to gain a three-week annual vacation.
"There is no punch time clock," said McDonald. "The supervisor says when you start and end," leaving pay for hours worked up to manipulation by supervisors. "They start at $7 an hour, which is extremely low for the meatpacking industry."
She said the union would also ensure that workers’ rights -- including Workers’ Compensation in the case of injuries -- are respected.
"Since it’s an immigrant workforce, a lot of them aren’t aware of their rights," McDonald said. "Like Family Leave, the [Americans with Disabilities Act], Workers’ Comp."
Nebraska Beef processes about 2,000 cattle carcasses a day. A steady stream of bloody, dismembered body parts can be seen coming out on a conveyor belt and dropping into refuse bins outside the plant.
In the Midwest, meatpacking is one of the main industries employing immigrants. Though there used to be twelve such plants in Omaha, there remain only three. Automation has cut the number of plants needed and changed the nature of the work, making it faster, more repetitive and more dangerous.
The Latino population of Omaha grew 155 percent between the 1990 and 2000 censuses as a result of immigrants coming to work in the slaughterhouses. Along with mostly undocumented Latinos, the plant employs refugees from Sudan, Somalia, Togo, Kenya, Laos and Vietnam. The refugees are generally settled by community and faith-based organizations contracted by the US government.
Ed Leahy, director of the Immigrant Rights Network of Iowa and Nebraska, said Nebraska Beef is specifically known for its lax safety practices and bad working conditions.
"There’s always manure on the streets outside," Leahy said. "I see that as one of the outward signs of the inside conditions. There’s a lot of harassment and intimidation. People who are sympathetic to the union are being fired. I say while workers might have to work around a lot of shit, they shouldn’t have to take it from management."
Kristie Phillips, program coordinator of the animal rights group In Defense of Animals, noted that increased line speed has made the conditions under which animals are killed significantly more brutal as well.
"Workers are required to work so quickly that they can’t give any consideration to animals," she said, referring to a 2000 expose by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals at an IBP slaughterhouse in Washington state in which video shows cows being skinned and dismembered while still alive, an illegal situation that increases the danger to workers aside from inflicting immeasurable pain on the animals.
"Unfortunately, that’s fairly common," Phillips said. "The Humane Slaughter Act, the only federal law protecting animals raised for food, is rarely enforced because it’s so dangerous to be on the slaughter floor that government inspectors don’t want to go there. The industry is really policing itself."
The UFCW joins today with the Laborers' Union, SEIU, Teamsters, and UNITE HERE in rejecting the AFL-CIO Officers' Proposal and in calling for genuine reform that will build worker power.
The AFL-CIO Officers' Proposal continues the status quo, and does not provide for genuine reform to build worker power. The UFCW supports, and will work for, a unified labor movement, but unity must be based on a shared commitment to revitalize the movement to empower workers. Unity without purpose is meaningless.
The status quo will not stand. We must build a 21st century labor movement for a new generation of workers. We are proud of our past-American unions have brought generations of working families prosperity, opportunity, and dignity-but, we must change now to meet the challenges of a changing world.
Unrestrained corporate power operating in a global economy is attempting to strip workers of their voice in the workplace, the economic well-being of their families, and the integrity of their government. A growing labor movement that engages and organizes workers, according to where they work and the jobs they do, can create a powerful force to raise living standards, provide for secure health care and retirement, make government responsive, and restore the American dream for working families.
We must start by changing the structure of the AFL-CIO and redirecting the resources of the labor movement to build worker power. As the cornerstone of reform, organizing should be the focus of unions to increase the number of organized workers in their core jurisdictions. The percentage of organized workers in an industry or occupation is the foundation of worker power. The AFL-CIO should be structured to further core industry organizing.
Affiliated unions representing the majority of union members should play an expanded role in the leadership and direction of the Federation. To maximize the power of workers, the Federation should provide central coordination for multi-union bargaining and organizing.
Only a growing labor movement can give workers a stronger voice in politics, and elect a worker-friendly government at the federal, state, and local levels.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The UFCW is engaged in an internal process to review reform proposals. For more information contact: Greg Denier at 202-466-1591.
Closer links with trade unions in China are part of a global union plan to challenge the low price-low wage strategy of Wal-Mart, the world's biggest company.
UNI global union wants to stop the Wal-Martization of the world by bringing together unions in different countries to organise its workers and bring them the benefits of collective organisation.
A special report on Wal-Mart is being presented to 1,500 delegates at UNI's second World Congress, being held in Chicago on 22-25 August.
Wal-Mart is viciously anti-union in North America and stands accused by unions of driving down wages and conditions in suppliers and competitors and dumping social costs like health care on taxpayers.
Wal-Mart is bad news for workers, for women workers in particular and for whole communities," said UNI General Secretary Philip Jennings.
"If it succeeds in establishing a new corporate model for the 21st century based on low wages, low benefits and insecure jobs it is also bad news for the whole global economy."
UNI has already been to China to meet union leaders and cooperation is planned in unionising the western multinationals moving into China - including Wal-Mart, which is relocating its purchasing operations to China.
"Chinese workers need as effective trade union representation as workers anywhere else in the world," says the UNI report.
Pressure to build global labour rights into world trade rules and build coalitions with community groups worried about the impact of Wal-Mart on their towns are also part of the UNI global plan.
Unions are also urged to use their investment power to pressurize Wal-Mart - Danish unions recently dumped their Wal-Mart stock in protest at the company's anti-social approach.
The world retailer employs 1.5 million workers worldwide and has annual profits of $9 billion. It is also the subject of the biggest legal class action in US history, alleging discrimination on pay and promotion, on behalf of 1.5 million women who work or worked for Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart has union busting squads to stamp on union activity in its stores and has closed or reorganised operations in Texas and Canada to nullify worker votes for representation by the United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW).
US union activists are already working with community groups to stop more Wal-Mart shopping centres devastating existing retail centres - and destroying three jobs for every two that Wal-Mart brings.
The UNI report spotlights pay in Wal-Mart USA at $9.70 an hour compared to $14 for workers in other large retail companies and more expensive health benefits, taken up by far fewer Wal-Mart employees than competitors.
"We reject the Wal-Mart way and at Chicago UNI will be imagining a better future for working people everywhere," said Philip Jennings. "We will work with the UFCW and those unions already established in Wal-Mart in Europe and elsewhere to stop a damaging race to the bottom."
* UNI - Union Network International - is the global union for skills and service workers, representing nearly 1,000 unions in 150 countries with 15 million members.
The report recommends a nine-point action plan:
· Focus on organising
· An international - not a national - union response.
· Closer focus on China
· Defending social partnership and collective organisation
· Press for agreed global labour standards to be built into world trade agreements
· Exploring new and more effective ways to organise – and to share best practices
· Building alliances with society groups
· Solidarity between unions in developed and developing world
· Using investment funds power to exert market pressures on Wal-Mart.
To read the full report go here
For more information on Wal-Mart go here
Beth Shulman
May 03, 2005
Beth Shulman is the author of The Betrayal of Work: How Low-Wage Jobs Fail 30 Million Americans (The New Press, 2003) and works with the Russell Sage Foundation’s The Future of Work and Social Inequality projects
In the economy, the bigger you are, the bigger the shadow you cast. But sometimes, when you start small, it’s hard to remember your new size and its impact.
Take Wal-Mart. When it started small in Arkansas, perhaps the company felt it had no choice but to create primarily low-wage jobs that offered few, if any, benefits, to successfully compete. But isn’t it high time to rethink this view? Couldn’t Wal-Mart provide family-sustaining jobs and be the General Motors of the 21st century ?
H. Lee Scott Jr., the CEO of Wal-Mart, says no. In a press briefing in Bentonville, Ark., he described General Motors as the company that “Usher[ed] in the great American middle class that this country is so proud of and rightfully so….” But he insisted that:
Retailing doesn’t perform that same function in the economy as GM does or did. Retailing has never occupied the top tier of wages in this country, or in any country… [If Wal-Mart raised wages and benefits] this could erase Wal-Mart’s profit or force it to raise prices, enabling less efficient rivals to thrive.
But is this true?
First, Scott claims that Wal-Mart can’t be like General Motors because there is something inherently low-wage about the retail industry. But there was nothing inherently high-wage about the automobile industry. General Motors didn’t always pay good wages and benefits. It became a “good” employer after workers organized and collectively bargained with the company for better wages and benefits. Likewise, there is nothing inherently low-wage about retail. In fact, one need only look closer at the retail food sector, to see that workers have enjoyed good middle-class jobs elsewhere in the industry for several decades. Meanwhile, jobs that were once low-wage jobs—such as janitors, hotel workers and home health care workers—are likewise becoming better jobs through unionization. And Wal-Mart is not constrained by global competition in its wages and benefits. These on-site retail jobs must be done here in the United States. Wal-Mart workers are not competing against cashiers or stockers in Bangladesh or China.
Second, Scott argues that if Wal-Mart paid better wages and benefits, it would reduce its profits. The implication is that this would damage the company’s position with investors. But it is the negative publicity about Wal-Mart’s treatment of workers—paying its workers poverty-level wages and providing few benefits; harassing and firing workers for trying to organize a union; sex discrimination allegations resulting in the largest class-action sex discrimination lawsuit in history; and mistreating immigrant workers— that is contributing to Wall Street’s declining perception of Wal-Mart’s potential. While Wal-Mart’s profits nearly doubled, from six to 10 billion dollars since 2001, its stock declined by nearly 10 percent. This is worse than the overall market averages and far worse than Wal-Mart’s competitors, whose stock prices climbed during the same period. There is no reason to believe the public pressure to change Wal-Mart’s labor practices will lessen and the negative publicity will slow. Indeed, more groups are challenging Wal-Mart and its low-road policies.
But equally important, Wal-Mart does not just have an obligation to its shareholders. It has some responsibility to its workers and to the communities in which it operates. By treating workers so poorly, it is abandoning its basic corporate responsibilities.
Third, if Wal-Mart didn’t want to reduce its hefty profits, Scott says it would have to raise prices, thus opening the door for competitors to undercut it. But let’s consider this argument. Wal-Mart is the world’s largest profit-making corporation in the world, with 1.4 million employees and annual sales of a quarter of a trillion dollars. It has close to 5,000 stores worldwide. It does more business than Target, Sears, Kmart, J.C. Penney, Safeway and Kroger combined. To say that other competitors would trump them in light of their size and market share is disingenuous.
Moreover, other retailers, such as Costco, Safeway, Giant and Kroger already pay family-sustaining wages and benefits. Wal-Mart would not be alone. In fact, if Wal-Mart did raise its wages and benefits, other employers in the industry would likely raise their wages and benefits to compete with Wal-Mart for workers. Wal-Mart’s higher wages and benefits would have a ripple effect throughout the industry. Just as General Motors set a standard of family-sustaining wages and benefits for the auto industry in the last century—and indeed, for American manufacturing—Wal-Mart would set that standard today, instead of pursuing a low-wage model that exerts downward pressures on wages and benefits throughout our economy.
Further, growing numbers of American communities now understand that the social cost that accompanies Wal-Mart’s low-prices is too high. As taxpayers, we all end up subsidizing Wal-Mart’s deficient wage and benefits package through the taxpayer-subsidized food stamps, child care, health care, and housing that support Wal-Mart “associates.” A recent report from the University of California at Berkeley Labor Center finds that Wal-Mart’s reliance on public assistance programs to support many of its 44,000 employees in California costs taxpayers an estimated $86 million annually, with $32 million in health-related expenses and $54 million in other expenses. Wal-Mart’s low prices are no longer such a bargain when it becomes clear that the customers’ taxpayer dollars go to subsidize what Wal-Mart fails to provide.
So there really is a choice. What will it be?
Wal-Mart, the world’s largest corporation with a 2004 gross income of more than $256 billion, can look around to see a threatened society with families who can’t provide for their basic needs and continue to go about its business as usual. Or it can offer a living wage, affordable health insurance and the means to a better future. General Motors became the template of the 20th century, doubling the real income of auto workers in the middle of the 20th century—and creating a society in which those at the bottom shared in America's prosperity.
One thing is certain: Wal-Mart has a decision to make about how it wants to do business, the society it wants to help share and its legacy in America’s history books. It can either become the General Motors of the 21st century by rebuilding a strong middle class, or it can continue to lead our country down the dangerous path to a low-wage economy. We all have a stake in its decision. Because, like General Motors several decades ago: As goes Wal-Mart, so goes the nation.