Processing Pain at Smithfield Foods

By Aaron Sarver

Located in Tar Heel, N.C., the Smithfield Packing pork processing plant is the largest in the country. It employs 6,000 workers who work to slaughter 33 hogs a minute, 24 hours a day. In 2000, Human Rights Watch issued a report that chronicles how Smithfield Packing, Inc. abused workers during union elections held in 1994 and 1997. The report detailed other practices at the plant:

According to union officials, approximately forty-five workers were bused into the plant each day from the Robeson Correctional Center, a state prison. They were bused into the plant premises without stopping to receive union flyers and boarded the bus at the same internal point so they could not receive flyers leaving the plant.

Smithfield management denied union advocates’ request to communicate with these workers, who qualified as “employees” under the [National Labor Relation Act] and were eligible to vote in the union election. However, management required these work-release employees to attend captive-audience meetings to hear its arguments against forming and joining a union.

Smithfield employs the only private police force at a meatpacking plant in the country; under law the officers can carry firearms.

In April, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that during union elections Smithfield had broken the law. According to the board, the corporation “assaulted workers, threatened them with bodily harm, threatened them with arrest by immigration authorities, and caused workers to be falsely arrested.” click title for entire article