Amidst the current discussion about the need to revitalize Labor, WalMart is usually held up as the main corporate target which must be challenged in order to rebuild the labor movement. However, a better chance of success with greater impact lies with addressing another target.
One of the largest concentrated groups of unorganized workers in the US is largely ignored by organized labor. This proposal is for a coordinated effort to organize in this key industry.
Organizing the poultry industry would have a significant and immediate impact on the future of the labor movement and would carry national resonance on debates over the rights of workers both to organize and have real enforcement protections from state and federal agencies. Labor can simultaneously increase our membership numbers, strengthen labor’s image as the advocate for working people, and increase our relevancy within minority communities.
It should be an embarrassment for Labor that a human rights organization (Human Rights Watch ‘Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Workers’ Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants, January 25, 2005) and the GAO (Safety in the Meat and Poultry Industry, While Improving, Could Be Further Strengthened, January 27, 2005) are the only ones speaking out against the systemic abuses in poultry. Those abuses are legion and must be addressed by Labor.
The workers in poultry want to organize. Not every worker, not every plant, but enough to enable us to be strategically selective and keep us very busy. We must get back to basics with a viable, relevant organizing campaign.
Poultry plants are overwhelmingly in the southern United States. The South is our greatest problem, by most terms – membership, politically, and Labor’s image. Organizing poultry is the best way to tackle our biggest problems in the region which most needs Labor’s presence.
Poultry can provide an initial industry-wide campaign, where workers are more immediately interested in organizing, individual plant elections can be won under the NLRB, and public support will include damaging brand name’s and industry’s image while enhancing Labor’s image. Having the experience of starting a successful industry-wide, multi-union campaign will be an incalculable help in subsequently structuring the more difficult WalMart campaign.
We can learn from previous multi-union efforts, replicating successful pieces and avoiding errors. This campaign differs from other attempts. Poultry workers have repeatedly demonstrated that they want to organize. They have been waiting a decade for Labor to pay attention to our mutual interest.
THE PLAN
We should begin organizing in a number of selected poultry plants where workers want to organize. We can be honest about what can, and cannot be achieved. We won’t be able to negotiate higher wages until we have critical mass in the industry. But we can own the shop floor. Through worker solidarity, we can force bathroom breaks. Through aggressive representation and ongoing organizing, we can ensure that workers are not fired (and then rehired for the lower starting wage) for absenteeism when there are valid FMLA claims. We can ensure that workers are paid for all time worked and that workers are able to file workers’ comp claims. We can expose flagrant safety violations. These changes are equivalent to negotiating substantial raises and, when combined with dignity, would make a union valuable to poultry workers.
Tyson Foods is likely to be the primary target, although a final determination will require additional corporate research and the results of an industry probe. After two decades of industry consolidation, Tyson is the largest corporation in poultry, and in recent years a dominant force in meatpacking, as well. Tyson does have a handful of union contracts, largely at plants that it purchased. Tyson is large enough to shift production to other plants, or even take short- term losses to maintain its corporate union avoidance posture.
We must begin the campaign on the ground. Attacking an employer without support of workers is dangerous. Workers must define their own issues, buy into an attack on their employer, and believe the attack will help them. In reality, we have no other option; Tyson is not going to agree to meaningful, fundamental change solely because of external pressure.
We will file for NLRB elections. With inoculation and community support, we may be able to win a substantial minority of elections. If elections are delayed, or other factors on the ground suggest it, we should be open to non-Board strategies. Poultry is an ideal industry for forming minority unions, with shop floor dignity issues for organizing worker actions and legal rights, which with education and enforcement, would have tremendous impact on the quality of work lives.
Although there is valid debate about the efficacy of using the Board, poultry is one industry in which we can effectively demonstrate the increasingly anti- worker and anti-democratic positions that the Board takes. We cannot successfully advocate for reform without raising the tenor of the debate, by illustrating the anti-union bias of the Board in an industry of low-paid workers who are subject to dangerous conditions, and have a strong desire for representation.
We cannot credibly accuse Tyson of subverting the wishes of workers to be organized without first demonstrating the problem with the current system. Workers will also be more willing to consider non-Board options if we have demonstrated why and how NLRB elections don’t work. Sadly, that means exposing workers to vicious anti-union campaigns.
Initially, we should probe the industry to identify strategically significant plants where workers are prepared to organize. An extensive multi-state probe of Tyson and other corporations of potential interest can be initiated immediately. A probe, interviewing a cross-section of workers at each plant, would be completed within 3 months. Based on the probe results, we can then initiate organizing campaigns. We can build on successes and use workers from one plant to organize at other plants. There should be aggressive, organizing-based representation from the beginning of the campaign, through any election delays and continuing.
Community support for poultry worker organizing already exists in strategic areas throughout the South because of the work of the Interfaith Worker Justice. Local Interfaith Worker Justice groups will also be a key starting point in a national campaign to support workers’ organizing.
The demographics of individual plants vary widely. Despite influxes of Central American immigrant workers, three quarters of poultry workers are US born and a majority are white and African American. According to the GAO, Latino immigrants make up 25% of the workforce in meatpacking and poultry, native born Latinos are 17%, whites are 32%, and African-Americans are 20%.
There are well over 200,000 poultry workers in the US. UFCW represention, which is concentrated in smaller companies, will be an asset in organizing among the industry leaders. States with the largest production are Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, and Mississippi.
This plan is viable and will have an immediate impact.
THE PUBLIC CAMPAIGN
We can launch a public campaign simultaneous to the organizing, and later paralleling the representation. There are tremendous opportunities for framing our broader policy issues and compelling personal stories to illustrate them. We can demonstrate lack of regulation and enforcement of state and federal labor, food safety, and environmental laws. We can link food safety and Bush’s advocacy for corporate self- regulation to working conditions. Publicizing the union busting during the campaigns is the best way we can frame the uselessness of the NLRB for workers who want a voice at their workplace.
One example of an issue is Tyson’s bragging about factories which have a million man hours with no injuries resulting in a lost work day. In such a dangerous industry, that’s impossible; it’s an admission of a calculated effort not to report injuries. And there are graphic, horrific worker stories to back that up.
Poultry organizing can be a social movement and enable the labor movement to define itself as what we truly are – fighting for all workers in America and basic human rights. A campaign against a big poultry processor is a tremendous opportunity and the issues which we will raise will make it easy for the public to identify which side they are on.
Our campaign will have a media plan but, more importantly, a community-based strategy which will resemble a modern version of the farm worker boycotts. The potential is great, too, for an international campaign around the violations of international labor and human rights standards.
Nationally, through outreach and education in the Latino and African-American communities, Labor will develop new links, and ultimately organizing leads, in those communities. Latinos and African Americans are very receptive to a campaign which advocates for Latino and African-American workers and this will be of special concern to the poultry industry (or any targeted company).
Individual poultry companies, and especially Tyson (because of their industry dominance), are vulnerable to attacks on its image. Almost every consumer routinely purchases processed poultry, yet there is little difference between different brand products. Consumers would only make a slight shift in their shopping patterns to support poultry workers. This is ideal for a campaign attacking a corporate image.
IMPACT ON POLITICS
Just as Central American poultry workers have changed the demographics of the South, so would we have the same effect by organizing in the South. The political impact of substantial organizing in the South cannot be overstated. We will see a shift in the attitudes of Southern politicians and new attitudes towards the issues of working people as labor in the South becomes a force for education and engaging in local, state, and national politics.
As we publicize the organizing struggles in poultry plants, outrageous NLRB decisions will be issued to rip democratic rights away from some of the nation’s most exploited workers. The discussion over organizing and labor rights will be polarized along highly defensible lines. When the Bush Administration seeks to weaken agencies, we will be able to demonstrate the failure of OSHA, Labor Department, EPA, and USDA to enforce basic protections for workers and communities.
WHAT TO DO NEXT
There are many ways to structure these campaigns. Once a commitment is made to organize poultry, resolving the specifics of how to provide resources and draw on many unions can be done. Clearly, it will require help from unions which have successfully organized in the South and among immigrant workers.
The UFCW will support a multi-union organizing approach because it is the best way to organize one of their core industries and directly affects meatpacking. The UFCW has been forced to concentrate on WalMart, which represents a significant attack on the UFCW’s other core industry, retail.
Poultry has not seen competitive organizing, with unions seeking to organize outside of their core industries. Yet, it remains unorganized. Under the plans to restructure the AFL-CIO to ensure that unions focus on their core industries, we can expect no organizing in poultry. Poultry, an industry with large numbers of workers concentrated in the South, is our best chance to organize in the South. Failing to organize poultry means that Labor continues to ignore the South and continues to let Human Rights Watch be the advocate for poultry workers in the US.
One proposal suggests spending $25 million on a campaign against WalMart. Poultry offers an opportunity for modest initial spending with concurrent evaluation of results. For $25 million there would be union density in poultry, new levels of unionization throughout the South, and a new landscape nationally.
The role of the AFL-CIO must be to drive Labor’s agenda forward and take on the significant challenges that individual unions cannot accomplish. Historically, Labor has grown when it is generally viewed that advancing Labor’s agenda also improves the quality of life for all people. Poultry can be the model to transform the class and political climate in the US. The AFL-CIO alone can ensure that this industry is organized, with the unique constellation of factors – an industry in the South where large numbers of workers desire union representation; credible models of non- Board strategies being available; the issues offering a compelling representation of what Labor stands for; a coalition of Labor and consumer interests can be built; a diverse workforce; and a winnable campaign.
Respectfully Submitted,
In Labor’s Trust,
Anne Janks
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