Smithfield Unions Pledge Global Solidarity

Posted to the IUF website 28-Oct-2003

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IUF-affiliated unions from three countries met in Paris on 14-15 October to map out a global strategy for organising and representing Smithfield workers. The agenda included the struggle of the United Food & Commercial Workers Union to win basic rights for the 6000 workers at a large hog processing plant in North Carolina, USA (background). The participants also planned an approach to creating a European Works Council for Smithfield, which becomes eligible with the entry of Poland into the European Union.



The delegates agreed on this statement:

Unions representing Smithfield workers in France, Poland, and North America met in Paris on October 14 and 15 under the auspices of the IUF in the first of what are intended to be regular meetings of unions representing the company�s workers throughout the world.

During the meeting representatives from France and Poland were shocked to hear reports of the brutal conditions and crippling injuries faced by the nearly 6,000 workers at the company�s hog processing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, in the southeastern United States, and of the anti-union campaign Smithfield has waged against them.

They learned that Smithfield Packing has engaged in a willful and unlawful campaign to suppress the rights of workers through intimidation, fear, threats, violence and the misuse of police power in violation of U.S. civil rights and labor laws, as well as in violation of international human rights standards and ILO conventions. The company was found by a U.S. federal administrative law judge in 2000 to have committed substantial and systematic violations of the U.S. National Labor Relations Act in its 1994 and 1997 campaigns to prevent workers from freely exercising their right to vote for union representation during their attempt to organize with the United Food and Commercial Workers. Although a new election has been ordered to be held off company premises and the company has been ordered to provide the UFCW reasonable access to workers inside the Tar Heel plant and to allow workers to communicate freely about union representation without company interference, Smithfield has refused to implement the order and is pursuing a course of appeal and delay in an effort to deny justice and to continue the suppression of workers rights. Smithfield�s actions at the Tar Heel plant, moreover, stand in direct contrast to the company�s respect for unions at its many organized plants.

The unions representing Smithfield workers deplore these actions and call on the company to allow the workers in North Carolina to exercise their basic human rights and their rights under U.S. law. We will inform our affiliates (members) of the history of the company�s actions towards its workers in North Carolina, will monitor carefully the company�s behavior in the future, and will take whatever actions we feel are necessary if the company continues to pursue this course of behavior.


Nacisnij tutaj by odczytac tekst oswiadczenia po polsku.

Click here to read this statement in Polish.

More information on the struggle to win worker rights at Smithfield can be found on the
UFCW web-site.