Support P-9 strike
Hormel workers face the National Guard.
Meatpackers at the George Hormel Company plant in Austin, Minnesota have been on strike since August 17, 1985. Their struggle against the most profitable U.S. pork processor, and against the policies of their union’s national leadership, continues in spite of a number of serious setbacks.
Hormel has won concessions from its Austin workers since 1978 by playing on workers’ fears of plant closures and increasing international competition in a declining market. In spite of Hormel’s rising profits, local unions at Hormel plants signed new concessionary agreements in 1984. But Local P-9 in Austin, with a newly-elected, militant leadership, refused. In retaliation, the company cut wages and benefits of the Austin workers by 23% – a level well below the other Hormel plants.
The union tried to win back the workers’ full pay through arbitration and negotiation, but the government ruled against the union. The company refused to restore full wages and insisted on maintaining unsafe working conditions, weakening grievance procedures, and reducing seniority rights. Leaders of the UFCW urged the local to accept the company’s demands anyway, telling workers they were fighting a lost cause. But the 1,500 workers voted overwhelmingly to strike Hormel and to launch an appeal to the rank and file of the labor movement to help them put an end to concessions.
Support
Local P-9 members have distributed literature to half a million homes across the Midwest. Mass mailings to 50,000 union locals all over the country have won substantial support. Teams of P-9 members have spread news of their struggle to workers in several states by talking with thousands of union members at plant gates and union meetings. At other locals representing Hormel workers, support committees have been established which have raised funds and contributed food and clothing to strikers and their communities.
In December, negotiations went to federal mediation. As workers prepared to vote on the proposal, Hormel reported record profits for 1985 of $38 million (a 30% increase over 1984), and gave its chairman a salary increase from $339,000 to $570,000.
The company responded by attempting to reopen the plant with scab labor, but union members blocked access to the plant. The National Guard was called to keep the plant open. Courts issued injunctions against picketing at plant entrances. Dozens of meatpackers were arrested.
Mass rallies
With the power of the state mobilized against them, Local P-9 called on workers at other Hormel plants to strike. Hundreds of Hormel workers honored P-9’s roving picket lines in Iowa, Nebraska and Texas in spite of intense company, union, and legal pressure. Hormel fired more than 500 of these workers. Local 431 in Ottumwa, Iowa, has joined with P-9 in organizing mass rallies and a boycott of Hormel products.
Workers at other meatpacking companies have also begun to fight back. New officers were elected in Local 304 at the Morrell Company’s Sioux Falls, S.D. plant after the old leaders agreed to a $2.40-an-hour cut in wages. The new officers led Morrell’s 2,500 workers in an eleven-week strike at the end of 1985 in an attempt to regain lost wages. When they succeeded in winning back only $1.00 an hour, the workers voted the new leaders out of office and replaced them with an even more militant slate of officers. Meatpackers in Georgia, Tennessee, and Michigan have also waged strikes in the past few months to resist pay cuts.
Militancy
The new militancy of P-9 and these other locals is putting increasing pressure on the national officers of UFCW. But UFCW President William Wynn and AFL–CIO President Lane Kirkland, instead of placing the full power of labor behind the Hormel strikers, have increased their public denunciations of Local P-9. Instead of calling all Hormel workers out on strike, or making any serious attempt to win a strike they originally sanctioned, the UFCW in March ordered P-9 to call off its strike, and has now placed Local P-9 in trusteeship.
Fightback
The incorrect policies of the UFCW have led activists in the labor movement to begin organizing themselves for a fightback. A group calling itself the National Rank and File Against Concessions was formed in December to “provide direct, immediate aid to those unions who have chosen to fight concessions.” The group has issued national appeals for support of the Hormel strike and boycott.
The Austin workers understood from the start that they could not win their struggle alone. Their appeals to community groups, farmers’ organizations and the broader labor movement have been very successful in gaining support and empathy.
But the major emphasis should have been on the other Hormel plants, the 30,000 meatpacking workers in the UFCW, and in organizing unorganized meatpackers. Conducting boycotts and community awareness campaigns is no substitute for industrial action.
Hormel’s Austin plant was the site of the first sit-down strike in the movement that led to the formation of the CIO. Current calls to shut down the plant seek to continue labor’s militant traditions. To win the strike now, a strategy of industrial action must be pursued. A Midwest-wide committee of meatpacking plant shop stewards should be organized to call for an all-out halt of all Hormel production. If Hormel holds out, calling for strikes and organizing drives at all packing plants in the Midwest must become the priority, followed by a call for a half-day strike of all union workers in Minnesota and Iowa.
Nationalization
The current fightback against concessions in the meatpacking industry makes it clear that meatpackers are unwilling to accept further lowering of their living standards. Developing a fighting national leadership with a strategy of industrial action would start to turn around their declining position. But the basic problem of overcapacity in the meatpacking industry will eventually have to be confronted. Workers cannot continue to win higher wages if high profit and enormous salaries and bonuses for executives are maintained. An industry shakeout is predicted, with mergers, bankruptcies, plant closures, and layoffs, resulting in renewed pressure on wages and conditions. A new recession would add to these pressures. In seeking a solution to the resulting impasse, activists in the labor movement will begin to call for nationalization of companies like Hormel that say they can’t pay decent wages.