Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock), July 25, 2004 Sunday

Copyright 2004 Little Rock Newspapers, Inc.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock), July 25, 2004 Sunday
SECTION: BUSINESS MATTERS
HEADLINE: COVER STORY Who moves next? When Tyson Foods purchased meatpacker IBP, it inherited entrenched unions and labor tensions.
BY CHRISTOPHER LEONARD ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

BODY:
Union negotiator Jim Brummond has just one question for Tyson Foods executives: "Why do we have to take pay cuts?"
Brummond is trying to seal a labor contract on behalf of 600 unionized employees at the Tyson Foods Inc. plant in Cherokee, Iowa. The negotiations are deadlocked.
Tyson is asking for compensation cuts and the union is seeking pay increases. Brummond says his last meeting with Tyson negotiators, on July 8, was brief, and he just brought one issue to the table.
"We were asking why they had to make these cuts. This plant makes good profits," said Brummond, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union local in Cherokee.
If Brummond's bargaining team didn't ask for more at the meeting, it is because negotiators are hardly optimistic about winning concessions from Tyson.
A strike possibility looms over the negotiations, he says.
"It's on everybody's mind. We're very hopeful that it won't come to that," Brummond said.
Tyson doesn't seem optimistic either.
On July 15, the company filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board claiming that Brummond was "making information requests for the purpose of frustrating the bargaining process and avoiding [the union's] obligation to bargain in good faith."
Cherokee isn't the only town where Tyson and the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union have clashed. In Jefferson, Wis., 470 unionized Tyson employees went on strike in February 2003. The union strike lasted 11 months, but members ultimately accepted a contract largely similar to the one they originally rejected.
The labor disputes can be traced back to Tyson's 2001 purchase of the meatpacking giant IBP Inc., which brought Tyson beef and pork operations and turned the Springdale-based poultry firm into the world's biggest meat company.
The purchase handed Tyson a group of meatpacking plants in Northern states with entrenched unions - and higher wages than the company's Southern operations. When Tyson has tried to cut benefits at some plants, the unions have fought back, saying the company will depress meatpacking wages nationwide. The impact from these disputes could reach far beyond towns like Jefferson and Cherokee. Tyson and the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union say they are trying to narrow the compensation gap between Northern meatpackers and Southern poultry workers.
The union wants to keep meatpacking compensation steady in the North and raise poultry workers' wages in the South through heavier organizing, spokesman Greg Denier says Tyson wants to cut compensation packages at some meatpacking plants to bring them in line with the rest of the company, according to information from spokesman Ed Nicholson. Tyson Foods declined to allow the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette to interview employees on the record for this article. Nicholson agreed to e-mail answers to the newspaper's questions.
Nicholson wrote that Tyson is not pushing down wages at meatpacking plants across the board. He cited three successful contract negotiations at former IBP plants that all included pay increases for employees.
Nicholson says labor negotiations are conducted on a plant-by-plant basis. When the company asks for wage freezes or pay cuts for new hires, it is because some plants pay more than other local companies, he says. "I've ... consistently stated that pay rates are determined by a number of factors not the least of which is prevalent local wage rates," Nicholson wrote.
That argument hasn't won over Brummond's union. Tyson is asking for an end to severance pay at the Cherokee plant, a freeze on wages for five years and decreased pay for new hires, among other compensation cuts "Even though they say it's based on individual plants, they come back with the argument that they want to remain competitive," Brummondsaid. "But we are competitive. This plant has lost money in one quarter of the last 39 years."
UNIONS, OLD AND NEW Labor unions are nothing new for Tyson Foods.
Before purchasing IBP, Tyson had 23 union contracts with the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Tyson's Nicholson wrote.
While unions have existed for decades in Southern poultry plants, they represent a minority of employees and don't have the strength of Northern meatpacking unions, says Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
"I think that food processing [in the South] is an industry where there has been a great deal of union activity, but not a great deal of union success," Bronfenbrenner said.
Among many causes for this is simple geography.
After World War II, unions gained a stronger hold in the north because meatpacking plants were located near urban areas like Chicago, creating concentrated pools of workers, Bronfenbrenner says.
Poultry plants, on the other hand, are often located in rural towns where workers are more dispersed and harder to organize, she says.
With Tyson's purchase of IBP, the corporation straddles two regions with disparate wages.
On average, slaughterhouse workers were paid $8.74 an hour in seven Southern states where Tyson has a majority of its poultry operations, according to an analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data collected in May 2003, the most recent figures available. The states are Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Texas, North Carolina and Tennessee.
By contrast, slaughterhouse workers were paid an average of $10.63 an hour in four Northern states where Tyson now has operations, according to the same data set. Those states are Iowa, Nebraska, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics did not have complete information on Oklahoma, a Southern state, and two Northern states - Illinois and Maryland. These three states' figures were not included in the comparison averages.
The data accounts for poultry and beef plants in the different states.
A multitude of factors play into any state's wage rate, including the cost of living. But unionized workers in all occupations earn higher hourly pay in the states above, according to regional analysis done by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The relative strength of unions also has an impact on slaughterhouse wages, Bronfenbrenner says.
"Wisconsin is a very different part of the country [than the South], but the work and the workers aren't that different," she said.
KEEPING THE FAITH It hasn't all been strikes and labor strife since Tyson bought IBP.
Between July 2002 and June of this year, Tyson ratified labor contracts with the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union at four meatpacking plants formerly owned by IBP in Iowa, Oklahoma and Indiana, Nicholson wrote.
All of the contracts included wage increases of varying sizes, according to summaries provided by Nicholson. Two of the contracts raised pay by 50 cents an hour; the third gradually raised pay by a similar amount.
Denier, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union spokesman, agrees that the ratified contracts signal that Tyson and the union can work together. The union is trying to build a "a good-faith working relationship" with the company, Denier said.
Good faith stretched thin, however, when Tyson and the union tried to negotiate a labor contract for workers in Jefferson, Wis.
Tyson asked for a number of provisions the union rejected, including pay cuts for new employees and increased employee contributions for health insurance.
Nicholson cites the health-insurance costs as a major sticking point in the negotiations.
"Soaring health-care costs are affecting everyone," Nicholson wrote.
Citing figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Nicholson noted that the average blue-collar worker pays $208 a month for health insurance.
Workers at the Jefferson plant pay $117 a month.
After failing to reach a contract agreement, workers in Jefferson went on strike in February 2003.
In the first months of the strike, the community at large showed strong support for the strikers, Jefferson Mayor Collin Stevens says. Grocery stores yanked Tyson products from their shelves. Citizens started a food pantry with donated food for striking workers. Rallies were held to raise money for the cause, says Stevens, a retired teacher who was once president of his local union.
But three months into the effort, things started to sour, Stevens says. Tyson hired replacement workers to keep the plant running. When those replacements and Tyson managers crossed the picket line, striking work- ers shouted profanities that were heard for blocks around, he says.
Tires were punctured with nails when cars drove near the plant.
"Nobody wins in a strike, I think," Stevens said. "There were some malicious things done. A lot of healing has to be done and we're in that phase right now."
In January, union members decided to go back to work even though they didn't win the contract they wanted. If they hadn't returned to work, the replacement workers could have voted to dissolve the union, says Ron Peterson, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union local in Jefferson.
"It's not like it was a mutual agreement - you just got bent to your knees, and you went back," Peterson said.
SOUTHERN ADVANTAGE While many people aren't happy with the outcome in Jefferson, United Food and Commercial Workers International Union spokesman Denier says the union will try to use publicity from the strike to fuel union-organizing efforts in Tyson poultry plants.
"I think a lot of Tyson poultry workers realize how underpaid they are," Denier said. "They look at wage rates at a plant in Wisconsin and say: `Hey, I do a lot of dangerous work, too. How come I'm not getting better wages?"
Nicholson dismisses that prospect.
"Poultry workers don't have counterparts in Wisconsin. We don't have any poultry plants there. The plant in Jefferson manufactures pepperoni," He wrote. "This has not been an issue."
Nicholson says Tyson employees are free to join any union. But the company doesn't support unions because they interfere with employee relations, he says. The same factors that limited union organizing in the South over the decades will still hinder them today, says Steve Striffler, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. He has worked in a Tyson slaughterhouse and is writing a book about the poultry industry.
"From the union's perspective, they're working with fairly limited resources, and it's difficult to funnel your resources into areas where the results won't be great, even if you do win," Striffler said.
Along with the geographic factor limiting unions, there is a demographic factor, Striffler says. An influx of immigrant workers to the plants makes for a difficult work force to organize. Some might not speak English, and those working illegally might be afraid to make waves, he says.
Unions are also weakened in the South by "right-to-work" laws that make it illegal to force new hires to join the union, Striffler says. Arkansas is one of 22 "right-to-work" states.
The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union has a presence at two Tyson plants in Arkansas, at Hope and Dardanelle.
"We're constantly trying to organize Tyson in the state of Arkansas," said Charles Lee, secretary-treasurer of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union local in Little Rock.
The biggest obstacle to further organizing is Arkansas' rural economy, he says.
"For the most part, Tyson is located in areas that may have a lack of industry," Lee said. "A lot of employees are afraid of losing their jobs. Any job is better than no job at all. If we make an attempt to organize, the first thing the company will use is the fear of the plant closing."
Nicholson calls that accusation false. He says that threatening to close a plant would violate federal labor laws enforced by the National Labor Relations Board.
Nicholson writes in an email, "if there were real evidence of this, the unions would most certainly file an unfair labor practice charge" with the National Labor Relations Board. Lee says his local has changed organizing tactics over time.
"We try to organize from within," he said. "The old practice of handbilling plants out front, we don't do that as much." Instead, the union has turned to calling employees at home, Lee says, declining to elaborate on other strategies.
Cornell's Bronfenbrenner says labor tension in states like Wisconsin could actually have a bigger impact on Arkansas than local efforts.
"The only way the union is going to be able to succeed ... is by doing a really national campaign which puts pressure on the company in many ways: their profits, their prestige, their public relations," she said.