Business Week, December 9, 2008, Tuesday

Business Week

December 9, 2008, Tuesday

Business Week

Union vote begins Wednesday at huge NC pork plant
By EMERY P. DALESIO

A 16-year confrontation over union representation at the world's largest pork slaughterhouse in the country's least-unionized state comes down to a two-day vote this week.

About 4,600 workers at the Smithfield Packing Co. slaughterhouse and packing plant in Tar Heel, about 80 miles south of Raleigh, will vote Wednesday and Thursday on whether the United Food and Commercial Workers should negotiate for them with the plant's owners, Smithfield, Va.-based Smithfield Foods Inc.

The plant, which employs about 5,000 people, is the size of a major shopping mall at nearly 1 million square feet and draws its labor force from across rural southeast North Carolina.

The operation turns up to 32,000 live hogs a day into plate-ready sliced pork and larger loin segments. Smithfield plans to expand its capacity from about 8.5 million to 9.5 million hogs per year.

Workers complain that the pace it takes to turn out one porker every two seconds leads to repetitive-motion and other injuries. They list tough working conditions, brusque treatment by managers and a desire for higher pay as the top gripes fueling support for the UFCW.

Dewel Delvalle, 38, who has worked for Smithfield for about 10 months, said his top complaint was what he sees as the disrespect of supervisors. The former South Bronx, N.Y., Teamster relocated to North Carolina about five years ago and said he enjoys his new job, where he earns $12.40 an hour, including a 50-cent raise this fall.

"It's not really about the money. It's about the respect we deserve," said Delvalle, who loads trucks. "A lot of supervisors talk to us any kind of way."

Johnnie Chambers, 45, who drives an hour and a half each way from his home in Marion, S.C., runs machines in the gas chamber where hogs are killed. He has supported a union for about three years, nearly the entire time he's worked at the plant, where he earns $12.15 an hour.

The starting pay there is about $10 an hour and the average about $11.50. Chambers said union organizers told him that starting pay at the company's three unionized plants near its Virginia headquarters is about $13 an hour.

The company says starting pay at the Virginia plants is $9 to $10.

Other workers are undecided about the union's value. Justin Whitted, Taylor Haats and Brendan Moore debated how they would vote as they munched on sandwiches and chips in the parking lot of a gas station Monday. Moore, 20, of Lumberton, said he didn't have enough information to make a decision, but if the union won and delivered improvements in a contract, he might join.

"If they get in, I want to see. If I like the way they work, then I will pay them their dues every week," he said.

Crew leader Barbara Lee said the national economic meltdown makes this no time to introduce a union and create uncertainty about future employment.

"I agree with the company. When you bargain at the table, you really don't know what's going to happen," said Lee, 51, of Fayetteville. "I have a job now. I do know I can lay down and go to bed without worrying if we're going to work today or go on strike. To me, I'm not interested in a union."

Employees voted against joining the union in 1994 and 1997, but a federal appeals court ruled in 2006 that Smithfield unfairly skewed the results. The company has since paid $1.1 million in back wages, plus interest, to 10 workers it fired during past union-organizing elections.

The union and the company declined requests for interviews, citing terms of a confidential legal settlement that set up this week's balloting. The deal shelved Smithfield's federal lawsuit accusing the UFCW of racketeering.

Neither side would describe the conditions for the campaign and vote.

Only about 3 percent of North Carolina workers belonged to a union in 2007, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while the national average was 12.1 percent.

Workers said managers met with employees inside the Smithfield plant Monday and showed a video in which company officials said a union was unnecessary. Employees said company officials declined to take questions afterward. About a dozen union representatives were allowed into the plant's cafeterias on Monday and Tuesday, these workers said.

Because of high worker turnover and the company's tactics in previous elections, the union had long demanded the company recognize it once the UFCW collected signed statements from a majority of workers, the process known as card-check. The company demanded a secret-ballot election. Each side said the other process could be manipulated by its rival.

"They've agreed to some kind of rules of conduct. What we can't know from the outside is what those rules are," said Cornell industrial and labor relations professor Richard Hurd, who has followed the Smithfield labor dispute.

The balloting is being overseen by the National Labor Relations Board. Workers will be released at specified times to vote, or they can cast ballots during off hours when the poll is open, NLRB assistant regional director Howard Neidig said.

Counting should be finished late Thursday, Neidig said.

(This version CORRECTS Corrects day to Monday sted Tuesday in graf 11. Moving on general news and financial services.)