Union Campaign to Organize Smithfield Workers at World's Largest Slaughterhouse

Interview with Gene Bruskin, organizer with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

The recent raid by U.S. immigration enforcement agents at six meat packing plants around the country points to the importance of Latino immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, in what has become a largely non-union workforce. A century ago, Jewish, Polish and other European immigrants worked in the packing plants of the Midwest, along with African Americans who had recently emigrated from the South seeking better opportunities. They helped unionize the thousands of workers in those plants. But times have changed, and much of the workforce is non-union once again.

The United Food and Commercial Workers, or UFCW, is now organizing the mostly African American and Latino immigrant workforce at the largest hog slaughterhouse in the world, run by Smithfield Farms in Tarheel, N.C. The union condemns what it describes as the poverty wages, brutal conditions, and crippling injuries which it says plagues the 5,500 workers who are employed at the plant.

Between The Lines' Melinda Tuhus spoke with Gene Bruskin, director of the UFCW organizing campaign, who discusses the intense union drive now going on at the Smithfield plant and provides an overview of labor history in this sector of the workforce.

For more information on the Smithfield campaign call the UFCW at (202) 223-3311 or visit the union's website at www.smithfieldjustice.com

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