The new collective bargaining agreement provides for, among many other significant gains, a substantial base wage increase of $1.50 over the term of the agreement, significant improvements in health care including 100 percent coverage for transplants and an increased allowance for hearing aids, improved retirement security including a 401(k) match increase from $300 to $500 and a pension increase to $27.

“The strong contract that we secured with Hormel is a pretty big deal,” said Dick Schuster, who has worked at the company’s Fremont, Neb. facility for the past 38 years. “At a time when pensions are under attack nationwide, we were able to bargain for significant improvements to our retirement security. Our contract is a testament to why sticking together and speaking with one voice benefits all workers.”

“Our communities need good jobs with pay and benefits that can support a family,” said Vincent Perry, a four-year veteran at the Hormel plant in Algona, Iowa. “Good union contracts like ours help build more stable and secure communities.”

Nationwide, the UFCW represents 8,000 Hormel workers. The current agreement covers about 4,000 workers at the company’s facilities in Austin, Minn.; Algona, Iowa; Fremont, Neb.; Beloit, Wis.; and Atlanta, Ga.

A handful of meatpacking corporations dominate the beef and pork industries.  Meatpacking companies have used the changing landscape to own as much livestock as possible.  As a result, farmers have lost business.  In the pork industry, when meatpackers own the hogs from birth to slaughter they can move livestock and production to wherever they can find the cheapest land and labor.

Workers, communities and the environment have paid the price for these disruptions.  Giant hog feedlots with lagoons of hog waste sprung up overnight and overwhelmed the environment and water tables in parts of the country where hog production didn’t exist thirty years ago. Giant processing plants were built near the feedlots to employ a workforce that is beholden to the industry.   Workers at processing plants located in places like Iowa and South Dakota lost their jobs when plants were shuttered and never reopened.

Left unchecked and unregulated, every meatpacking producer will attempt to operate the same way – moving livestock and production to maximize profits, no matter how many jobs and local economies are destroyed in the process.  UFCW’s experience is that meatpacking corporations which own livestock push down wage and benefits levels for all workers in the industry.

U.S. Senators are considering a provision, Section 10207. Prohibition on Packers Owning, Feeding, or Controlling Livestock as part of the 2007 Farm Bill.  This provision would preserve the open market approach to meat production and protect workers and communities from further disruption and exploitation at the hands of giant meatpacking companies.  The UFCW joins more than 200 organizations, including the National Farmers’ Union, in supporting the ban on packer ownership of livestock.

In a full-page ad in today’s issue of Roll Call, UFCW members pointed out that when meatpacking companies own all levels of production, the stability of processing jobs are at risk.

The UFCW represents more than 250,000 workers in the meat packing and food processing industries, including workers at Hormel, Tyson, Cargill and Smithfield Foods.

UFCW shop stewards play a big role in cultivating unity and driving contract negotiations that exhibit strength, determination, and solidarity “We’re much more powerful when we have thousands of us together,” says Michael Rasmusson a shop steward at the Hormel plant represented by Local 6 in Algona, Iowa. As fellow Hormel steward, Mark Coufal, of Local 22 in Fremont, Nebraska notes, “The company negotiates from a position of power, and we need to do the same thing. The more members we have backing us, the better chance we have in getting a good contract.”
There’s a lot at stake: wages, health benefits, retiree health benefits, and health and safety issues. Affordable health insurance, in particular, is a big concern. “When people have families, it’s important to have insurance at an affordable rate. If people are paying for it out of their pockets, it makes it hard to put bread on the table, shoes on their kids’ feet, and pay college tuitions,” says Richard Chinander, chief steward from Local 9.
Also on the minds of many of the Hormel stewards is the crucial issue of the company’s determination to see that more and more of its plants arenon-union.
“By Hormel operating union plants as well as non-union plants, they can take the work out of a union plant and move it to a non-union plant….The best thing for our workers would be to unionize all Hormel plants,” says shopsteward Steve Bormann of Local 6.

The chain-wide bargaining that will begin in August provides Bormann and the 4,000 other UFCW Hormel workers the opportunity to work together to win a strong new contract that will improve their wages and benefits—and will send a powerful signal to workers at non-union plants. “It will show new employees coming in that unions do work–and not just for wages, but for the future of America and its families,” says Local 22 member and steward Bill Anderson of the Hormel plant in Fremont, Nebraska.
With so much on the line, workers at the five plants already have started talking to co-workers, handing out informational leaflets, and makingplans for the August bargaining. “We all have a lot in common. We all want a fair wage, health care, and to be treated right. That’s why we need to communicate with each other and stand together on these issues,” says steward Ryan Dodds of Local 6. “It’s really important that we start talking and start working together.”
The need for unity is something stewards at all of the five plants agree is key. Says steward Armando Olvera of Local 9: “Unity creates power. We’re much stronger when we’re united.”

So it should not come as a shock that when accidents happen, it really takes the union’s action to force the company to take responsibility and comply with safety standards.

Being on the front line, the steward plays an essential role in workplace safety by being involved in accident investigations. It is also vital for shop stewards to be on their union’s safety and health committee, so that co-workers know who to turn to in case of an
accident and to make sure the company puts in place safety measures to prevent workplace injuries.
Dolores Sandoval is a chief steward at UFCW Local 1546 and a member of her union’s safety committee. She recently investigated an accident involving a machine guard at her Hormel
Foods plant in Rochelle, Ill. Sandoval’s co-worker, who worked as a machine operator, slipped on a piece of bacon and her hand slid into the cutter. Had themachine guard been working correctly, the machine would have stopped automatically. But it didn’t stop. The outdated
guard did not completely guard the blade, which allowed the worker’s
hand to slide through. The cutter pounded through the worker’s thumb, cutting
it almost completely. The woman suffered nearly 30 minutes with her hand
lodged in the machine until maintenance could get her out.
While the worker was flown to Madison, Wis., to have her thumb operated on, the union immediately took action in response to the accident: The safety committee inspected the machine, Sandoval drove over three and a half hours to interview her co-worker recovering in the hospital, and Sandoval also interviewed workers on the line at the time of the accident and maintenance workers.
“When an accident happens, you must respond immediately by talking to the workers involved,” Sandoval said. “You get first-hand information of the accident, not management’s spin.”
Sandoval says that besides investigating the accident, stewards must make sure to go over the worker’s statement with them to prepare for meeting with management. That includes choosing and using the right words to say when describing the incident to management.
Management may try to twist statements around to blame the worker for getting hurt if the worker is not careful of how to word his or her explanation.
However, Sandoval’s years of experience as a steward and safety committee member paid off with a solid accident investigation. The union’s safety committee determined the company needed to put different guards on the machine. The company shut down the work area, and within three days of the accident, rebuilt the machine guards to meet safety standards.
Sandoval knows that if it weren’t for the union, management would place safety solely on the responsibility of the workers.
“The company still feels it was her fault, but they had to report it as an accident because of the union’s investigation,” Sandoval said. “It’s the union— not the company—that checks to make sure all the guards are now working properly and that the company supplies workers with necessary safety equipment.”

The accident happened in October, but doctors are still not sure the worker’s thumb will heal. The woman, who still has no feeling in her thumb, has been moved to light duty since returning to work.

The new Hormel contract increases the base wage to $14/hour with raises over the term of the agreement.   Workers also secured improvements for their pension, vacation and premium pay for night shifts while maintaining quality health care coverage for workers and their families.

The federal mediation office facilitated the negotiations and aided both parties to reach this agreement.

The new contract covers members of UFCW Local Unions 6, 9, 22, 1996 and 73A.  The workers produce such well known products as SPAM luncheon meat and Dinty Moore beef stew.

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