Wanda Blue
UFCW Activist 

Wanda Blue has worked nights at Smithfield Packing Company, in Tar Heel, N.C., for 12 years.  In that time, she has been a core leader in the struggle with the world’s largest pork processor.  She has campaigned, marched, spoken to crowds and recruited others in efforts to unionize the plant. 

And Blue believes Smithfield is starting to take notice. 

“We need to be together as one.  This is really inspiring.  I love it,” she said after a rally in February. 

She thinks that in the past Smithfield executives have not taken the workers’ previous attempts to organize seriously.

Workers at the Tar Heel plant have been trying to unionize for more than a decade, and Smithfield has resisted all the way.  Secret ballot votes were defeated in 1994 and 1997.  In May 2007, Smithfield was ordered by the National Labor Relations Board to stop anti-union tactics and allow its 5,000 workers to hold a fair vote to join the union.

Blue rallied with co-workers and activists at the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Virginia last August.

“This is not a joke.  This is real,” Blue said.  “We are ready for a union in there.  We are getting somewhere.  I think they know we mean business.”

In her time working in the livestock area at the Tar Heel plant, the 53-year old Blue tells of times when workers had to beg for a water break at night, or were threatened they would be disciplined for leaving work after an injury. 

She has traveled with activists to Illinois, Georgia and Virginia, and is always present at community events in North Carolina – a real commitment for a night-shift worker.  Blue knows there is strength in numbers. She will continue to spread the union-strong message until it reaches everyone in the plant.

“I think if it takes a walkout to make them understand we mean business, then we need to do it, but not 10, 20 or 30 people.  We need the whole plant to walk out,” she said.  “If they really want this union, they will walk.”