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	The Case Against Smithfield: Human and Civil Rights Violations in Tar Heel, North Carolina

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The Case Against Smithfield
Human and Civil Rights Violations in Tar Heel, North Carolina

CONTENTS:

A History of the Struggle in Tar Heel
An Unsafe Workplace: Health and Safety Problems in the Plant
The Smithfield Clinic And Workers’ Compensation
Modern Day Pinkertons: the Smithfield Company Police
Smithfield Violates Human Rights: A History of Ignoring the Freedom of Association
Racism, Discrimination and Abuse of Immigrant Workers at Smithfield
Attacks On Immigrant Workers
Smithfield Worker's Tell Their Stories

CLICK HERE to get involved with the Justice at Smithfield Campaign.

A History of the Struggle in Tar Heel

When Smithfield Foods opened its million square foot facility in Tar Heel, N.C., in 1992, it became the largest pork processing plant in the world. Today the plant employs over 5,000 workers and slaughters up to 34,000 hogs a day. Wages currently start at $8.10 per hour. Workers are not eligible for health insurance for at least 6 months, and then only at a high cost. The work is dangerous and fast. Workers face intimidation from both management and the company's private police force when they attempt to band together to defend their rights on the job.

While unionized in most locations outside of North Carolina, in this southern state Smithfield has fought vigorously to prevent its employees from forming a union. Elections to unionize the plant were held in 1994 and in 1997; although the elections were initially lost, the results were overturned in a landmark decision by a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) judge, who charged Smithfield with multiple violations of federal labor law, violations that destroyed the conditions for a free and fair election.

In December 2004, the NLRB upheld the order for a new union election at the plant and the findings that the company has engaged in unfair labor practices against employees. But Smithfield continues to deny justice as it drags out the appeals process through the courts.

In January 2005, the internationally recognized Human Rights Watch issued a report that documents many of Smithfield's human rights abuses. This report, titled "Blood Sweat, and Fear: Workers Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants," highlights the community's outrage. The report documents how Smithfield workers are being threatened and even fired for defending their civil rights on the job.

While Smithfield's anti-worker practices have not changed, the face of the workforce has. Eight years ago, the plant was majority African-American. Current estimates place the workforce at about 55% Latino, while African-American workers now make up 30-35%; the remainder is split fairly evenly between White and Native American workers.

Despite fear for their safety and jobs, workers are standing up with courage and dignity to demand their civil rights. In November 2003, the majority of sanitation workers walked out of the plant in the middle of the night protesting wages and working conditions. In March 2005, another group of workers walked off three understaffed production lines in the plant and stood together in solidarity to demand that management fully staff the lines. Meanwhile, all the employees at the Smithfield Tar Heel plant are engaging in a daily struggle to gain a voice at work.

An Unsafe Workplace: Health and Safety Problems in the Plant
Meatpacking is dangerous work by nature, but many Smithfield workers have expressed concerns that the company is not doing enough to prevent injuries—that it values production more than safety.1   The most glaring safety issues at Smithfield include repetitive motion injuries, line speed, inadequate training, and the systematic denial of workers' compensation when people are injured.

Many injuries at this Smithfield plant result from repetitive motion strain; workers are required to repeat the same movement thousands of times a day. Injuries of this nature are frequently ignored because they are not disfiguring or obvious. However, workers who suffer from repetitive motion strain are often permanently disabled. Many are never able to work again.

Despite available technology, Smithfield makes little or no effort to tailor the work environment to the worker's size and requirements.   As the Raleigh News and Observer reported in January 2005, "Workers tall and short are forced to work at identical work stations, some reaching to cut the meat hanging on hooks and others stooping. They are packed so close that they often cut each other, and they repeat the same motion hundreds of times an hour."2

Safety training in general has been called inadequate by many employees. Workers described the lack of training in detail to Human Rights Watch; some reported, "they showed us a video and then told us to do what the person next to us is doing."3  One sad result of the lack of training was the tragic death of a young African-American worker in November 2003; OSHA concluded that both the "lack of adequate training" and "a lack of accountability" contributed to this preventable fatality.4

OSHA has been called to the plant on a number of occasions, including after an explosion in 1998 that left several workers injured and a rash of fires in 2003 and 2004, which resulted in a citation for a "serious OSHA violation" for a blocked exit. Recent newspaper investigations revealed that the North Carolina State OSHA is simply incapable of inspecting all workplaces, and, therefore, cannot ensure workers' safety. In January 2005, the Raleigh News and Observer reported that the state Department of Labor has only 110 inspectors to handle 230,000 workplaces.5

Smithfield itself has a financial interest in underreporting injuries. Not only does the company avoid paying OSHA fines if injuries are not reported, but fewer injuries lower the cost of workers' compensation insurance. In fact, in its report, Human Rights Watch cited studies that revealed serious underreporting of injuries of all kinds.6

The number one complaint of workers in this plant is the speed of production. The line speed puts workers at ongoing risk. Human Rights Watch stresses the problems that result from dangerous line speed. At the Tar Heel plant, workers may be required to kill and disassemble up to 2000 hogs per hour. Lines are spaced closely together, and workers are frequently injured by knives and other machinery.

The Smithfield Clinic And Workers’ Compensation
Smithfield uses a variety of tactics to systematically avoid paying workers their due compensation for injuries. Some workers have reported that the company discourages employees from reporting injuries, frequently claims injuries happened away from the job, and threatens termination if workers file compensation claims. On top of this, the company often forces injured workers to depend on either their personal health insurance, if they have any, or short-term disability—tactics designed to deny them their legal right to file workers compensation claims.7 However, personal insurance and short-term disability do not cover 100% of medical costs and lost wages in the case of an injury, so workers are ultimately shortchanged.

Smithfield operates both an in-house plant clinic and a primary care facility on site. These clinics must approve time off and compensation claims, and are usually the first place workers go when they are injured. However, workers are suspicious about the level of confidentiality provided by the company clinics. Furthermore, numerous employees have reported that the medical personnel at the clinics have given injured workers cursory exams and sent them back to work. Human Rights Watch notes, "Workers at Smithfield . . . often described [the company clinic] as a disciplinary arm of management, denying claims and benefits and often failing to report injuries."8

Terry Kilbride, an attorney representing many Smithfield workers, points out that "management always sends people to the clinic so they don't see a real doctor. They simply tell the employee that there is nothing wrong, and keep stringing things along until the situation becomes intolerable. By making the process take so long, cases get more and more difficult to prove."9

Modern Day Pinkertons: the Smithfield Company Police

Special Police car specific to Smithfield Packing
Smithfield uses its own police force, with the power to arrest and detain workers, to deny basic civil rights to workers at its Tar Heel plant.

Smithfield Foods in Tar Heel is the only meatpacking plant in the United States to have its own private police force. Under a somewhat obscure North Carolina state law, Smithfield has created a company police force that patrols the plant, carries concealed weapons on and off duty, and has the power to arrest workers and detain them in an on-site jail cell.

Since its founding in 2000, Smithfield Company Police have arrested at least 90 workers and charged them with a variety of crimes. Ultimately, many of the charges have been dropped by the Bladen County Court—although arrested employees are forced to hire attorneys and pay court costs.10

The Chief of Smithfield Police is Danny Priest—previously the head of security—who was found guilty of violations of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 for arresting and beating union activists after the 1997 election at Smithfield. Other company cops were also involved in the violence following the 1997 election, and some are still Bladen County Sheriff Deputies.

One of these company cops was recently arrested and charged with using a Smithfield-issued handgun while off-duty to shoot a 20-year old man. The victim of this shooting has sued Smithfield, alleging that the company was negligent in issuing a handgun to this cop, who had shot and killed a crime suspect a few years prior to this incident while working as a public police officer. Smithfield "should have known of the aggressive and dangerous propensity" of this cop, and did not maintain proper control over the guns issued to these cops.11

Due to the presence of the company cops in the plant, employees work under the constant threat of intimidation. In November 2003, a majority of the employees of Smithfield's sanitation subcontractor QSI, Inc., protested their working conditions by walking off the job. An administrative law judge for the National Labor Relations Board found that Smithfield Company Police and QSI managers physically assaulted workers and caused one worker to be falsely arrested in retaliation for their activity.

In another instance, in January 2004, two union activists were arrested at work, handcuffed and lead through the plant in view of all their coworkers. They were held in the on-site Smithfield jail for seven hours and interrogated, and they were not allowed to make any phone calls, despite repeated requests. The pair was eventually charged with felony arson, but the charges were dropped for lack of evidence after a nine-month court fight supported by the union.

In its report issued in January 2005, Human Rights Watch found that the actions of the

Group of Smithfield Packing workers
The NLRB has ordered that fired Smithfield cleaning contractor QSI's employees be reinstated with full back pay after finding that both companies were guilty of violating the employees' rights. The companies have yet to reinstate the workers and are appealing the ruling.

Smithfield Company Police represent the "conflict of interest that can arise when company employees can exercise state police powers while responding to the employer's directives and interests." HRW continues by pointing out that these problems can be worse if the police have not been properly trained or supervised in the technicalities of labor law and the rights of workers to organize.12

An examination of the company's actions since the 1997 election shows that those were not isolated events. There appears to be a developing pattern of using violence and intimidation to interfere with workers' concerted attempts to exercise their civil rights.

Smithfield Violates Human Rights: A History of Ignoring the Freedom of Association
The right to form trade unions has been recognized as a Human Right under the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet it has been repeatedly ignored in North Carolina by Smithfield Packing. From the first attempt to organize in 1993 through today, Smithfield has met workers' attempts to organize with tactics that include racism, violence and intimidation.

Following the union elections in 1994 and 1997 Smithfield was found guilty of multiple violations of federal labor law. These include:

Threatening to close the plant
Spying on union supporters
Threatening cuts in wages and benefits if the union came in
Harassing and intimidating union supporters
Disciplining and firing union supporters
The constant threat of retaliation

Another favorite tactic is the repeated use of violence and threats. Following the vote count in the 1997 election, two union supporters were dragged out of the plant, beaten up, insulted with racial slurs, handcuffed and arrested. The two successfully sued Smithfield and Chief of Security (now Chief of Company Police) Danny Priest under the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, a federal civil rights law. A jury awarded the plaintiffs $755,000 in damages, although the award was overturned later on a technicality.

Smithfield's hostile labor policies in Tar Heel, North Carolina, continue today and are replicated by its subcontractors. In 2005, QSI, a sanitation subcontractor at the plant, along with Smithfield Packing, was found guilty of:

Physically assaulting employees
Falsely arresting employees
Firing workers for engaging in protected activity
Threatening employees with arrest by federal immigration authorities
Threatening employees with bodily harm

Clearly Smithfield is continuing its policy of using violence and intimidation as a means of preventing its workers in North Carolina from standing up for their rights on the job.

Racism, Discrimination and Abuse of Immigrant Workers at Smithfield
The area around Tar Heel is one of the most ethnically diverse rural areas in the

Go Home Slur
Anti-union tactics at Smithfield have included racial harrasment.

United States with American Indians, Whites, African-Americans, and Latinos. Smithfield's workforce reflects this diversity, but a closer look at the breakdown of job distribution shows racial divides. When New York Times reporter Charlie LeDuff got a job at Smithfield, he found "Whites, blacks, American Indians, and Mexicans, they all have their separate stations. The few whites on the payroll tend to be mechanics or supervisors. As for the Indians, a handful are supervisors; others tend to get menial jobs like warehouse work. With few exceptions, that leaves the blacks and the Mexicans with the dirty jobs at the factory."13

Smithfield exploited racial divides as a tactic in its anti-worker campaign preceding the 1997 election. The company held separate meetings for Black and Latino workers, turning them against each other. In front of an NLRB administrative law judge, Tara Davis, a former worker, testified the bosses "put the Mexicans in one room and the Blacks in another, and told the Mexicans not to vote or they'd be sent back." Sherri Buffkin, a former supervisor for Smithfield, participated in this segregation. She told black workers, "We would bring in Hispanics to replace them if they voted for the union." The only African-American supervisor at the time of the election, James Blount, said, "Some of them [Latinos] were afraid that if they did not vote with the company, the company would send them back to Mexico."14

Dividing the workers racially has continued since the election. Workers told Human Rights Watch, "In March [2003] the company called all the Latino workers into a meeting."15 A current Smithfield employee confirms, "Hispanics went into one meeting and everyone else was in the hallway."16

The pattern of racism culminated around the time of the last election. Shortly before the August 1997 election, workers arrived at Smithfield and saw "Nigger go home" painted on the side of the union trailer.17 Tara Davis testified, "We were pushed on, spit on, maced on, told to get the fuck out of here, niggers go home, and this and that." Another worker, Rayshawn Ward recalls, "I was beat up and punched in the back of the head and spit upon and called a nigger."18 Jeffrey Green a UFCW representative recounts, "company people were pushing us, shoving us, spitting on us, kicking us, calling us niggers . . ."19

Attacks On Immigrant Workers
Since the 1997 election, the number of Latino immigrant workers has drastically increased relative to the number of African Americans. Former supervisor Sherri Buffkin testified to the U.S. Senate that Smithfield liked immigrant workers because they were "easy targets of manipulation." Smithfield has continued to threaten Latino workers about immigration when they stand up for their rights. When the employees of Smithfield's sanitation subcontractor walked off the job in November 2003, the workers were threatened with arrest by immigration, according to the 2005 ruling of an administrative law judge.

Latino workers also face challenges when they are injured. Although all workers are systematically denied compensation for their injuries, immigrant workers are hardest hit. Many Latino immigrant workers have reported that they have been threatened with termination for filing workers compensation claims, have been told that their injuries were not work related and have been consistently not informed of their rights when injured.

Smithfield Worker's Tell Their Stories
"If you are hurt or injured, DO NOT REPORT IT, if you want to keep your job." - Martha Arroyo on the instructions she received during orientation (Interview by Manuel Hernandez with Martha Arrroyo 3/9/2005)

"Your hand is no longer any good; you're no longer any good," - Told to Martha Arroyo after she was injured. (Interview by Manuel Hernandez with Martha Arrroyo 3/9/2005)

"The line is so fast there is no time to sharpen the knife. The knife gets dull and you have to cut harder. That's when it really starts to hurt, and that's when you cut yourself." (Blood, Sweat, and Fear, Workers' Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants," Human Rights Watch; New York, New York, 2004.)

"The supervisors were really hard on the workers, especially the immigrants who don't speak English. My supervisor was making us work faster and faster, get out the product. I was rushing and I reached for a loin and I got my hand caught in the saw. The doctors did surgery and they put pins in my finger and today, this finger is not straight and I have a hard time with this hand." - Jose Sauceda’s testimony to U.S. House subcommittee on Workforce Protections of the House Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. October 2, 2003

"The work we do here in the U.S. is really hard and the companies take advantage of us as immigrants who don't speak English and who don't know our rights. They intimidate us to keep us in line and fire us when they want to." - Jose Sauceda’s testimony to U.S. House subcommittee on Workforce Protections of the House Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. October 2, 2003

"It pays well but it kills you." - Maria Carmona's assessment of working at Smithfield to the News and Observer

"I was beat up and punched in the back of the head and spit upon and called a nigger." -Rayshawn Ward on events following 1997 union election

CLICK HERE to get involved with the Justice at Smithfield Campaign.

Notes:
1. Interviews with Smithfield workers, conducted in North Carolina between January 2003 and March 2005.
2. Collins, Kristin. "Meat Plant in Bladen Criticized." Raleigh News and Observer, January 26, 2005.
3. "Blood, Sweat, and Fear, Workers' Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants," Human Rights Watch; New York, New York, 2004. p. 44
4. North Carolina. Department of Labor. Division of Occupational Safety and Health. Citation and Notification of Penalty, Inspection Number 307215731, Raleigh, NC. March 10, 2004.
5. Collins, Kristin. "Report Puzzles Labor Department." Raleigh News and Observer, January 27, 2005.
6. "Blood, Sweat, and Fear, Workers' Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants," Human Rights Watch; New York, New York, 2004. p. 52.
7. Ibid, p. 69
8. Ibid, p. 64
9. Ibid, p. 65
10. A review of Bladen County Court records indicates that over 30 of the cases brought to the court by Smithfield have been dismissed.
11. Case number 05-CVS-587, Robeson County North Carolina, Amended Complaint, filed March 28, 2005.
12. "Blood, Sweat, and Fear, Workers' Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants," Human Rights Watch; New York, New York, 2004, p. 99
13. LeDuff, Charlie. "At a Slaughterhouse, Some Things Never Die: Who Kills, Who Cuts, Who Bosses Can Depend on Race," The New York Times, June 16, 2000.
14. Witness: Justice@Smithfield, A Worker-Community Voice Video Production, 2003
15. "Blood, Sweat, and Fear, Workers' Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants," Human Rights Watch; New York, New York, 2004. p. 92
16. Interview of anonymous Smithfield worker by Kevin Blair, March 21, 2005
17. United States. National Labor Relations Board. Smithfield v. UFCW Local 204, John H. West, Administrative Law Judge. Decision Number JD-158-00, December 15, 2000. Page 380.
18. Witness: Justice@Smithfield, A Worker-Community Voice Video Production, 2003
19. United States. National Labor Relations Board. Smithfield v. UFCW Local 204, John H. West, Administrative Law Judge. Decision Number JD-158-00, December 15, 2000. Page 190.

The struggle of Smithfield workers in Tar Heel, N.C., is a struggle for fundamental civil rights. The more than 5,000 workers at the plant face a company engaged in the systematic, often violent, suppression of their democratic rights. Smithfield police routinely intimidate workers who attempt to stand together and speak out for better working conditions and economic security. The suppression of democratic rights in Tar Heel threatens all our civil rights.

CLICK HERE to get involved with the Justice at Smithfield Campaign.