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Falling carcasses and untreated injuries: Meatpackers at Dakota Premium Foods were driven to form a union. But not even that got the company's attention.

ILLUSTRATION BY ALEX OSTROY

Shortly after 6:00 a.m. on June 1, 2000, the meatpacking line at Dakota Premium Foods in South St. Paul ground to a halt. The cattle carcasses that are slaughtered and dismembered at a rate of almost 800 a day hung motionless from their hooks. The only carnage occurring was economic: In the slaughterhouse business, time is money.

The work stoppage had been coming for weeks, as the mostly Hispanic personnel at the company began to grumble about the increasing speed of production. Those laboring on the line figured that the number of cows slaughtered per hour had risen from 67 to 111. The workday usually stretched from 6:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. Suddenly employees were hanging up their knives and removing their bloodied smocks by 1:30 p.m., and yet the same number of cattle had been processed.

When dozens of men and women wield sharp blades in close quarters, amid the deafening clamor of machinery, injuries often result. In fact, meatpacking is the most dangerous work in America; that's according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which found that a quarter of the 1.5 million meatpacking employees in the U.S. suffered job-related illnesses or injuries in 1999. Knife lacerations, chemical burns, and repetitive-motion injuries are routine. Death, sometimes by decapitation, is an everyday threat. When the line speeds up, the risk of injury increases.

On the morning of June 1, workers sensed the rate of production had increased once again. Many of them complained to supervisors on the factory floor. The response, according to a three-year veteran on the line: If you can't keep up with the work then there's the door. When the complaints persisted, floor supervisors summoned plant manager Steve Cortinas. According to the same employee, Cortinas upped the ante. "He was furious. He was threatening everybody that he was going to fire everybody and get new people." So, exasperated and fearing for their safety, the 200 slaughterhouse employees refused to work. "That day we were fed up with the whole thing."

¡Sí se puede! William Pearson (left) and Rafael Espinosa, of United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 789 PHOTO BY CRAIG LASSIG

The impromptu strike dragged on throughout the morning, as Cortinas attempted to assuage the disgruntled workers. Shortly after noon, as chaos continued to rule the killing-house floor, one of the laborers walked a quarter-mile up the road to the headquarters of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) Local 789. The UFCW also represents the rank and file at the Long Prairie Packing Company north of the Twin Cities, which is owned by Rosen's Diversified--the same company that owns Dakota Premium.

The local dispatched union representatives Howard Kern and Tom Oswald to the scene. "We went to the gate and immediately were swarmed by people," Oswald recalls. As plant supervisors looked on, the two organizers were peppered with questions, some delivered in English, most spoken in Spanish: How could Local 789 help the workers? Was there an initiation fee? How much were monthly dues? Inside two hours, more than 80 workers had signed registration cards that said they wanted Local 789 to represent them, more than the 30 percent required by law to force an election.

Eventually, Cortinas agreed to slow the assembly line down to 95 cows per hour, and the workers returned to the slaughterhouse. Dakota Premium issued a press release claiming that "the vast majority of the plant employees have made it clear they do not want a union." A month later, in an election sanctioned by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the workers at Dakota Premium voted by a margin of 112 to 71 to be represented by Local 789.

It wasn't the first time the UFCW had tried to unionize the South St. Paul plant. In 1991 the local won a similar election at the slaughterhouse. But after negotiating with management for a year, the UFCW failed to come up with a mutually agreeable labor contract and the NLRB, concluding both parties had negotiated in good faith, decertified the union. This time around, however, William Pearson, president of the UFCW, believed a contract was imminent--in large part because his organization's relationship with management at Rosen's Diversified's Long Prairie meat packing plant had been relatively amicable. "I said to people repeatedly, 'This company will come to the table and bargain a contract,'" he says. "We've got a good relationship with them. There's no reason to fight us."

Fifteen months later Local 789 and Rosen's Diversified are getting ready to take the gloves off. Immediately after the July election, Dakota Premium appealed the results to the NLRB, charging that Local 789 had illegally interfered with the vote. Among other things, the company claimed that a pro-union worker offered money for votes and threatened people with deportation. Dakota Premium also alleged that Local 789 distributed prejudicial propaganda. In mid-November 2000, after six days of hearings, an administrative law judge representing the NLRB rejected all of the company's arguments and ordered that the union be certified. The loser immediately filed an appeal. On August 27, 2001, the NLRB upheld their initial ruling. The UFCW was certified as the bargaining representative for factory workers at Dakota Premium. Local 789 threw a party for the slaughterhouse employees at their office.

The revelry was premature. Despite the NLRB's rulings, Rosen's Diversified refused to recognize the union. To this day no negotiations have taken place between the company and Local 789. The UFCW is now seeking an "order to bargain" from the NLRB. But even if it receives such an edict, the company can postpone negotiations by taking its fight to the federal courts--a process that often lasts years.

"This case is a textbook illustration of the problem with American labor law as it stands now," says Brendan Cummins, a Minneapolis labor attorney who represented Local 789 in the initial appeals process. "Employers have many avenues to delay and impede workers' right to organize."

In the meantime, at least half of the workforce at the South St. Paul slaughterhouse has come and gone. Many who supported the initial organization drive have either grown disaffected by the delay or have moved on to other jobs. Some of the newer employees don't even know that a union election was held. And workers claim the speed of the slaughterhouse line has been gradually increasing.

"We have gone through a lot in the last year and a half," says Miguel Olvera, a union supporter who has worked at the plant for six years. "If we just give up, it will all be for nothing."

 

Miguel Olvera has been one of the most vocal pro-union employees at the Dakota Premium slaughterhouse PHOTO BY CRAIG LASSIG

Naive is not a word that comes to mind when considering Bill Pearson's track record as a labor organizer. He has worked at UFCW Local 789 for 23 years, first as a union representative and then, for the last six years, as president. During that time, the 53-year-old former produce manager has encountered just about every bargaining ploy in the book, from broken promises to bogus financial figures. He has helped organize strikes at Iowa Pork and Country Club Markets, and he has mediated scores of contract disputes that never reached the picket lines.

Yet naive is the word Pearson uses to describe his initial approach to Rosen's Diversified in St. Paul. "I'm foolish enough to believe that if you have an election and you win it, you sit down and negotiate a contract," he says. "If I could redo this whole mess, there wouldn't have been an election. I would have demanded recognition and then said, 'Screw you, we're not working until we get a contract.'"

Pearson's newfound cynicism is understandable. In recent years, the right to unionize in the United States has become illusory. Companies like Rosen's Diversified, intent on keeping unions out of their workplace, have found ways to exploit loopholes in the National Labor Relations Act, which was designed to protect workers' right to organize.

In a report released last year, the international nonprofit group Human Rights Watch concluded that "freedom of association is a right under severe, often buckling pressure when workers in the United States try to exercise it." The study, conducted by Cornell University labor law professor Lance Compa, found that more than 20,000 workers are fired each year for attempting to organize. It cited dozens of instances, in fields ranging from meatpacking to shipbuilding to computer programming, where attempts by employees to form unions were met with blatant violations of the law and widespread discrimination.

Last February, for example, an administrative law judge found that Smithfield Foods, the world's largest pork processor, wantonly ignored labor laws while fighting a union drive at a packinghouse in Wilson, North Carolina. The company fired pro-union workers, threatened others with termination, and warned that the plant could be shuttered--all violations of the National Labor Relations Act. The judge overturned the results of a 1999 election, in which Smithfield prevailed, and ordered the company to the bargaining table. Smithfield ignored the decree and is currently appealing the judge's ruling.

"There's no justice in this," scoffs Pearson. "People talk about the diminishing number of unionized workers. Well hell, it isn't because the unions aren't here. It's because the system that we operate under allows employers to slap workers around, abuse the entire process, and nothing happens."

Part of the problem, according to critics, is the very organization that was set up to guarantee workers' rights: the National Labor Relations Board. In the 1930s labor unions made unprecedented inroads nationwide, largely through direct actions such as sit-down strikes. In response Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act in 1935, explicitly granting workers the legal right to collectively bargain and establishing the NLRB to enforce the legislation.

The legislation was hailed as a victory for unions. But labor historian Peter Rachleff, a professor at Macalester College, sees it otherwise. "The real functioning of the law was to slow the movement down, to get people to play by certain rules rather than to continue with the direct action that was bringing results," he posits.

Over the years, many argue that the NLRB has evolved into a paper tiger, slow to react and unwilling to inflict much pain on employers when they break the law. "It's not that the act can not be interpreted as providing stronger remedies, but the board over the years has been very cautious and conservative in doing that," observes James Gross, a professor of labor law at Cornell University who has written several books about the NLRB.

In addition, a cottage industry has evolved in the legal world over the last two decades, aimed at neutralizing organized labor. The end result is that union disputes drag on for years, while workers twist in the wind. "Really since Reagan fired the air traffic controllers there's been an explosion in the United States of anti-union law firms," Rachleff says. "These firms have come along and have realized that there are big loopholes in national labor law."

In June, Sen. Paul Wellstone introduced legislation aimed at curbing management's ability to abuse labor. Under the Minnesota Democrat's Right-to-Organize Act of 2001, employers would face stiffer penalties for illegally firing pro-union workers and union elections would be expedited. Another bill, introduced by Sen. Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, would prohibit the hiring of permanent workers to replace striking employees--a common practice since President Reagan fired 11,000 air traffic controllers in 1981. But in the wake of terrorist attacks neither bill is likely to get a hearing anytime soon.

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