Should Americans boycott products processed at the Smithfield Packing Co. plant in Tar Heel, N.C.? Leila McDowell thinks you should. Before you bite into that holiday ham, McDowell wants you to consider if was packed by what she calls “abused workers” at the Smithfield Tar Heel plant.
You’ve met McDowell before. I wrote about her in this column during the summer about the situation of Smithfield’s Tar Heel workers, the overwhelming majority of whom are black and Latino. Since April, McDowell has served as the communications coordinator of the Smithfield campaign for the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.
McDowell could be the multi-tasking poster lady of 2006. In addition to her UFCW work, she’s a media consultant for the Washington, D.C.-based Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation, where she worked as the director of communications from 2000 to 2002. McDowell also works as a media consultant for the Venezuelan embassy.
“I work with (embassy personnel) on trying to get information out to the American people about what’s really going on in Venezuela, because there’s so many inaccuracies out there,” McDowell said (You may have correctly surmised that she supports the government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.).
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McDowell is afflicted with a soft spot for the underdog and has a warm place in her heart for the working stiff. She’s a former member of the Black Panther Party and a direct ideological descendant of Americans like A. Philip Randolph, Mary Harris “Mother” Jones and Eugene V. Debs, who were uncompromising in standing up for workers’ rights. McDowell added the UFCW job to her already lengthy resume after learning that workers at the Smithfield plant may not have been getting a fair shake from management. And that might be putting it mildly.
McDowell pointed to a ruling by the National Labor Relations Board -- which was upheld in court decisions -- that invalidated those elections and charged that Smithfield’s management had used unethical practices to get workers to vote against the union.
“The 1994 elections were marred by all these violations of law,” McDowell said. “According to the NLRB, not us. The 1997 elections were even worse.”
Rather than take her word for it, perhaps a passage from the NLRB ruling of April 28, 2006 might be enlightening. The NLRB ordered Smithfield’s management to “cease and desist from:"
1. “Discharging its employees because they engaged in protected concerted activities.”
2. “Physically assaulting its employees because they engaged in protected concerted activities.”
3. “Threatening its employees with arrest by Federal immigration officials because they engaged in protected concerted activities. (Many employees at the Tar Heel plant are Latino.)"
4. “Causing employees to be falsely arrested because they engaged in protected concerted activities.”
5. “Threatening its employees with bodily harm because they engaged in protected concerted activities.”
6. “Informing its employees that they were discharged because they engaged in protected concerted activities.”
McDowell believes the allegations in the NLRB ruling are true (She’s not alone. The Human Rights Watch report “Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Workers’ Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants” devotes and entire section to abuses at the Tar Heel plant.). And, after paying a visit to Tar Heel and talking to Smithfield workers who alleged they were fired after being injured on the job, she believes Smithfield is guilty of much more.
“What moved me the most was how vulnerable these people were and the raw exploitation and abuse that I saw, which you just don’t see anymore,” McDowell told me in a previous BlackAmericaWeb.com column. “They got permanent, crippling injuries while on the job. They lose their jobs, workers’ compensation and health benefits. You see these injuries that are just horrifying.”
Dennis Pittman, the director of corporate communications for Smithfield, disputed the NLRB findings. He disputed the ruling of a judge on the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals who upheld the ruling (The judge “rules for unions about 90 percent of the time,” according to Pittman.). Pittman said workers at the Smithfield Tar Heel plant have some of the highest wages and best benefits in the area, even higher and better than at some plants where the UFCW represents the workers.
“The starting salary at the Tar Heel plant is $9.20 an hour,” Pittman said. “The average salary is $12.50 an hour. Our workers tell me, ‘We work for you. It’s hard work, but you pay us better than anybody in the area.’ Workers get 12 weeks of short-term disability for free. We built a state-of-the-art medical center across the street from the plant.”
McDowell doesn’t buy Pittman’s defense of Smithfield. And she doesn’t want Americans -- especially those in the Baltimore-Washington market, one of Smithfield’s largest -- buying products processed at the Tar Heel plant.
“We are asking people to make their holiday parties abuse-free," McDowell said, "by making them Smithfield-Tar Heel-free."
