Pork slaughterhouse

[Guest guest]

Jobs with Justice has a "Grinch of the Year" contest to decide the employer that does the most harm to working familes. Below is Jobs with Justice's description this year of a pork slaughterhouse (which may be the company being sued jointly by AR organizations and unions?). As we've learned from EBAA's investigation into Foster Farms, companies lacking compassion for animals are likely to lack compassion for their workers as well. Another reason to go veg!

 

 

Smithfield's Tar Hell Division CEO Joseph Luter III

Smithfield operates the largest pork slaughterhouse in the world. Located in Southeastern North Carolina, Smithfield¢s Tar Heel plant employs 5,500 workers and kills and dismembers over 32,000 hogs each day.

But that¢s not all Smithfield does. Smithfield operates a dangerous workplace, forcing its workers who have not been adequately trained to work at exceedingly fast line speeds while making repetitive hand motions in processing the pork. Every day, workers are injured, harassed, intimidated, and threatened by Smithfield management.

Smithfield maintains an environment of fear and intimidation. For over ten years now, workers have fought relentlessly for a voice on the job. In 1994 and 1997, workers tried to hold a union election but were met with the coercive fist of Smithfield. After the vote count at the 1997 election, one union supporter and one union organizer were dragged out of the plant, beaten, insulted with racial epithets, and arrested.

For five years, from 2000-2005, Smithfield had it own police force with the state police power to make arrests on Smithfield property. And arrests it made. During its brief stint as a police force, the Smithfield Company Police arrested over 90 workers.

Smithfield is also known to have exploited racial tensions, having in the past physically segregated African-American and Latino workers in the plant. In 2004, the Company threatened Latino workers with arrest by federal immigration authorities. Although Smithfield was brought to court over their labor abuses and found to have committed violations of the National Labor Relations Act, Smithfield continues to deny the legitimacy of the 2004 National Labor Relations Board decision and order which was affirmed by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.

As Smithfield pays poverty wages to its employees and fails to provide adequate treatment to injured workers, Former CEO and current Chairman of the Board, Joseph Luter III, takes in $83,333.33 each month in a base salary just for consulting Smithfield. Under the terms of Luter¢s contract, he is also entitled to use the company jet and receives cash incentive awards. Even in retirement, Luter is afforded a lavish lifestyle.

While Luter revels in the benefits granted to Smithfield¢s upper echelon, the workers in Tar Heel are forced to bear the burden of Luter¢s indulgent activities. For this reason, and countless others too numerous to mention, Joseph Luter III of Smithfield deserves the title of Grinch of the Year.

 

Thea

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