World’s biggest hog boss meets its match: Smithfield workers take on global Goliath

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/10466/1/356

World’s biggest hog boss meets its match: Smithfield workers take on global Goliath

Jim Adams started at Smithfield Packing on the hog kill floor assembly line. He was hurt on his first day, and by the time his second shift ended he knew he’d better keep his mouth shut and try to ignore the pain if he wanted to keep his job.

During his first few months he kept getting hurt, until after eight months he tore the cartilage in his right knee, slipped and fell on a blade and slashed his arm and hand through the tendons.

The emergency room doctors and his personal physician said the injury was due to his job, but Smithfield denied him worker’s compensation. He had to take unpaid leave to have two surgeries. His leave time ran out before a third scheduled operation and the company fired him.

“This hand is useless,” he said while describing his predicament during a phone conversation with him in January. “I am the only breadwinner for my family — three boys, a wife — and I owe $40,000 in medical bills. I can’t afford the third operation.”

FULL story at link.

[msongs]

1. meat is murder nt

[Red1]

2. Let See A Little Involvement Here

"There is a history of abuse at the Tar Heel plant. Human Rights Watch, a respected international organization, has cited Smithfield Packing for violating international human rights standards and for retaliating against those who report their injuries. The National Labor Relations Board has ruled that Smithfield violated labor law by using threats, intimidation and violence against workers who tried to organize a union"


The shrub admin. has been anti union, anti American Labor from day one.

Here is a chance to add a little more visibility to the plight American Workers face at abusive corporations like smithfield packing.

I'd like to see 1000 posts, right here, protesting this inhuman type of treatment and a little discussion of how the current "president" promotes this type of working condition.

[High Plains]

3. Wow, Omaha Steve, I remember when Democrats cared about labor

I see you post with some regulatity on labor issue, only for those posts to sink into oblivion as DU wages furious debates over smoking, teachers and students having sex, and Hilary-Obama-Edwards-Etc 2008.

[Red1]

4. I know

Oh well, I understand issues on this site are discussed based on the familiarity of the posters to each other.

Too bad, I believe labor issues and the quality of life are somewhat interrelated (sarcasm).

[fed-up]

5. I can't believe I am the only rec....... n/t

[sutz12]

6. K & R

Labor issues have been suppressed for far too long. Especially safety issures.

:kick:

[sweetheart]

7. boss hog better watch out! nt

obscure stupid TV show reference for dyxlexic readers... :-)

[Viva_La_Revolution]

13. I thought it was an article about slaughtering a giant pig named Goliath

:rofl:

oh, those Duke boys... hubba hubba! I watched faithfully every week. :patriot:

[Lugnut]

8. K&R

For the night crowd. :kick:

[TygrBright]

9. Thanks for posting this! It's part of a gigantic problem...

...with how everyone involved in feeding Americans (except ADM and Cargill and their ilk, if you can call what they do "feeding Americans"... "poisoning Americans" might be more accurate) is treated by the vast machine responsible for the Industrially Produced Foodlike Substances we eat.

In order to create the economies of scale that make it possible for our totally-screwed up agricultural subsidy program to funnel cash into the pockets of the ADM/Cargill crowd, we've had to build what is in essence a gigantic machine that runs on human parts. Everyone... from the farmers trying to make just a little bit more than their debt payments plus eating money for their families, farming artificially price-supported commodities that resemble food only in the most academic sense, to the over-the-road truckers hauling bagged mini-carrots 1200 miles to your local supermarket (Think about that. There isn't a climate zone in America where you can't grow carrots most of the year round, ferchrissakes.) to the single mom running the cash register at your local MegaFood store, is getting royally hosed so that you can eat "cheap" food and the owners of the machine can make out like the robber barons they are.

The machine gobbles up lives and limbs and sanity and hope for literally millions of people, every day. And it won't stop until we realize the true cost of the "cheap" pseudo-food we pile into our carts at the local GigaMart, and demand that the people who grow it/raise it, the people who harvest it/butcher it, the people who package it/transport it, and the people who sell it are FAIRLY PAID, and (if possible) ALL THE SAME PEOPLE.

When I was a kid you could still buy eggs from the lady who had the hens, and a side of beef (nicely cut up, no less) from the farmer who raised the steer. THAT'S ILLEGAL now, under the cover of a totally spurious concern for "food safety" but really in order to protect the monopoly of the small oligarchy of megacorporations who control the Foodlike Substances production machine.

It was just bearable back when the jobs produced by the machine's existence were sort-of-OK jobs as far as pay and benefits went, and back when OSHA had teeth and Workers' Comp rules were really enforced. Now that the jobs are shitty and exact such a horrible physical cost from people who have no rights, no say, and no recourse, there is no longer ANY reason to let the Machine continue robbing us of our health and our future.

Whew! Ya got me started.... /rant

sheepishly,
Bright

[Matilda]

10. This reminds me of the Sally Field movie

Norma Rae. And that was set in the 1970s - seems nothing has changed
in some places.

Thanks for the post - sometimes we need to be reminded that many people
are still fighting for basic conditions.

[NuttyFluffers]

11. exactly, very Norma Rae. except more depressing.

i can't think of what can happen to save this poor family in time. at least in the 70s there was a more stable safety net, in at least medicare, welfare, etc. i'm saddened this isn't getting more posts here, though not entirely surprised. petty drama always made better copy than serious woe.

but i'm still gonna K&R :kick:

[salin]

12. me, too...

k & r

[progressoid]

14. Here's hoping he wins!