Smithfield Foods will pay $1.1 million in back pay to workers it illegally fired for union organizin

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.laborradio.org/node/5162

Smithfield Foods will pay $1.1 million in back pay

Lede: Smithfield Foods will pay $1.1 million in back pay to workers it illegally fired for union organizing activity. Doug Cunningham has more on the story.

By Doug Cunningham

Workers at Smithfield’s Tar Heel, North Carolina hog processing plant may get another union election. Smithfield says it’s wrapped up an agreement with the National labor Relations Board to pay $1.1 million in back pay, plus interest, to workers fired by the company for union organizing. A federal court order relating to union elections held in 1993 and 1997 prompted the NLRB agreement. Hundreds of Smithfield workers stayed off the job last Friday after immigration officials arrested some workers outside the plant. The United Food and Commercial Workers union is attempting to help workers at Smithfield form a union. The company has violated labor law in efforts to intimidate workers to stifle support for organizing a union. Now Smithfield says it’s ready to hold another union election.

AUDIO story here: http://www.laborradio.org/files/lo/winsheadlines.ram

http://www.smithfieldjustice.com/

[TheMadMonk]

1. And to think I was once a union hater.

But then again, I grew up with the BLF (Builders Labourer's Federation) and the Painters and Dockers. Both poster children (here in Australia) for what unions were not meant to be. (The BLF (under Norm Gallagher) were notorious for extorting kickbacks to keep a site open & the P&D for stopping work if they could show three spots of rain on a sheet of writing paper.)

The problem is that corruption has no favourites. IF there's a buck to be made by shafting one's fellow man, someone will attempt to make it. The only possible solution I can offer is that any and all meetings (right or left) must have a credible observer from the opposing camp. Exigencies may(must) prevent him from reporting on details. However, he has to be there to say that the subject and resolution are fair and above board.