Minnesota meat packers expand fight to defend union against company attack

http://www.themilitant.com/2007/7134/713450.html

Minnesota meat packers expand fight
to defend union against company attack
(feature article)

BY REBECCA WILLIAMSON
SOUTH ST. PAUL, Minnesota—“The company keeps pushing production at the cost of the health and safety of workers in the plant,” reads the opening sentence of the latest issue of the Workers’ Voice. The newsletter is produced by members of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 789 who work at Dakota Premium Foods, a beef slaughterhouse here.

The newsletter reports that in one week two workers—Samuel Farley and Antonio Gómez—suffered stabbing injuries on the production line, “which could have been prevented with proper safety measures or a slower line speed.”

The union contract at the plant expired at the end of June. A few weeks before the expiration date two pro-company workers began circulating petitions “to remove the union.” The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which decides if there will be a vote or not, has yet to make a decision. The union says the company-backed petition was illegal.

Workers at the plant waged a two-year battle including a sit-down strike to forge the union in the plant. They won their first contract in 2002.

Local 789 activists are organizing to visiting every union member who works at the plant.

Last week, the Workers’ Voice reports, management called Farley, who is the last remaining union steward on the cut floor, into the office “five times in two days for the letting pieces go down the line.” The newsletter says there were not enough workers assigned to perform the job with Farley.

FULL story at link.