2019-12-31T09:44:58-08:00 What was achieved, through several decades of struggle, were improved conditions and a national wage standard adhered to by all producers. In their collective defiance of the heads of the UFCW International Union, the Hormel strikers have raised the question, Who shall run the labor movement, the careerist, top-down hierarchy of the AFL-CIO-type unions, or the rank and file whose lives are directly affected? His travels took him to Austin and he decided to settle there, borrow $500, and open a meat business. endobj Local P-9 had originally considered sending out pickets to other plants in October. 1 0 obj On Saturday, April 12th, another 3,000-strong rally assembled in Austin, with supporters from all over the country. Though material had been published on the safety problems in Hormel’s new plant, Corporate Campaign’s overwhelming emphasis had been on the money issue — a profitable company cutting wages. <>/P 35 0 R/S/Link>> It changed its name to Hormel Foods in 1993. Liberating Thought: Toward an Independent Mass Media, Lessons from the Air Traffic Controllers’ Strike of 1981, Rojava: An Anarcho-Syndicalist Perspective. But in the current climate of employer aggression, Hormel is just following the present trend, justified among business leaders as a “battle to become more competitive.” The leaders of Continental, Iowa Beef Processors, the Chicago Tribune and Phelps-Dodge would certainly not say that Hormel is particularly “unfair” to its workers. When the state outlaws the most effective forms of worker action, such as sit-down strikes and refusing to handle scab goods, the union heads simply go along with this because they try to avoid any action that may put their organization at risk or threaten to disrupt their long-standing relationships with management and government leaders. While receiving strike pay of $40 from the International and $25 from Region 13, money was running low in Austin and striking families were facing a grim Christmas. Get your 100% original paper on any topic done AUSTIN DAILY HERALD. 15 0 obj The magazine is currently suspended. The corporate campaign didn’t work because it didn’t stop Hormel from continuing to make money from packaging meat. UWWUYYW[\\WVTY[[Y]X\\_][^_[Y_]ac^]\\`bb`ddbfgba`dgfdhchjigklgfljnglnjnqomqsnmqoslqstrvwrqotvxvzsxz|xvv{}|z}z~��}|�~�|��~���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������\ Speaker after speaker from National Rank and File Against Concessions pledged undying support for a fight to the end. The Spam Factory’s Dirty Secret First, Hormel gutted the union. 58 0 obj A Second Look at the Hormel Strike . The $20 million in concessions helped to finance Hormel’s new $100 million plant in Austin. Rogers’ strategy towards the strike has been to push non-violent “civil disobedience,” rather like Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement or the anti-nuclear protesters who sit down in front of nuclear plants with the intention of getting arrested. Hormel sells food under many brands, including the Chi-Chi's, Dinty Moore, Farmer John, Herdez, Jennie-O, Lloyd's, SPAM and Stagg brands, as well as … seniority rights) that defended workers against arbitrary management power. The Watsonville cannery strike is one of these struggles, the Hormel strike is another. Since the AFL-CIO heads see corporate campaigns as a way to avoid strikes, they actually favor them, as the J.P. Stevens campaign demonstrates. uuid:6d952d59-ad52-11b2-0a00-9012ea000000 But in 1984 the International proposed a $1.69 per hour wage cut for Hormel workers outside Austin (from $10.69 to $9 per hour). The UFCW mailing included a form letter, addressed to Hormel’s personnel manager, which states that the applicant is willing to take any job unconditionally. A look back at the Hormel Strike. William Wynn — the president of the UFCW International — publically denounced Guyette, accusing him of leading P-9 on a suicide mission and appealed to the local membership to repudiate the strike and go back to work. <> 71 0 obj Lewie Anderson, UFCW vice-president and head of the Packinghouse Division, had negotiated the agreement that was falsely presented to P-9 as protection against wage cuts. A Publication of the Workers Solidarity Alliance. local p-9 of the united food and commercial workers union (ufcw), made up of workers at hormel's main plant at austin, minnesota, has attempted to break out of isolation in several ways: a Members of Local P … After the rally people filed out, pushing their way past legions of Trotskyists selling newspapers, pamphlets, and discussion bulletins. They made a deal with William Wynn, who pledged to approve the roving pickets if negotiations with Hormel failed. We are not saying that workers should automatically avoid the AFL-CIO-type unions, even when no other mass organization is feasible. 44 0 obj Slaughterhouse Fight: A Look at the Hormel Strike. Twenty-five years ago today, workers at the Hormel meatpacking plant in Austin, Minn. went on strike, bringing the struggles of the national labor movement home to southern Minnesota. When the airline unions and the AFL-CIO let the air controllers go down to defeat, the message to the employing class was, “You can do what you want; we won’t organize a fighting solidarity.”. :9A@?=@A?C=ACD@?CAEFDGHDCBFHGEIIGKLHFEJLNIHLJMIMONLOPLJRNMQNRLQSSQUUQPUSWXSRQ\ Another twist in Rogers’ emphasis upon “public opinion” is the consumer boycott of Hormel products. Ideas & Action, 7. The company was founded as George A. Hormel & Company in Austin by George A. Hormel in 1891. On a hot August day in 1985, more than 1,000 workers filed out of the Hormel plant. For five months, they kept the heat on Hormel with an effective, resourceful, well-run strike. Since then his track record has been mixed — some wins, some losses but nothing approaching the publicity of the J.P. Stevens campaign. But the Communist Party registered the leftist retreat the earliest and clearest: “The local leadership’s attacks on the leadership of the UFCW has played into the hands of the corporations’ union busting strategy and will be used to split and divide other locals and be used as ammunition against the union in organizing drives…” (Daily World, 2/6). The weakness of P-9’s position has been its inability to close down operations at the Austin plant. The model for Corporate Campaign is Rogers’ campaign for the Amalgamated Clother and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU) against J.P. Stevens, which achieved union recognition against a notoriously nonunion Southern employer. By MIKE ALEWITZ Thirty-five years ago, 1500 members of Local P-9, United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), struck the Hormel meat-packing plant in Austin, Minnesota. To do that it was necessary to stop production. This has not stopped the UFCW from trying to seize the support group funds, however, which indicates how determined the UFCW is to crush P-9’s rebellion. Several hundred strikers amassed at the main gate, chanting, hurling insults at the cops. On National Public Radio Lewie Anderson said that the problem now at Hormel was that the workers made too much money and this would make the company unprofitable and lead to loss of jobs. Bill Montross of the UFCW’s research department was able to denounce the strike in the pages of In These Times (“Local P-9 Is Leading Mass Suicide”, 2/26), the Guardian (“Dissidence Isn’t Always Progressive,” 2/19), and Labor Notes (“UFCW International Led Fight Against Concessions”, April). When Hormel began production in January, it would have been possible to break into the plant and carry out a sit-down strike. On May 9th, the Executive Board of the UFCW International ordered a trusteeship for local P-9, with the Region 13 director Joe Hansen appointed as the International’s dictator in Austin. Meanwhile, local P-40 in Wisconsin and local P-6 in Albert Lea, Minnesota, are refusing to pay their per capita dues to the International until the trusteeship is removed fromm local P-9. It eventually became part of the United Packinghouse Workers Union of the CIO. The top-down structure of the AFL-CIO-type unions is an albatross around the neck of the American workforce. At that time local P-9 was being led by a more pro-company case of officials, who decided to break away from the Hormel master contract in exchange for a supposed guarantee that there would be no more cuts at Austin. 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