[SOCIALIST ACTION MARCH 1986 "We believe that this…]

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SOCIALIST ACTION MARCH 1986 "We believe that this rank-and-file is the litmus test for all of organized labor," said Henry Nichols, president of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees, to over 4000 Local P-9 strikers and their supporters on Feb. 16 in Austin, Minn.

Nichols is dead right. The six-month strike of 1500 packinghouse workers in United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local P-9 has sharply posed the question: "Which side are you on?"

In the P-9 strike, there can be no neutral stance. The employer, Geo. A. Hormel & Co., has set out to cut wages, gut the seniority system, introduce a two-tier system for new hires, and increase speedup on the job with no concern for safety. It has forced 1500 packinghouse workers, who had already given up concessions in 16 out of the last 23 years, to be out on strike since last Aug. 17.

But the Hormel company didn't stop there. After the P-9 strikers refused to bend to the employers' attacks and the court's illegal injunction, the Hormel company called on strikebreaking Gov. Rudy Perpich to bring out the National Guard to escort scabs through the picket lines.

More recently, the courts have further come to the company's aid. P-9 leaders have jail sentences hanging over their heads if they dare to even appear near the Hormel plant.

Nichols and the other prominent labor officials who spoke at the Austin rally on Feb. 16 [see story next page] took a firm stand in support of P-9 and against the employers' continued takeback demands. They were expressing the sentiment of hundreds of thousands of workers across the country who have already demonstrated their solidarity with the P-9 strikers.

Bob Brown, international vice president of the United Electrical Workers union, pledged his full support at the Austin rally for whatever action was necessary to win the strike. "If we have to come back six times," he said, "we'll all go to jail."

P-9 challenges Wynn's strategy But this spirit is, unfortunately, not shared by all in the labor movement. UFCW International President William Wynn has put P-9's parent union on the side of the Hormel bosses. Echoing company slanders against the P-9 leadership, he has worked tirelessly to you whatever the striking union requires. sabotage labor solidarity. He has gone so far as to campaign against sending financial aid to P-9's Emergency Hardship Fund, charging falsely that the funds were being misused. [See article pp. 2-3.] The stakes in the Hormel strike are high. A Feb. 15 New York Times article titled, "Local and National Union Clash Over Tactics in Hormel Strike," reveals the intense interest of the U.S. employing class in the outcome of the P-9 strike.

Accurately reflecting the negative role of the UFCW international leadership toward Local P-9 and the strike, the Times article states:

"Jay Foreman, the parent union's senior vice president and executive assistant to Mr. Wynn, said it might be necessary at some point to lift the union's strike sanction and place the local in receivership, so the strike could formally be ended.

"Some labor authorities said a key to the bitterness that exists is that the strikers' strategy of confrontation would, if successful, demonstrate that the parent union's tactics, of accepting concessions regarded as necessary and of maintaining essentially cooperative relationships with companies, are incorrect.

"These are the tactics of most American unions, and a rank-and-file victory in Austin, this argument holds, would demonstrate tactics at other unions are wrong too."

Now, Lane Kirkland, president of the AFL-CIO, has come out on the side of the unholy alliance between the UFCW bureaucrats and the greedy Hormel bosses. Kirkland, presiding over the AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting in Bal Harbor, Fla., termed the UFCW bureaucrats' backstabbing policy "wise and sound."

In Minnesota Dan Gustaffson, president of the state AFL-CIO, has invited Gov. Rudy Perpich to address a statewide Legislative Conference on Feb. 24. Gustaffson has pointedly kept silent, failing to denounce the governor's use of the National Guard to break the P-9 strike. Worse still, Perpich remains an honored guest of the labor federation, despite overwhelming opposition to his use of the Guard in Minnesota polls.

Minnesota trade unionists should go to the Legislative Conference on Feb. 24 to lobby and protest against the presence of this strikebreaking governor.

But despite the array of hostile forces, Local P-9 can still win. A groundswell of support has been developing among rank-and-file workers nationwide, who have been inspired by the valiant fightback example provided by the Hormel workers.

Reflecting this, a significant minority of union leaders-including some in the UFCW-have taken a stand behind P-9 and for resolute action to beat back the strikebreakers at Hormel. Clearly, had UFCW President Wynn put the international behind P-9, the strike would have been won long ago.

Picket lines inspire support When P-9 pickets faced down the National Guard, forcing Gov. Perpich to order the plant closed on the first day of the Guard's deployment, it showed the great potential power of determined action. Why? The governor was unwilling to risk the consequences of a direct confrontation with the mobilized strikers. To suppress P-9 that day would have had too high a cost in terms of human lives and consequent national outrage.

Perpich knows that the American people will not take kindly to such violations of the basic freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. Especially when working people show their capacity to mobilize in their class interests. Brutal repression, the rulers know, can spark mass indignation and an outpouring of thousands-not hun -dreds—on the Hormel picket lines.

And when 500 pickets and supporters stopped scabs cold on Jan. 31, Local P-9 proved the strike could be won.

These examples of determined and effective strike action by the Austin strikers triggered the solidarity action of Hormel workers in Ottumwa, Iowa, and other plants around the country. It inspired workers all over the country. The injustices suffered by P-9 workers are an all-toofamiliar tragedy. It is their militant response, however, that has begun to stir tens of thousands of workers to action.

P-9, of course, cannot win alone. It needs the support of hundreds more on the picket lines and hundreds of thousands across the land. P-9's militant example points the way to bring tens of thousands into active support and victory-The Editors.

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Who said feed 'em a few scraps and they'll leave MINNEAPOLIS—The strike of Local P9 members against Geo. A. Hormel & Co. is widely recognized as a strike involving much more than only the fate of 1500 packinghouse workers in the small town of Austin, Minn.

The strike of Local P-9 of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union is seen throughout the Hormel system and nationally throughout the labor movement as a dramatic challenge to the headlong drive for more and more concessions from labor.

The Austin workers themselves have made major concessions in 16 of the last 23 years. In October 1984, the company unilaterally imposed a 23-percent wage cut. All of this, despite the fact that Hormel has among the highest profits in the industry and chalked up a 31-percent increase in profits last year alone.

At the same time P-9 members were subjected to the 23-percent wage cut, Hormel chairman Richard Knowlton saw fit to increase his own salary by $231,000 to $570,000 a year.

In response to P-9's stand against further concessions, Hormel began a massive propaganda and slander campaign against the local and its leadership. To carry out this campaign, they hired not one-but two union-busting consulting firms.

They flooded a cooperating news media with charges that P-9 was unreasonable, inflexible, and engaging in "all-or-nothing" bargaining. They said the Austin union was violent and attempting to impose "mob rule" on the town. They characterized the leadership of P-9 as irresponsible and explained membership rejection of contract offers by claiming that P-9 President Jim Guyette and labor consultant Ray Rogers had manipulated and intimidated the Austin work force.

The wholehearted cooperation of the news media in this campaign should come as no surprise. Likewise, the collaboration of Democratic and Republican politicians, including Democratic Gov. Rudy Perpich, who called in the National Guard to escort scabs into the struck plant, should hardly come as a surprisè. However, the role of UFCW international officers-International President William Wynn and International Vice-President Lewie Anderson-is another matter.

with company From the beginning of the struggle the top UFCW international officers have echoed and endorsed virtually every charge the Hormel company and its union-busting consulting firms have come up with in their slander campaign against P-9.

This process reached a dangerous new stage with the publication and national CORPORATIONS F UNIUN distribution by the UFCW international of a booklet entitled "Fact Book on Local 9/Hormel, Austin, Minn."

A major charge raised in this "Fact Book" is that P-9, at a meeting of Hormel Chain Locals in 1984, "refused to support a proposed strike against Hormel," abandoned a common negotiating strategy, and irresponsibly "withdrew from chain negotiations and followed their own agenda."

This is just plain untrue. The facts are as follows: The international leadership, with the explanation that P-9 had a different contract expiration date, did not even invite P-9 to this meeting. P-9 attended anyway to see what it could do to support and solidarize with the locals whose contracts were expiring.

In mid-January, P-9 President Jim Guyette was forced to reply to UFCW President William Wynn's public use of this big lie, stating:

"As you well know, from conversations held as recently as October, Local P-9 never 'withdrew from the Hormel chain negotiations.' We were simply never invited by the international union. As our contract expired at a different date from URP concessions Carott 171981 you alone?"

those at some other plants, Hormel never sent our local a notice of contract termination. P-9's executive board sought to discover what rights we had to support the locals whose contracts were expiring, such as attempting to discover whether or not we have the right to strike prior to the expiration of our contract. We did not withdraw-rather, we were convinced by the international union to stand aside and let the other unions negotiate and we were commended by the international and the locals for standing aside."

Another charge from the "Fact Book" is that P-9, "in their weekly newspaper, The Unionist, lambasted our brothers and sisters in the Postal Workers Union as creating excessive labor costs, trying to exclude competition, and abusing their political influence."

What are the facts? An article making such charges was clipped out of another publication to be printed in The Unionist with an answer from P-9 refuting such charges and defending the Postal Workers. Through an error by the printer this article was printed without the answer. In the very next issue of The Unionist the original answer was printed with an explanation and an apology to postal workers.

The international officials, who follow motions from our rank and file made by people with more than 30 years service with the union who felt there was clearly wrongdoing by this international and tried to get up and ask that we disaffiliate. I have not honored those motions.

A fully democratic union local The "Fact Book," in directly repeating charges made by the Hormel company, accused the P-9 leadership of "repressive tactics against its own members," and running the local in an undemocratic way.

P-9 is probably one of the most democratic union locals in the country. During recent months not only have they been holding weekly membership meetings, which a big majority of the membership attend, but in addition, nightly strategy and support meetings, which routinely draw 300 to 400 members. At all these meetings the members freely take the floor, speak their minds, make motions, and vote the policy of P-9.

Last January, in response to the combined pressure of Hormel, Gov. Perpich, and the international, P-9 voted for a second time on Hormel's "final proposal."

William Wynn announced that P-9 could not be trusted to carry out the vote in its own union hall and publicly charged that its own members were put through a "physical and psychological gauntlet" to manipulate the vote.

P-9 responded with two actions. It announced it would hold and only be governed by its own vote. It also appointed four local clergymen to act as observers at the election.

Immediately following the vote, these clergymen released a unanimous statement that "re-examined new attempts to intimidate and coerce or influence the vote in any way. Our observance was that the voting was done very fairly and openly and the outcome expressed the feeling of the majority of the voters."

The outcome? In both P-9's vote and the Wynn-mailed ballot, the contract was again rejected by virtually identical margins.

The only thing accomplished by Wynn's actions was to publicly repeat and endorse the slanderous charges being promoted by the Hormel company.

Making the victim the criminal Another Hormel charge repeated in the "Fact Book" is that P-9 is the party that refuses to negotiate in good faith. The of makir of fact, remarka answerin What Wynn a probing destruct been for of conc leadersh of dollai throughs Wynn on P-9's concessi back.

Wynn danger t twisted of the "F as "the e In the and And of Horn make r Minnesc the Hori the arre notorio AUST here shc strikers moveme They strikers some 5( states, n hall to 4 their unir signs fro as well i Iowa, wl facing t profitabl

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