Hormel contract approved; union local charges fraud
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FORUM: Discussion on elections, See pp. 7-11. MUNRET, TORTURE By FRANK AUSTIN, Minn.—In a mail-in referen -dum completed on Sept. 12, workers at the Hormel meatpacking plant here approved a new contract with the company.
Members of the Original Local P-9, since reorganized as the North American Meat Packers Union (NAMPU), have been on strike at Hormel since August 1985. The new contract gives no guarantee that the strikers will ever be rehired.
Approval had been recommended by the international leadership of the United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW), which imposed receivership on Local P-9 in June. Trustees of the local announced that 1064 voted in favor of the contract and 440 opposed it.
About 90 percent of the scabs inside the plant approved the contract, according to UFCW estimates. About 45 percent to 55 percent of the strikers voted for it.
A representative of NAMPU told • Socialist Action that scabs were permitted to vote before they had become union members. According to NAMPU, there are 650 to 700 people currently working in the plant, and 800 union members still out.
Speaking to about 100 Twin Cities supporters on Sept. 12, former P-9 President Jim Guyette called the voting process and the contract "a fraud and a sham." He noted that workers voted only after seeing "a summary that's incomplete with no final language."
Prior to the election, Guyette and other Original P-9 members went before Federal District Court Judge Devitt requesting a temporary restraining order against the voting until all members had an opportun -ity to examine a final copy of the contract.
Guyette's affidavit also asked for a group discussion of the proposal, a statement indicating voting eligibility, and a neutral third party appointed as overseer on the voting process.
Judge Devitt refused the request. He said there would be "no irreparable harm" if the election went ahead and noted there was a 25 cent-an-hour pay increase offered for the first year.
Concessions remain
Essentially, the UFCW-negotiated con -tract is the same contract Hormel implemented in January of this year when it resumed limited operations with scabs. Holidays and sick leave are reduced. Workers can be dismissed immediately for in strikes, secondary taking part sympathy strikes, boycotts, boycotts, and picketing.
The two-tier wage clause remains in effect until 1989, unless the contract covering the Hormel plant in Fremont, Neb., allows it after that year.
P-gers were earning $10.69 an hour until October 1984, when wages were reduced to $8.23. Just prior to the August 1985 walkout, Hormel offered $9 an hour. Then, when it re-opened the plant in January 1986, Hormel offered $10 an hour to P-9ers willing to cross the picket line and $9 to newly hired scabs.
Under the new contract, workers will receive $10 an hour, with new hires rated at $9 an hour. Over a three-year period wages will top out at $10.70, a one-cent increase over wages paid before the October 1984 wage cut.
UFCW negotiators, according to Guyette, never asked that P-9ers who stayed on strike get their jobs back. Nor did they demand that workers in Fremont, Neb., or Ottumwa, Iowa—who honored P-9's roving picket lines and were immediately dismissed—be rehired.
Local P-9 has had hard experience with (continued on page 4)