Hormel celebrates SPAM; workers don't give a damn

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in a car caravan) was a town brought to its knees by the strike-breaking tactics of Hormel and its collaborator, the international leadership of the United Food and Commercial Workers union. In the midst of the strike, the UFCW top officialdom cut off benefits to the strikers. In June 1986, the UFCW placed Local P-9 in receivership.

The fact is, every time Hormel has extracted a concession from its workers, the revenues of businesses in the town have gone down by an almost exactly corresponding amount.

Buck Heegard, an out-of-work member of the original P-9, had this observation to make: "I don't know what this town has to celebrate. When I began work at Hormel 38 years ago, we had 4000 workers. Now there are 700 in the plant. We had a thriving town of 35,000 and now we are dwindling [to 23,000]."

Indeed, there was very little celebration here. The 4thof-July parade, which was to be the highlight of the weekend, was not held on Main Street because the Chamber of Commerce did not wish to have the TV cameras show how many stores have gone out of business. About every third or fourth business has closed down, according to Pete Winkels, a former P-9 executive-board member.

The population that-according to the media-had rallied behind Hormel and against the strikers was subdued and weary. It was apparent to everyone (except the corporate media) that, rather than healing, the wounds had yet more salt rubbed into them.

Boos competed with cheers as five carloads of women in SPAM T-shirts went by. The lead car bore the sign "Hormel Girls," although all the women appeared to be at least 25 years old. Interestingly, none of the local residents seemed to know who they were. Did Hormel have to go out of town to find these paid shills?

Many children were pressed into service as corporate standard-bearers. One float of children was called the "Spamwich Mobile." Mickey and Minnie Mouse were flown in on the Hormel jet to represent the company in the parade.

Police with videotape cameras stood above the clusters of NAMPU supporters in the audience. They filmed Hormel who had not already been fired or persecuted in some appropriate manner.

Hormel has a long record of harassment of militant workers and their supporters:

• A federal-court injunction enforcing the UFCW's trusteeship was interpreted by local "Now we are dwindling" A long record of harassment authorities as forbidding any pro-union or boycott activity by the workers, under the penalty of contempt charges. The contract negotiated by the UFCW has a clause forbidding similar activity by workers in the plant and those on the recall list.

•Between 40 and 50 people have been harassed, including Frank Collette, who was fired for having a boycott bumper-sticker on his car.

Charles Norris put a small boycott sticker on his forehead when he had his picture taken for his driver's license. The Iowa Department of Motor Vehicles reported him to Hormel, who subsequently fired him.

•Farmers around Austin have been told by the County Commissioners that if they don't paint over pro-P-9 slogans on their barns and silos, their land will be rezoned as commercial and the structures with the slogans considered billboards.

•There has been widespread vandalism against the strikers. Former executive-board member Kathy Buck had to replace her car engine three times due to sugar being poured into the gas tank. The company and its errand boys in the Austin police department use these instances of vandalism to spread rumors about the unionists' "violence."

Boycott Hormel products!

Surrounded by 850 crosses and a flag-draped coffin to represent those left out of the plant, Jim Guyette, former president of Local P-9 and current president of NAMPU, later told the press, "Hormel has plants in South Africa and Mexico where the company employs people under brutal conditions. They would like to see us live like that. They would like to see us in a coffin like this. Well, it's not going to happen."

Madeline Kruger of the United Support Group announced that Pizza Hut and Burger King had been added to the boycott list because of their use of Hormel products.

A Solidarity Tent City was held on a farm just east of town. There were about 25 tents and five campers. One of the owners of the farm, whose husband was a P-9 loyalist, told me that their property was being foreclosed —partly as a result of their activism in support of the strikers. She didn't know what the future held, now that they had donated their land to Solidarity City.

Hormel is not satisfied with having broken the union and the lives of its workers. It had to put on this obscene spectacle as a way of gloating over its anti-labor policies. However, we were able to return to the Twin Cities knowing that the spirit of the remarkable people of Austin, Minn., has not been broken.

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everyone's face, presumably so the company could make sure that no one from Austin would speak out against