Always makes you feel warm and fuzzy when you hear unions and the NAACP use phrases like “fair and uncoerced”. From the N&O’s story about Smithfield Foods:
In another push to organize workers at the world’s largest hog
slaughterhouse, union and NAACP leaders publicly asked Smithfield Foods
Inc. on Thursday to sit down and discuss a “fair and uncoerced” process
for holding an organizing election.
Of course, this is after several intimidating moves by union members going to the homes of employees and making all sorts of allegations against Smithfield and their leadership. Smithfield wants the employees to be able to cast a secret ballot, the NAACP and union wants the balloting to be open so that they can identify who votes against them.
Smithfield’s response, “If they have made up their minds to allow our employees to use the
democratic process to hold a union election … we’ll be glad to sit
down with them,”
But nowhere in the N&O story is it mentioned that various plants owned by Smithfield in other parts of the country do have unions (of course, they’re north of this part of the country.)
