Sherri Buffkin, a supervisor at the world’s largest hog processing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, has testified against meat giant Smithfield Foods in a case alleging that the company ran an illegal union-busting campaign.
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Buffkin, who held the post at Smithfield during 1997, admitted to the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee that she fired workers at Smithfield Foods who were trying to organise membership of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW).
“Smithfield Foods ordered me to fire employees who supported the union, telling me it was either my job or theirs,” she revealed in her testimony, adding that Smithfield promoted racial tension to separate workers: “Smithfield keeps Black and Latino employees virtually separated in the plant with the Black workers on the kill floor and the Latinos in the cut and conversion departments.
“The word was that black workers were going to be replaced with Latino workers because blacks were more favourable toward unions.”
The hearing, chaired by Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA), was the first such hearing in 14 years about what happens to workers when they try to exercise their federal right to form a union, said the UFCW.
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By GlobalData
