Busting the Unions

The farmed-animal industry does anything it can to thwart the efforts of workers who attempt to form unions. In a 175-page report condemning the farmed-animal industry for violating workers’ rights, Human Rights Watch stated, “Many workers who try to form trade unions and bargain collectively are spied on, harassed, pressured, threatened, suspended, fired, deported or otherwise victimized for their exercise of the right to freedom of association.”⁶⁷

Giant animal-processing companies like Tyson and Perdue have taken extreme measures to ensure that their workers don’t organize to demand better pay and benefits and safer working conditions. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) found managers in one Perdue plant guilty of doing everything from harassing employees they suspected of being pro-union to threatening to shut the slaughterhouse down if workers unionized.⁶⁸ At another Perdue plant in North Carolina, managers threatened to fire workers who wore union T-shirts. Managers also claimed that they would shut the plant down and turn it into an airport if workers formed a union.⁶⁹

The NLRB has also repeatedly found Tyson guilty of illegal activities aimed at eliminating unions in its slaughterhouses, including threatening to arrest workers who distributed pro-union materials (even though the materials were distributed after hours and off Tyson property), promising better wages and benefits if a union was shut down, and firing dozens of workers who supported a union.⁷⁰

The farmed-animal industry has also quashed unions by hiring workers who are unlikely to stand up for their rights. Donald Stull, a professor at the University of Kansas who has focused much of his research on the meat industry, explains, “The industry has targeted women and immigrants because they are less likely to organize, less able to find alternative [employment], and more easily manipulated.”⁷¹ Mike Coan, the former safety director of ConAgra Red Meat, acknowledged that “in some plants maybe a third of the people cannot read or write in any language”—this works to the benefit of the industry because people who are illiterate cannot fill out ballots to vote for a union.⁷² The high turnover rate also prevents workers from organizing because it is difficult for unions to gain consistent support when workers are constantly being replaced with new people who may not speak the same language or know about their right to unionize.

The lack of unions means that wages and benefits for slaughterhouse workers have continued to fall—in 2002, workers in meatpacking plants made, on average, 24 percent less than their counterparts in other factory jobs.⁷³ Employees continue to be forced to work in dangerous conditions, and they even have to buy their own safety equipment. The lack of unions also means that workers can’t collectively bargain for better health care or adequate workers’ compensation for their injuries. Throughout the farmed-animal industry—and especially in the chicken industry—workers are basically little more than serfs because they can’t negotiate collectively for better treatment. While the farmed industry continues to fight to prevent its laborers from organizing, workers are enduring worsening pay and work conditions with no hope for improvement.

Read about workers on factory farms.