clauddette.pdf

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Smithfield News Release

Union is Misleading Consumers, Hurting Employees

And Blocking a Secret-Ballot Vote at Smithfield Plant

Contact: Dennis Pittman

Director of Corporate Communications

910-876-4776

The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union is giving consumers false information about Smithfield Foods. The union also is refusing to let the employees vote by secret ballot on whether they want to be represented by the union.

Responding to the UFCW’s announcement of a Washington-area advertising campaign aimed at Smithfield pork-processing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, Dennis Pittman, Smithfield’s Director of Corporate Communications, said:

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March 4, 2008
Union Misstates the Facts – Again

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Businesses for the Bay honors 11 for preventing pollution

By Karl Blankenship

The Bay Program's Businesses for the Bay initiative has presented 10 regional businesses with esteemed Environmental Excellence Awards and one individual with the Mentor of the Year award for their efforts in reducing nutrient and chemical pollution in the Bay and its tributaries.

Winners of this year's Businesses for the Bay Environmental Excellence Awards are:

• Outstanding Achievement for Pollution Prevention / Large Facility: Anheuser-Busch, Inc., Williamsburg, VA; and Smithfield Packing Company, Landover, MD.

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Firms Use RICO to Fight Union Tactics

By KRIS MAHER
December 10, 2007; Page A15

Employers are using laws originally aimed at organized crime to combat aggressive union organizing efforts that they claim amount to extortion.

Two lawsuits filed by employers in the past two months invoked the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, to claim unions have tried to damage their reputations and businesses through public-relations campaigns and other tactics. In both suits, the companies claim the unions are spreading false and damaging information through flyers and the Internet and at demonstrations.

The suits, which the unions say are baseless, mark escalating tensions over organizing methods. Unions want to organize workers by approaching them off company grounds and having them sign cards in favor of a union while the company remains neutral, a process companies say subjects employees to intense pressure. Companies generally favor a secret-ballot election, which is held on company property and usually follows months or years of expensive, time-consuming and negative campaigning by both sides.

RICO was passed in 1970 to make it easier to prosecute organized-crime leaders when they couldn't be directly tied to murders or other crimes but when a pattern of racketeering existed. Civil RICO claims became common in the 1980s and have been filed in a variety of contexts, often against corporations, alleging fraud or illegal competition. The law allows for the recovery of triple damages.

While unusual, union-related suits filed under RICO laws instead of labor laws have precedent. In 1995, Food Lion LLC sued the United Food and Commercial Workers, claiming the union planted damaging reports in the media and filed frivolous regulatory claims. The case was settled in 2004.

In October, Smithfield Foods Inc. filed suit against the United Food and Commercial Workers, which has been trying for more than a decade to organize 4,600 hourly workers at the company's Tar Heel, N.C., plant.

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Barton: Don't pick on Paula Deen

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Modified: Nov 28, 2007 05:12 AM

Published: Nov 28, 2007 05:09 AM

Smithfield's Luter says company has been under attack.

Union tactics under fire

Smithfield uses racketeering law

Kristin Collins, Staff Writer

A racketeering lawsuit filed by Smithfield Foods could deter unions across the nation from criticizing corporations, some legal experts say.

After a 15-year struggle to fend off unionization of Smithfield's giant Bladen County plant -- the world's largest pork slaughterhouse -- the company is alleging that the union amounts to a criminal organization.

Smithfield is one of a handful of corporations fighting unions with a federal law often used in mob prosecutions. As a result, the suit has taken one of the Southeast's largest union fights into new territory.

The threat of complex and expensive federal lawsuits, which can target not just unions but the community groups that support them, "is certainly going to have a powerful impact on free speech," said Marion Crain, a UNC-Chapel Hill law professor and the director of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity.

The suit, filed in Richmond, Va., last month, accuses the United Food and Commercial Workers union of engaging in extortion and asks for about $5 million in damages. It says that union members orchestrated a public smear campaign designed to hurt the Smithfield, Va.-based company's business. Union members offered to stop only if the company agreed to bargain with the union.

The suit uses a federal law known as the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which was designed to target organized crime. In the past few years, companies have used it against unions in rare instances -- but there is still little legal precedent for such a use of the law.

"Our company has been under attack," Joe Luter IV, head of the division that runs the company's slaughterhouses, said Tuesday in a meeting at The News & Observer. "This lawsuit was a last resort, and it's not something that we wanted to do."

 

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November 16, 2007
The unthruths against Smithfield go on

This summer, for example, the union charged that employees at the livestock pen did not have fresh water.  The next day, state OSHA inspectors showed up unannounced at the plant to investigate.  They found – and the agency said publicly – that the union’s charges were not true.

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November 12, 2007
Smithfield says, “Let employees vote”

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October 17, 2007

Smithfield Foods Files Civil Action against the United Food and Commercial Workers Union under Federal Racketeering Laws

Requests Relief from Union’s "Malicious and Exploitative Corporate Campaign"