Swift meatpacking workers vote to join union

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.sltrib.com/business/ci_11034805

Seeking a say » They want better benefits and more rights

By Jennifer W. Sanchez

The Salt Lake Tribune
Updated: 11/20/2008 05:25:19 PM MST


One of two signs posted along U.S. 89 in Logan March 6, 2007 advertise jobs at E.A. Miller beef processing plant also know as the Swift & Co. Meat processing plant. (File / The Salt Lake Tribune)

Since Bernardo Ponce started working at the now JBS Swift & Co. meat-packing plant in Hyrum 14 years ago, ownership has changed four times.

Each time employees saw their benefits decreased or eliminated, Ponce said. So when he heard this summer about some of his co-workers trying to unionize the plant, he rallied behind them and encouraged others to join their fight.

" just kept taking things away," he said in Spanish. "We wanted the union to make a change."

This week, after months of organizing and attending community meetings, more than two-thirds of plant workers voted to join the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW).

Some 1,000 workers were eligible to vote in Wednesday's election on paper ballots in the plant's cafeteria. Of ballots cast, 649 (69 percent) were for the union and 290 voted against, said UFCW spokesman Evan Yeats,

In the 1980s and on and off since then, workers have tried to unionized but failed. The Hyrum site was the only plant that was not unionized when federal agents arrested some 1,300 undocumented workers in December 2006 during an immigration raid on six meat-packing plants nationwide, then owned by Swift & Co., one of the world's largest meat processors. JBS bought Swift last year.

This time, workers started organizing meetings in August and later petitioned the National Labor Relations Board for an election.

FULL 2 page story at link.