WRAL-TV is reporting tonight that the workers at Smithfield Foods’ giant hog slaughtering plant in Tar Heel have voted to join the United Food and Commercial Workers.
Tar Heel, N.C. — Workers at one of North Carolina’s largest industrial sites voted Thursday to join a union to bring better pay and working conditions to the world’s largest hog-processing plant.
Smithfield Packing Co. employees in the tiny Bladen County town of Tar Heel completed two days of voting at 7 p.m.
It is not the first time workers have considered forming a union that could result in better pay and improved working conditions.
The United Food and Commercial Workers union has tried since the plant opened 16 years ago to win the right to represent about 4,600 production workers.
A federal court ruled two years ago that Smithfield’s bad conduct during two elections in the 1990s unfairly skewed the votes the union lost.
Let’s hope that the company doesn’t try yet again to deny the workers their basic rights.
