In the days following the contract vote, workers belonging to the negotiating committee organized a table in both plant cafeterias to sign up fellow workers for membership in United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 271. Nebraska is a "right-to-work" state, so each worker must individually join the union.

As each new member signed up, they received a "union yes" sticker for their hard hat in either Spanish or English. "There was a lot of spirit on the shop floor," said a 21-year veteran of the kill floor. "All those union stickers on hard hats everywhere all of a sudden--that was the result of many, many months of work. People are proud, and are walking with more authority."

He added, "The company doesn’t like it, but too bad. This helps them see that now, when they want to go after one of us, they will have a bigger problem."

The contract provides for modest wage increases of 35 cents an hour beginning immediately, with an additional 30 cents next year. Seniority rights, medical benefits, and job bidding stipulations are spelled out in the agreement. Probation is reduced from three months to a maximum of two months.

Other provisions give some protection to immigrant workers, who comprise roughly 90 percent of the workforce. Workers will maintain their seniority when they change their names or social security numbers, and are entitled to unpaid leaves of up to 30 days to take care of immigration matters.

"I’m glad we got the contract and our raise," said a kill floor worker who helped lead the organizing drive. "This was another step for us in getting the company to respect us and to win some dignity. But the company is going to seek revenge, because now their level of exploitation is going to have a limit."

"The fact we have a contract is a big step," said Yolanda Cruz, a trimmer with 15 months in the plant. "Before, they could just fire you, just show you the door. Now the company must officially recognize us as workers with rights."

The 20-month contract will expire in June 2004, which coincides with the contract cycle of the plant’s unionized mechanics.

"This is an important victory for everybody because now the company sees that the majority of the workers in the plant have the union, not just us mechanics," said a 38-year-old union mechanic. "Now when we come to our next contract vote we’ll be fighting at the same time."  
 
First union victory at local cut-and-kill
In May workers voted in the union by a 2-1 margin. This was the first union victory at one of the cut-and-kill operations in this area since the UFCW and a community group called Omaha Together/One Community (OTUC) launched an organizing drive in June 2000. Since then, workers at a smaller sausage plant voted for the UFCW, while the union election was lost at Nebraska Beef, a slaughterhouse with close to 1,000 workers.

The union negotiating committee, consisting of seven workers together with union officials, had been bargaining since mid-June.

María Pinto, an eight-year veteran of the kill floor and a member of the workers committee, explained the tactics used by the bosses during these months. "They dragged out negotiations to see if we would lose our drive," she said. "The longer it goes, the more they thought they could break our union, and later count on less people signing up for membership. They sped up the line, created a lot of pressure and problems. But we kept up the fight, kept on our feet, maintained our unity."

This working-class unity had been built through an organizing fight that drew on workers’ collective strength as they defended themselves against company attacks.

Workers responded to one such attack on a worker who was scheduled for surgery and had been granted a leave for such purpose. On his last work day before surgery, the company told him he would lose his job if he didn’t return in three days.

"Management thought we wouldn’t defend him because he wasn’t out in front during the organizing drive," said one of the workers who was active in the union drive. "But the company got a taste of the real union forged in this plant when word spread of this violation. A group of workers visited him in the hospital, and later made some noise in the plant about this outrage. Our union officials won a guarantee of his job upon recovery." Workers then made up a collection box with his photo, soliciting donations that would help defray his medical insurance costs.

On the week before the contract vote, three union officials walked throughout the shop floor talking with workers about job conditions for the good part of a day, including during the lunch break. Olga Espinoza encouraged co-workers to "come over and talk to our union representatives about any problems or questions we have."

At a certain point, when it became clear that the bosses were stalling on the negotiations, members of the workers committee who work on the kill floor organized a petition. It asked that during the contract negotiation period the company slow down the line speed and guarantee eight hours of work each day. Nearly all of the workers in the kill department signed the petition in one morning.

"After signing the petition, the company slowed the line down, and we didn’t even have our contract yet," said Cruz. After a week, the company pushed the line speed up again.

Commenting on the next steps to build the union in the plant, Espinoza said, "We need to stay united as always. The company will test us, but they also know we’re capable of defending ourselves as we’ve done before. We have stewards now, which is good, but we must also keep doing what we did before, with workers acting together to defend ourselves."

Lisa Rottach is a kill floor worker at the Swift plant in Omaha.  
 
 
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