Leading up to this year’s celebration of King Day, about 4,000 of the 5,000 workers at the Tar Heel hog slaughterhouse signed a petition asking for the holiday as a paid day off. With typical arrogance, the company dismissed the request and threatened to penalize those who took time off. Nonetheless, some 500 meat packers took the day off or left work early January 15. Many attended a King Day march and memorial service in nearby Fayetteville, where several Smithfield workers spoke. The company later dropped its threat to discipline those who missed work.

This action builds on the November 16-17 walkout by 1,000 Smithfield workers, mostly Latin American immigrants, to protest the firing of dozens of employees accused of having false Social Security documents. That protest forced the bosses to agree not to penalize the strikers and to reinstate the fired workers, giving them more time to resolve the issue of their papers.

The Martin Luther King Day initiative was an effective way for Black and immigrant workers—the majority of the workforce—to forge stronger solidarity in action and undercut company attempts to divide them by nationality and language. It was a boost to the years-long fight to organize a union in face of brutal job conditions and abusive treatment—in a plant that processes 32,000 hogs a day to squeeze out maximum profits for the wealthy owners at the expense of workers’ lives and limbs.

The walkout and the ongoing struggle at Smithfield register the increased self-confidence of immigrant workers, which was demonstrated in the mobilizations of 2 million last April and May to demand the legalization of all undocumented workers. It was also seen in the protests against the December 12 immigration police raids at Swift packinghouses in six U.S. states.

These actions have strengthened the entire working class. And they underscore the fact that the only way to prevent bosses from pitting the U.S.- and foreign-born against each other is to organize all workers into unions, and to use union power in defense of all working people under attack by the employers and the government.

As the sign held by one of the marchers in Fayetteville aptly put it, "Workers united, never divided."
 
 
Related articles:
Smithfield workers join King Day march
4,000 at N. Carolina plant demand day off
Hundred s take off work, attend Fayetteville action  
 
 
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