Ah, union power—after flexing its muscle with a 99% vote in favor of a strike, UFCW Local 304a got Smithfield to agree to raise the starting pay at its Sioux Falls slaughterhouse from $17 an hour to $18.75, fork out $520 bonuses, and keep a 15-minute afternoon break for workers.
Tina Gonzalez is a business agent at UFCW Local 304a and was at the bargaining table.
Publicly speaking out about the negotiations put pressure on Smithfield to agree to the union’s demands, Gonzalez said. But what really made a difference was the strength and unity of the union itself.
“I think that the biggest part that convinced them was seeing how much support we actually had at the plant,” Gonzalez said. “I don’t think that they realized how tired our workers are right now. I don’t think that they realized that they’re willing —even though 60% of them live paycheck to paycheck — I don’t think that they realized and really understood that they would much rather struggle for a couple of weeks or even a month of going out on strike than continue to work under the conditions that they were, to continue to be working for the same amount of money that Taco John’s was paying. So I think that those things were a real eye opener for them” [Arielle Zionts, “Smithfield Union to Vote on Contract Offer,” SDPB Radio, 2021.06.10].
$18.75 is a quarter shy of the $19/hour the union wanted to match wages at the JBS meat factory in Worthington. Union members will vote this Thursday on accepting this contract offer.
Giving all of its 3,700 Sioux Falls workers, not just the starters, a $1.75/hour raise for a year and a $520 bonus woulf cost Smithfield $14.9 million. Meanwhile, Smithfield’s owners are offering investors almost 130 times that much to buy back stock and boost their portfolios:
WH Group, the world’s largest pork producer, surged to a 14-month-high after the company offered as much as HK$14.95 billion (US$1.93 billion) to buy back 13 per cent of its capital at a premium as the stock underperformed the market in 2020 and this year.
The stock rose 11 per cent to an intraday high of HK$7.54 on Monday, its highest level since April 2020, before closing at HK$7.33 on Monday. Hong Kong’s benchmark Hang Seng Index fell 0.5 per cent on the same day.
The share price rose after the firm offered to pay HK$7.80 each to cancel 1.92 billion of its outstanding shares in the buyback to “enhance shareholder value”, according to an exchange filing on Sunday. BofA Securities and Morgan Stanley are the agents conducting the buyback on its behalf, it added [Enoch Yiu, “World’s Largest Pork Producer WH Group Makes US$1.93 Billion BUyback Offer to Boost Valuye as Sotck Underperforms Market,” South China Morning Post, 2021.06.07].
Ah, investor power….
American labor has come a long way. In the old days, when you posed a threat to the Chinese, they sent in the tanks and killed everyone.
Gonzalez? Meaning no offense, but Gonzalez has the ring of a deeply rooted, well entrenched South Dakota moniker,. probably a descendant of the Conquistadors from Spain..
Chinese owners are pretty damn smart. That’s why they are way ahead of the West in business matters. While the west was still playing marbles with rabbit poop, the Chinese were trading around the world. Ask yourself why Wall Street is going big in China. The answer is because we Americans are not doing it here, thanks to Thune and Rounds, the best buds China could ever ask for.
Good on the workers at Smithfield, they deserve a whole lot more for the work they do.
They should have held out for more.
– Our nature as humans is to expend as little energy as possible to get what we want or need.
– Longtime employees expect to receive raises.
– They also became less enthusiastic about the work.
– And, they are a potential source of internal workplace discontent.
– A dug-in, blue-collar work force represents “a march to
mediocrity”.
– To encourage employee turnover, after three years on the job,
hourly workers no longer receive automatic raises.
– Bonuses are offered to people who quit.
– There is limited upward mobility for hourly workers.
– Managers are not chosen from current employees. They are hired
from outside sources.
– The number of workers who leave the company over a full year is
larger than the total level of employment.
– This business model is how Amazon made Jeff Bezos the richest
employer worldwide.
~ China IS smarter than America.
~ Bezo’s model is unsustainable in the long run.
~Smithfield’s is the free market exemplified.
~China is the future, like it or lump it.
well…as I understand it, 51%of all Chinese “private” companies are owned by the Chinese government aka the Communist Party or one of its entities(most commonly, the Chinese Army). Only 49% of the shares are on the market. If I’m wrong, please correct me. The financial status, in US terms, of Chinese owned business entities is shielded by the Chinese government and is really unknown. China has a hybrid economic system which resembles a state sponsored fascism.
Porter, it never has to be a march to mediocrity. You should check out the IBEW, when my dad was head of it he communicated the upward mobility, you can always go upward in each company depending on what you are willing to learn, if you want that is. Without unions it is exactly what you say. Where I worked all of the adjuncts had virtually no chance of becoming full time, period. Why pay more for someone you already have?