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Union talks turkey with workers in Willmar
by Annie Baxter, Minnesota Public Radio
September 3, 2003

UFCW representatives Jennifer Christensen, Juan Sandoval, Yusef Kodar, and Jake Baxter outside their one-room office in Willmar. (MPR Photo/Annie Baxter)

This past Labor Day weekend, unions across the country announced a new push to increase union memberhship in the private sector. Membership rates have been on the decline nationally, as in Minnesota. But Minnesota still remains one of the most unionized states in the country, with an almost 20 percent union membership rate, compared to about 6 percent in many southern states. Efforts to unionize continue. One such place is in Willmar, Minnesota, where Jennie-O Turkey Store is based. The plant is employing more and more immigrant workers, and union organizers says those workers need help protecting their rights.

Willmar, Minn. — At a cafe called The Daily Grind in downtown Willmar, workers from the Jennie-O plant sit around a table with representatives from the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 789. The union opened an office in Willmar in July to lay the groundwork for a certification effort. Jennifer Christensen is the director of organizing.

"One of the main issues is we've encountered is job safety," Christensen says. "There's a lot of workplace injuries happening that we don't feel are being adequately addressed, and the workers don't feel that they're being addressed. They don't have the proper information on the workers' comp procedures they have to go through."

Jennie-O Turkey declined comment for this report. But Jennifer Christensen says the complaints here are common for the industry. Meatpacking is known to have a high accident rate. And though no single incident attracted the union's attention, Christensen says the overall environment is hostile.

"General workplace respect issues. Workers being heard, being listened to, workers from different cultures being played against the other" are all concerns, according to Christensen.

One Spanish-speaking employee, who wouldn't give his name, talked about his safety worries. An organizer from the UFCW, Juan Sandoval, translated.

Most people who work up there are all immigrants. They don't know their specific rights. It's only a percentage that can speak fluent English, maybe write English. - Yusef Kodar, union organizer

"The last time they were working on the line, the light went off and they were walking off the line. Everybody was tripping over each other. They don't got no backup lights."

According to the union's estimates, almost 45 percent of the workforce at Jennie-O is Hispanic, and approximately 30 percent is Somali.

Union reps say problems with safety and injuries are aggravated when the workers don't speak English. Yusef Kodar was born in Somalia and works as a union organizer.

"Most people who work up there are all immigrants. They don't know their specific rights," Kodar says. "It's only a percentage that can speak fluent English, maybe write English."

This workforce looks decidedly different from the meatpackers of the past. Twenty years ago, the meatpacking industry mostly consisted of white men.

But that's not all that's changed.

Bart Finzel teaches economics at the University of Minnesota, Morris, about 60 miles from Willmar. He says poultry processing's traditional home is the South.

"Major poultry processing in the north is a relatively new phenomenon. Most of the meatpacking industry was organized in the '30s and '40s," Finzel says. "And at that time, most of the meatpacking organization in the North, where unionization was strong, was in pork and beef."

So there's not much precedent for unionizing poultry workers in the North. The UFCW has targeted Jennie-O before. A sister local out of Minneapolis tried unsuccessfully to organize here about 10 years ago.

Jennie-O is now owned by Hormel. The strike at Hormel's Austin plant in the early 1980s was a landmark battle in Minnesota's union history.

But the UFCW says it's not intimidated by Hormel this time around. Union reps say they just want to get the word out now. They'll push for a certification vote when they feel the time is right. That may be some months in the future.

On the street, just outside the union's tiny one-room office, a union organizer holds forth on workers' rights, gesturing in the air with his cigarette. Another organizer leans against the wall, a fist stuffed into her front jeans pocket.

These organizers betray an air of tough confidence. They insist they're not going away anytime soon.

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