Smithfield/Farmland Workers Win Lunch Rights
For some fifteen years workers at the Milan, Missouri hog processing plant owned by Smithfield/Farmland were required to buy their lunches at the company cafeteria—just one more daily sore spot for workers already struggling to make ends meet. In February, however, Smithfield/Farmland finally relented and is now permitting employees to bring their own lunches into the plant. The decision came on the heels of a letter sent to the company by the Milan Ministerial Alliance last year after Center for New Community organizer Axel Fuentes and workers spoke to the pastors about the persistent issue.
One worker reported that when he asked about the lunch purchasing requirement during orientation he was told, “if you don’t like it you can go somewhere else and work.” Workers’ complaints about the matter - and about the price and quality of the food they were required to buy - went unheeded for years until the company announced the change of policy last month. When the news broke, calls poured into Fuentes from workers thankful that something had finally broken on the issue. Workers report that since the change in policy the food at the cafeteria itself is better but more expensive; more and more workers are bringing their own food to work now that they can do so.
Previous owners of the company always claimed that plant sanitation and health requirements prohibited workers from bringing their own food into the plant. Smithfield/Farmland took over Milan operations in 2007. Since 2008 Milan area pastors and plant workers have forged an important alliance to advance worker issues at the plant and in the community, including training and treatment of the contract crew responsible for cleaning the plant using toxic chemicals. Rescinding the food purchase requirements is, according to Fuentes, “an important breakthrough in worker relations with the company managing this plant. The workers are grateful for the support and leadership of the community and its pastors in this effort.”
Anti-immigrant Movement Advances Its Reach Into States and Communities
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and its allied organizations are deepening their reach into states and communities across the nation to advance a restrictive, anti-immigrant agenda through legislative action and local ordinances.
Since late January the Center for New Community has identified 43 anti-immigrant rallies, meetings, and press conferences from northeast Rhode Island to southern California. FAIR’s education and training events for local anti-immigrant leaders and activists have yielded key lobbying campaigns in support of state-level policies to restrict immigrant rights, and have prompted numerous press conferences and other media events aimed at promoting a restrictionist agenda in legislatures and in local communities.
In response to this anti-immigrant activity, 19 local and state-wide immigrant rights organizations took action to thwart FAIR and its allies, based on information provided by the Center for New Community. Before FAIR-affiliated groups lobbied elected officials in Maryland and Georgia, for example, information about the organization was conveyed to dozens of lawmakers in the two states. The emails and faxes included background information about a local anti-immigrant group’s working relationship with FAIR and FAIR’s connections to white nationalist leaders and organizations.
Many state legislators and local officials are not aware of FAIR´s deep ties to groups like the Pioneer Fund, a notorious racist foundation that has supported eugenics and other “race science research” since its formation decades ago, or of its ties to the Council of Conservative Citizens, the modern-day incarnation of the White Citizens Councils out of the segregationist South. FAIR has been identified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, yet it continues to ply its agenda as a “mainstream” organization.
To learn more about FAIR and its numerous front groups contact the Center for New Community and sign up for its bi-weekly e-news publication, FAIR Exposed.
Take Action Now!
Anti-immigrant Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio is still running Maricopa County like his own fiefdom. Recent adverse media exposure of his latest inhumane treatment of immigrant prisoners—marching them circus-like through the streets to a new tent city constructed to incarcerate them—had virtually no impact on him. Numerous efforts are underway in Arizona and across the nation to put a stop to Arpaio. You can join this growing movement by signing on to a petition calling for a federal investigation into his practices. Click to view the petition at America’s Voice, http://americasvoiceonline.org/page/content/sheriff. Do it today!
