Poultry and Pork-Processing Workers Stand Together

What do we want?
Justice!
When do we want it?
Now!

¿Qué queremos?
¡Justicia!
¿Cuando?
¡Ahora!

There ain't no power
like the power of the people,
cuz the power of the people
won't stop!

Gathered outside an H.G. Hills supermarket in Nashville, wearing yellow t-shirts that practically glowed in the burning Tennessee afternoon, we were shouting together. We were women and men of all ages, classes, races, and faiths, and we were holding signs, marching, chanting, singing, and praying together at a rally in support of pork-processing workers at the Smithfield plant in Tar Heel, N.C.

This rally was just one in a series of events to urge people to boycott Smithfield products and pressure supermarkets to stop selling them -- but for us it was a last-minute addition to our agenda at a poultry worker human rights convening. Poultry workers and workers' justice advocates, including UUSC's partners MPOWER and the Northwest Arkansas Worker Justice Center, had traveled from Mississippi, Arkansas, Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, Washington, D.C., and Massachusetts to build the poultry worker justice movement by networking, sharing information, building strategies, and deepening skills in community organizing.

The convening was a historic event at which workers' centers in the Southeast were meeting face to face for the first time. This rally, a show of solidarity between poultry and pork processing workers, and between workers' centers and unions, was a fitting accompaniment to the convening.

Johanna Chao Rittenburg, manager of UUSC's Economic Justice Program, and I, along with allies from the Center for Community Change, Oxfam America, Interfaith Worker Justice, the Highlander Research and Education Center, East Tennessee Jobs with Justice, and the Humane Society of the United States, were participating in the convening to connect with the workers' centers and learn how we can support them most effectively in our collective efforts to improve the wages and working conditions of poultry workers. Before this trip, I'd only been working at UUSC for four weeks, so I felt extremely fortunate to participate in the convening and meet the amazing people who dedicate themselves to this work.

After the rally, we piled onto the bus that would bring us back to the conference center to carry on with our agenda. Gulping water and drained from the sun, we felt tired but energized at the same time. When we returned to our meeting we sat in a circle and shared our thoughts on the rally, each of us summing our reflections up in one word: excited, connected, solidarity, unity, hopeful.

For more information on workers' rights in the poultry industry, check out these resources:

"Injury and Injustice," (PDF) a UFCW Fact Sheet on the Poultry Industry.

"Finger Licking Bad: How Poultry Producers are Ravaging the Rural South," (PDF) By Suzi Parker, Grist magazine, February 21, 2006.

"Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Workers' Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants," (PDF) a Human Rights Watch report that profiles both the meat and poultry industries.

Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America's Favorite Food, (book) by Steve Striffler. An anthropologist's expose on the U.S. poultry processing industry.