

So it may not come as a shock that Smithfield Foods this week filed a 100-page lawsuit against its main union under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. The statute has historically has been used to prosecute organized crime and drug dealers.
The lawsuit accuses the various union leaders and their affiliated groups of using the tactics of Washington, D.C.'s K-Street lobbyists to fatten their own coffers from Main Street workers at the Smithfield Foods plants nationwide.
Smithfield started this fight by using bare-knuckle approaches in two union campaigns at the world's largest slaughterhouse in Tar Heel, North Carolina in 1994 and 1997. The company was rebuked heavily for its behavior, but now it portrays itself as the victim in recent years.
The lawsuit paints a picture of a union relentlessly harming the company's reputation and bottom line. It outlines a series of alleged misrepresentations and unwarranted attacks made by a union desperate for 4,650 more dues-paying members.
The union says this is about a corporation suppressing legitimate social protest by comparing it to organized crime.
"Rather than putting money into workers' health care, they're putting millions into a lawsuit to prevent a union and communities around the country from supporting them," said Gene Bruskin, an organizer with the United Food and Commercial Workers, or UFCW.
The world's largest pork company says that the UFCW campaign against Smithfield represents a new tactic to destroy companies until they recognize a union without a vote. This is big business's attempt to make sure a court calls the tactic illegal extortion.
Smithfield would not comment on the lawsuit.
A K-Street conspiracy
The lawsuit says a conglomeration of unions and groups that support them battled Smithfield in an effort to extort money from the company in the form of union dues.
The UFCW, which represents 1.4 million workers, is a member of Change To Win, a coalition of labor unions that joined together in 2005. The coalition is named as a defendant, along with union-aligned non-profit groups Research Associates of America and Jobs With Justice.
The lawsuit touts that many of the labor executives in the Smithfield campaign work on prestigious, expensive K Street, home to lobbyists for large corporations. Bruskin said the union headquarters has been there for decades. The suit also lists the work and home addresses of seven labor executives.
The union campaign is not aimed at forcing a company to accept a union without a voting process prescribed by federal law, said the company. The lawsuit spells out a strategy found in an alleged UFCW organizing document about how to get a union involved without the National Labor Relations Board, which mediates elections for the government.
The UFCW document advocates a strategy of costing employers enough money to either eliminate the company or force it to give up its rights and accept a union without a vote.
"One of the concerns organizers might have about waging economic war on an unorganized company is that it might turn employees against the union," the UFCW document stated. "I look at it this way: If you had massive employee support, you probably would be conducting a traditional organizing campaign."
The lawsuit says this tactic has been used against five other companies by the UFCW.
Bruskin said the person who wrote the document was a former UFCW organizer who wrote it after he left the organization.
How it began
The union onslaught began in June 2006, but the Change To Win Leadership Council had approved the "Justice At Smithfield" campaign in 2005.
The UFCW got Jobs With Justice to participate with $92,579 in contributions, and paid almost $2 million to Research Associates of America. The $2 million led to a study of OSHA reports on injuries at Tar Heel called "Packaged with Abuse." Smithfield says there were intentional, blatant errors in the report.
The company was annoyed by the union's non-stop attempts to get Harris Teeter to stop carrying Smithfield products. The union then told the news media that the grocery chain was pulling Smithfield products, which Harris Teeter denied.
The union got supporters to picket stores, hand out pamphlets to shoppers and even demonstrate outside the home of the Harris Teeter CEO. UFCW worked with Jobs With Justice to protest grocery stores carrying Smithfield nationwide, and they claimed victories at several stores.
The union also got local governments, including the New York City Council, to pass condemnations and boycotts of the company. The mayor of Boston wrote to Smithfield CEO C. Larry Pope saying the city would no longer buy Smithfield products.
After Smithfield inked a promotional deal with celebrity chef Paula Deen, the union started hounding her relentlessly this summer with protests at public appearances. A union organizer even sent a letter to Wall Street analysts to influence their opinion of the company's value.
Media campaign
The lawsuit explains how the union began a barrage of press releases in June 2006, using phrases such as "there's blood on that bacon" and "sweatshop conditions." The union organized protests that month against Smithfield in major cities.
The union releases portrayed the marches as being led by immigrant and civil rights groups, but were orchestrated by the union. By November, the campaign shifted into an attempt to get a Smithfield product boycott during Thanksgiving.
When Smithfield workers in Tar Heel were targeted by immigration officials over Social Security number problems, the union targeted the company. A press release said the company was using the situation "to terrorize immigrant workers" over growing union support.
Smithfield has, in fact, been found more than once by courts to use threats of calling immigration authorities to scare workers into following orders. But the union press release implied that the Smithfield threats were made right before the immigration authorities swooped in.
The union fought Smithfield's application for a state water permit, and portrayed it as led by environmentalists and workers. Change to Win said the water fountains didn't work in the plant, and printed the vice president's phone number.
A press release announcing the OSHA complaint said an employee had passed out from lack of water — which Smithfield denies. When OSHA investigated and cleared the company, the union said Smithfield colluded to get a false result.
A Change to Win story said a Smithfield worker died because the company put him in a job where he couldn't get his insulin, which the company denied.
The union even said the United Nations was investigating Smithfield for its treatment of workers. It claimed they would testify in a hearing to the top U.N. human rights official. In reality, the union set up an informal meeting with them at AFL-CIO headquarters, and there has never been any investigation of the company.
Even the recent Smithfield acquisition of Sara Lee's European operations was not immune. The union worked with international unions and local governments in the countries to fight the deal.
No lightweight
Many parts of the Smithfield complaint read like a person saying they have been unfairly picked on. The company complains that one union press release disclosed Luter's salary, which must be publicly revealed annually to investors by law.
The company takes offense to jabs from the union's use of non-literal catch phrases like "packaged with abuse" and "blood on that bacon" by calling them false accusations.
The company complained that the union said the plant "stirs racial tensions among African-American and Latino workers." Court rulings have condemned Smithfield for these practices, and the New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize in part for reporting on how the plant managers at Tar Heel separated workers by race and pitted them against each other.
Bruskin said most of the verbiage Smithfield objected to was based on — or taken directly from — worker testimony and court rulings.
"The truth hurts, and they don't like us advertising it," said Bruskin.
The lawsuit frequently complains not that civil rights, religious and other groups didn't take part in certain protests — but that the union didn't explicitly claim to lead them.
Smithfield also complains of repeated mentions in union literature of the company using threats and violence to intimidate workers. But Smithfield has been found guilty repeatedly by courts for abusing Tar Heel workers.
A scathing 400-page ruling by the labor relations board judge in 2000 said the company threatened to fire workers and said it would close if the union won. The company was forced to re-hire 11 workers, but it appealed the case for a decade before a court ordered a new election in 2006.
That's when the union tactics kicked into high gear. Now a court will decide if those tactics were ever truly aimed at winning a fair new election.
Events timeline
• Smithfield workers vote against the union in 1994 and 1997
• Court rulings for a decade condemn Smithfield's union-fighting tactics
• June 2006 – Union starts intense public campaign on plant conditions
• Negotiations over a new election end this week
• Smithfield files a RICO lawsuit Wednesday over union conduct
(dailypress.com)