Nebraskan Atrocities and the Struggle to Organize

Omaha Nebraska is known for its beef industry. Coming through L Street in South Omaha you can smell the raw stench of death. The workers describe to me the condition on the “kill floor” facing 2500 cattle a day. First the head is cut off, then the feet and then slits in the skin so a machine can suck it all off at once. Next comes the slicing and dicing which is hard work, carrying heavy loads and cutting through massive muscle. If a worker isn’t trained to sharpen their knives right it’s even harder work, as a friend of mine from Greater Omaha beef, s

till no union, explained he did not get proper training and hurt his shoulder. Most workers are immigrants from Mexico, Central America, Sudan or Vietnam with some Chicanos, African American and whites mixed in.

The Human Rights Watch put out a report called Blood, Sweat and Fear telling of the now famous rights abuses from the meatpacking industry, “failure to prevent serious workplace injury and illness, denial of compensation to injured workers, interference with workers’ freedom of association—are directly linked to the vulnerable immigration status of most workers in the industry and the willingness of employers to take advantage of that vulnerability (Watch, 2004).”

Maria works at Skyler, a plant that has been organized for some time, and now she helps her union, United Food Commercial Workers (UFCW), to organize other plants. The Nebraska Beef plant is notorious for its anti-union campaigns. In 2001, the UFCW filed charges against the company for its illegal firing of workers which finally, “The NLRB upheld a hearing officer's findings that the company used a broad range of intimidation tactics to deny workers a voice on the job in the 2001 election (Rivera, 2009)."

Now the UFCW is starting to organize Nebraska Beef and Greater Omaha again, but its uphill struggle against these historically anti-union plants that have fought hard and dirty to keep from unionization. Last week, Father Jack McCaslin and myself went to help “handbill,” to get authorization cards. Perhaps this is a new beginning to a long stronghold of worker intimidation wherein the Employee Free Choice Act could pass soon and change the entire playing field to give workers the right to organize, binding arbitration and stiffer penalties against illegal anti-union mistreatment of workers. We must keep on in this struggle and make sure that we are involving faith leaders as we together figure out what it means to live out our faith in this context of extreme capitalitism and exploitation.