Religious, Political Figures Urge Boycott of Smithfield Products

Tar Heel, N.C., is 341 miles from the nation's capital.

But a group of Washington-area religious and political leaders focused their attention June 19 on a Smithfield Meats pork processing plant in Tar Heel -- the world's largest such facility -- to urge a boycott of Smithfield meat products until the company stops what they said is unfair treatment of its workers.

"The Washington region is one of the biggest consumers of Smithfield products," said the Rev. Donald Robinson, senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Washington and emcee for a rally on a triangular patch of land across the street from his church.

There should be "one sense of fairness, one goal of fairness, one standard of fairness" at Smithfield, he added. "There shouldn't be two standards of fairness."

A couple of former employees at the rally said that, like many others, they were fired by Smithfield because they were injured on the job. But according to Smithfield spokesman Dennis Pittman, who spoke to Catholic News Service the next day, the real issue for those calling for the boycott is not working conditions but getting union representation at the plant.

The United Food and Commercial Workers union has been trying to organize the plant in Tar Heel, 80 miles from Raleigh, N.C., since it opened in 1992; it lost votes for unionizing in 1994 and '97 amid charges of company misconduct during the election campaign.

Tom Shellabarger, domestic policy adviser for the U.S. bishops' Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development, did not address the Smithfield issue directly in a June 19 telephone interview with CNS, but said "the concern for working Americans is something the bishops have certainly been concerned about."

"How a company responds to workers' efforts to organize is not just something the bishops are concerned about, but a matter of law. That law has been stretched and overlooked far too often in the recent past," he said.

Rally participants held a banner with the names of close to 800 workers injured on the job in 2006 and '07, a fact Smithfield admitted to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

A 2006 report by Research Associates of America, a union-funded nonprofit, showed injury rates in Tar Heel 2.5 times higher in 2006 than in 2003, and higher than comparable unionized Smithfield operations in the Midwest.