After a decade and a half of struggle, the workers at the Smithfield Packing slaughterhouse in Tar Heel, North Carolina won their right to union representation.  Steven Greenhouse from the New York Times notes that the United Food and Commercial Workers [UFCW], after failed unionization drives in 1994 and 1997, won the support of the workers with a margin of 162 votes in favor of unionization.  It is, without a doubt, a highly significant victory for the working class from the southeastern region of the United States and for working men and women of the country as a whole.  With typically low levels of unionization relative to the rest of the United States, the workers from North Carolina set a precedent for the entire southeastern region to emulate.

The bosses at Smithfield, like many capitalists fearing the self-mobilization of their workforce, used underhanded and downright illegal tactics to prevent any kind of successful unionization campaign from materializing.  For example, the UFCW claimed that they lost the 1997 election because the bosses at Smithfield allegedly fired workers who supported the Union’s attempts to organize the company.  The company was later found guilty by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit of “spying on workers’ union activities, confiscating union materials, threatening to fire workers who voted for the union, and threatening to freeze wages and close the plant,” all of which are violations of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935.  Despite the overall victory for the workers at the Smithfield plant, one cannot overlook the rather ironic twist that shifted momentum away from the bosses and into the direction of the workers. 

African Americans and Latinos make up the majority at the Smithfield facility.  Two years ago, as Steven Greenhouse notes, African Americans made up 20% of the workforce.  Today, that number is 60%.  The reason for this is, at the same time, predictable and alarming.  It all stems from the transitory and exploitative aspects intrinsic to “undocumented” labor.  The capitalists prey on this particular form of labor because of its seemingly limitless potential to increase profits.  It also appears, rather naively, to the capitalists that few, if any, negatively foreseeable consequences can result from this situation.  An armed apparatus of enforcement officials coupled with a constitution designed to protect avarice and predation only multiplies the power the capitalists can exert over an already marginalized and fearful workforce.  Unionization drives typically isolate Latino workers who fear deportation or worse for supporting union activities.  All of this is well known to the capitalists and used relentlessly on their part to intimidate and divide workshops with the aim of preventing unification. 

Through the use of the National Security Agency [NSA], the capitalists can quickly remove workers with “ambiguous” status who call for union representation.  The 1,500 Latino workers, who left the factory because of a possible NSA raid, actually facilitated the victory of the workers at Smithfield.  While it is most enjoyable to “thumb my nose” at the capitalists and their contradictory imperial grand scheme to annihilate the workers’ movement, it is grossly incorrect to assert that the removal of Latino workers from workplaces is all that is necessary to ensure a union election victory.  The Latino men and women at Smithfield were an indispensable component to victory.  Workers from all backgrounds must protect and encourage their Latino comrades by fighting alongside them in their combined daily struggles against capitalist exploitation. 

The long fought victory at Smithfield empirically suggests that workers from various backgrounds can unite under one banner.  We simply cannot let the bosses divide us along trivially self-defeating lines any longer.  The struggle for working class political supremacy gains traction and reinforcement from events like the one in Tar Heel, North Carolina.