Jane Slaughter
Labor Notes
March 2008

Since the UFCW's Justice at Smithfield campaign began in 2006, the union has
asked city councils to pass resolutions and boycott Smithfield products, and
demonstrated at stockholder meetings (above). The company cites these
actions as evidence of a racketeering conspiracy. Photo: Metro Washington
Council, AFL-CIO. Click to enlarge.Is it illegal for an activist group or
union to criticize a company's business practices? Is it a "conspiracy" if
advocates call for boycotts, organize rallies, or press for resolutions from
elected bodies?

Smithfield Foods, the largest producer of pork products in the world, is
hoping so, after a lawsuit it filed last October passed an initial court
challenge. The suit aims to halt the United Food and Commercial Workers'
campaign to unionize 4,600 workers in its Tar Heel, North Carolina,
slaughterhouse. The company is using a 1970 statute originally designed to
battle gangsters' extortion schemes-the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt
Organizations Act (RICO).

"This is a terrible menace to rights of free speech and protest, and
constitutional rights and freedom of expression," said Lance Compa, Cornell
University labor relations professor and an expert on the meatpacking
industry. "It's a really dangerous new offensive that employers have seized
on to try to snuff out legitimate protest about abusive employer conduct."

Jobs with Justice, which is named as a defendant in the suit, is launching a
campaign against corporations' use of the RICO act, which has surfced
intermittently as one legal tactic among an arsenal to silence corporate
critics. The act has been used to file suits in recent months against
campaigns by the Service Employees (SEIU) at the Wackenhut security firm,
and the UFCW at an Arizona-based grocery chain.

JWJ expects to work with unions, central labor councils, and city councils
to pass fresh resolutions condemning the lawsuit.

"Our goal is to protect the right of not only unions to engage in these
activities, but everybody fighting corporate abuses," said Russ Davis,
director of Massachusetts JWJ. "Hopefully we can deter corporations from
going down this road. But if these things occur again we want to be ready."

A VAST CONSPIRACY?

Smithfield sees a wide array of plotters conspiring against it, naming UFCW,
JWJ, Research Associates of America, and Change To Win, the labor federation
to which the UFCW belongs. Also named are eight individuals, including UFCW
President Joe Hansen, the union's Smithfield campaign director Gene Bruskin,
and Andy Stern, SEIU president.

Since the UFCW's Justice at Smithfield campaign began in June 2006, the
union has asked city councils to pass resolutions and boycott Smithfield
products, demonstrated at stockholder meetings, and filed health and safety
complaints with OSHA. Stores in Massachusetts pulled Smithfield products
from their shelves.

All these actions the company cites in its lawsuit as evidence of "formation
of the conspiracy," "delivery of the threat," and "publication of false,
misleading, baseless, negative and/or damaging information on the Internet
and in the newspapers."

"Whatever economic consequences flow, they are not considered in the law
sufficient to deprive people of free speech," said Joan Bertin, director of
the National Coalition Against Censorship, a member of the anti-RICO
coalition.

The defendants' supposed crime? They employed strategies long used by unions
and social movements to educate the public, garner support, and pressure
corporations.

The union said it had to turn to an aggressive campaign for consumer and
community support because Smithfield repeatedly violated laws that are
supposed to allow workers to organize.

The UFCW has lost two National Labor Relations Board elections at the plant,
both of which were overturned after reams of unfair labor practice charges
were sustained against the company. Smithfield's violations include firing
workers for talking about the union, and attempts to spy on and intimidate
them.

"A TERRIBLE DISTRACTION"

"They're trying to box us into a slow, NLRB process, because it doesn't
punish them for violations-all (workers) get is back-pay and reinstatement,"
said Renee Bowser, UFCW's assistant general counsel.

Court-watchers doubt the suit will survive. A similar RICO suit brought by
Detroit's newspapers last decade against striking newspaper workers
ultimately failed.

"This form of coalition building, holding demonstrations-all of these are
classic forms of freedom of association, freedom of expression, and freedom
of assembly," Compa said. "Ultimately the case won't hold up. In the
meantime it's a terrible distraction."

http://labornotes.org/node/1559

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