Ruling against pork processor upheld
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Winston-Salem Journal
RALEIGH, NC
May 2, 2006
A company police force illegally threatened and assaulted employees of a contractor hired to clean Smithfield Foods' massive pork-processing factory in Tar Heel, a National Labor Relations Board panel said in a ruling released yesterday.
The panel upheld a year-old ruling by an administrative-law judge who said that Smithfield's private police force and managers from the contractor, QSI Inc., bullied and abused the workers when they walked off the job in November 2003.
The workers were demanding a $1-an-hour raise, reinstatement of two lower-level managers who had recently been fired and improved working conditions. When they tried to walk out, they were threatened with firing and arrest by immigration authorities, and some were physically assaulted, according to the NLRB.
"By virtually all accounts, the walkout by the employees was a peaceful and a reasonable means of protest," protected by federal labor law, according to the April 11, 2005, ruling by Administrative Law Judge Lawrence W. Cullen. "The violence that occurred was initiated by respondent QSI's management and the Smithfield Special Police."
The labor-relations panel upheld Cullen's decision in a ruling dated Friday and released yesterday.
It ordered QSI to reinstate 14 workers who were fired for walking out and to give them back pay, and it told both companies to stop firing, assaulting, threatening or otherwise mistreating employees who engaged in legally protected labor actions.
Smithfield plans to appeal the decision to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, a company spokesman said in a statement that noted that Smithfield no longer employs a special police force.