Today's New York Times picks up the continuing stooooory of Paula Deen versus the workers of Tar Heel, North Carolina:
Paula Deen, the Food Network’s ebullient queen of butter-drenched Southern cooking, has found herself in the middle of a dispute between Smithfield Foods Inc. and a union that has long tried to organize one of the company’s pork processing plants...
Within the growing world of food-celebrity endorsements, Ms. Deen is the first personality to have become entangled in such a fight.
And the story contains the first response from Paula & company themselves on the issue:
Ms. Deen, for her part, issued a news release in which she said, “Now, I’m not an expert on the union situation but here’s what I do know: I know the folks at Smithfield care about their employees and work hard to support the communities where they live, work and raise their families.”
Just as a reminder, here's what Smithfield worker and Gulf War veteran Keith Ludlum told a House subcommittee back in February (PDF) about exactly how much Smithfield "care[s] about its employees":
The moment that made me realize we needed a union at Smithfield was when a fellow worker in his 50’s broke his leg on the job when it was pinned between an electric pallet jack and a concrete wall.
Jeez! That sounds horrible. But since Paula has assured us that Smithfield cares about its employees, I'm sure they gave that guy top-notch medical care and plenty of time to recuperate...
The next day, when I came to work, he was there in the break room with a full leg cast and using crutches. I asked him why he was back at work so soon. He told me that the company had told him he needed to come to work or he would lose his job.
Oh. Um... well, I'm sure there's at least a very good reason why they forced him back to work. Right?
It was only later that I learned that by forcing him to return to work the next day, Smithfield avoided reporting a lost work day due to injury on their Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) log.
Hm. Never mind, then.
So Paula's approach to learning that her sugar daddy regularly abuses its workers is to clap her hands over her ears and say "I can't hear you!" I guess Upton Sinclair said it best:
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
Women too, apparently.
