Change to Win unions are standing up to Smithfield in our Justice at Smithfield campaign.

• Smithfield is the largest hog producer and pork processor in the world and the fifth largest beef processor in the United States. The company raoses 14.7 million hogs a year for slaughter. Smithfield Packing slaughters 32,000 hogs a day at its Tar Heel facility.
• Revenues have doubled over the past five years to $11.4 billion.
• The company’s net profit reached $300 million in 2005.
• Its global employment exceeds 50,000.

For all items above, see endnote 1 below

• The base wage for workers at the non-union Tar Heel North Carolina Plant is just $8.60 an hour.² Union workers in other food processing facilities currently make more than $12 an hour.³
• The non-union wage is 31% below the amount of money one needs to earn to afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment.⁴
• The non-union wage is lower than the income needed to keep a family of four above the federal poverty line: $20,000, or an average of $9.62 an hour.⁵

• CEO Jospeh W. Luter III received more than $10.8 million in total compensation in 2005.⁶
• That level of compensation amounted to $29,600 a day – far more than the annual wage of his company’s workers.

• When New York Times’ reporter Charlie LeDuff went undercover as a worker at Smithfield, he found that “Whites, blacks, American Indians, and Mexicans, they all have their separate stations."⁷
• In 1997, two union supporters were dragged out of the plant, beaten up, insulted with racial slurs, handcuffed and arrested.  The two workers successfully sued Smithfield and their Chief of Security, Danny Priest, under the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, a federal civil rights law.⁸

• Up until 2005, Smithfield employed a private police force. This police force has arrested and detained more than 100 workers, including union supporters. The Police kept a jail on site where it has detailed people for up to six hours for questioning, before transporting to the county jail.
• Smithfield's abusive practices have been documented in two Human Rights Watch Reports, Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Workers’ Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry and UNFAIR ADVANTAGE: Workers’ Freedom of Association in the United States under International Human Rights Standards.⁹

• In 1997, Smithfield was fined $12.6 million by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for 7,000 violations of the U.S. Clean Water Act and National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permitting process. The fine, one of the largest ever, was upheld with only a minor change by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond.
• A former operator of Smithfield’s two wastewater treatment facilities at its Virginia plants was released from federal prison last year after pleading guilty to knowingly discharging contaminated wastewater into the Pagan River and trying to cover it up.
• Smithfield’s Tar Heel plant in Bladen County, North Carolina, has been cited several times by the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources for exceeding its permitted waste discharge limits.
• Similarly, Smithfield’s North Carolina factory hog farms have received numerous notices of violations and fines from state regulators for waste-lagoon spills.
• In June of 2000, Smithfield was sued by a number of environmental organizations for negligence, liability, trespass, and unfair trade practices related to the operation of swine waste disposal lagoons.
• Water pollution concerns from waste-lagoons have become so severe that the company recently signed an agreement with North Carolina to phase out the lagoon storage system on company-owned farms, committing up to $65 million to develop alternative technology and to clean up the environment.

For all items above, see endnote 10 below

1. Smithfield Foods Form 10-K, Securities and Exchange Commission, for fiscal year ended May 1, 2005.
2. Reports by Smithfield Foods workers in Tar Heel Plant to the United Food and Commercial Workers, Feb. 2006.
3. Calculated figure from current UFCW-Smithfield Foods collective bargaining agreements covering approximately 13,000 employees. The average rate is based on negotiated base production wage rate.
4. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of Reach 2005.”
5. "2006 Federal Poverty Guidelines,” Federal Register, Vol. 71, No. 15, Jan. 24, 2006, pp. 3848-3849.
6. Smithfield Foods, 2005 Proxy Statement, Securities and Exchange Commission form 14-A.
7. Charlie LeDuff, “At a Slaughterhouse, Some Things Never Die; Who Kills, Who Cuts, Who Bosses Can Depend on Race,” New York Times, June 16, 2000, p. A1.
8. United Food and Commercial Workers, http://www.ufcw.org/smithfield_justice/what_is_at_stake/index.cfm.
9. Human Rights Watch, Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Workers’ Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants, 2005, and Human Rights Watch, UNFAIR ADVANTAGE: Workers’ Freedom of Association in the United States under International Human Rights Standards, 2000.
10. United Food and Commercial Workers,   http://www.ufcw.org/smithfield_justice/irresponsible_smithfield/index.cfm.
11. Smithfield vs. UFCW Local 204, Administrative Law Judge John H. West, #JD-158-00, Dec. 15, 2000.
12. Rodriguez, Ward v. Smithfield Packing Company, Daniel Priest, United States Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 02-1835, July 30, 2003.
13. QSI Inc., NLRB 11-CA-20240, 11-CA, 20317, Smithfield Packing Company, Tar Heel Division, NLRB 11-CA-20241, 11-CA 20281.