Fighting for Justice on
the Delmarva Peninsula
By Michael J. Wilson, United Food and Commercial Workers
International Union (UFCW)
The Delmarva
Peninsula is a one-of-a kind place. It is the
one place where Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia
meet on a thin strip of land surrounded by the
Atlantic Ocean and the Chesapeake Bay. If you
are thinking that it is the land of crabs, you’
re wrong. It is the land of chicken farming
and chicken processing, and the setting for
a historic struggle for workers rights.
It was March of 1999 and the coalition that
became the Delmarva Poultry Justice Alliance
was as disparate a group as there has ever been;
farmers, environmentalists, church groups, workers
from inside and outside the poultry processing
plants, and union activists. Members of this
alliance came together because they were simply
fed up with the poultry industry, no pun intended.
Maybe Rev. Jim Lewis, a member of the Alliance,
summed it up best. He spoke of the degradation
of the immigrant workers toiling in harsh and
brutal conditions in processing plants; of the
tough work of killing, cutting, skinning and
deboning chickens and chicken parts at a rate
faster than one per second, in a refrigerator-cold,
wet workplace. He talked about the difficulty
of being a poultry farmer, with all of the responsibility
for the farmer’ s crops and the bi-products
of their farms, but no ability to diverge from
the production dictates of the giant poultry
firms. He spoke about the difficulty of being
a "chicken catcher," of working for
the company that thought of you as an "independent
contractor", but determined your schedule,
your pay, your job assignments, and owned the
product you worked with from beginning to end.
He talked of the problems of runoff from the
chicken waste, and how it impacted the bay,
the ocean, the tourists, and every person who
worked, farmed, or visited the Delmarva. He
made it so that your enjoyment of chicken was
changed forever.
Alliance members were confronted with issues
of immigrant status, union organizing, waste
runoff, wages, employee status and control over
the product. The Alliance used various strategies
to address these issues including litigation,
community organizing and legislative advocacy.
Bringing members of Congress to the Delmarva
was unprecedented. It was done with the help
of the United Food and Commercial Workers International
Union (UFCW) and the Faith and Politics Institute
in Washington D.C.
Did it change anything? Yes, some things, but
not enough. There were victories. A court declared
the "chicken catchers" to be employees. In spite
of a strong anti-union campaign from their employer,
the "chicken catchers" promptly organized
with Local 27 of the UFCW in two of three NLRB
elections.
Chicken plant workers brought a lawsuit against
poultry companies for unpaid overtime pay. This
was a landmark legal effort. Eventually, even
the U.S. Department of Labor sided with the
workers. Perdue Farms signed a consent decree
and agreed to back wages and future compliance
with federal wage and hour laws. Tyson Chicken,
however, refused to settle, forcing the Labor
Department into the only progressive action
of the last three years by the federal government
against a company on behalf of the workers.
With these successes, however, there were setbacks
as well. Plants were closed, and when the ergonomic
standard was before the U.S. House of Representatives,
even the moderate Republican Representative
Amo Houghton (NY-31) ignored the pleas of the
workers and voted to gut the job safety regulations.
Despite the Herculean efforts of Democratic
Representative David Bonior (MI-10), the minimum
wage increase was not considered and wages remain
stagnant.
In spite of this back-and-forth in the public
policy arena, what remains is the Delmarva Poultry
Justice Alliance - a vibrant, progressive, inclusive,
grassroots organization that continues to advocate
for all of their issues - including workers’
rights. Remember that the next time you have
chicken. Or better yet, take a trip over to
the Delmarva. There isn’ t any place like
it in the world. |
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