Teamsters Local 556 Fight against Tyson Foods

Two years ago Tyson Foods Foods tried to crush Pasco, WA-meatpackers’ union Teamsters Local 556. Enlace worked with the union leadership team to fight back.  The workers won the first vote, but Tyson came back with the support of the Bush-appointed National Labor Relations Board, firing workers and taking other repressive actions and throwing the union out in a second vote in February 2005. 

Background
Five years ago the workers in the Tyson plant in Pasco, WA, organized a democratic movement that gained control of the local union.  Worker Maria Martinez was elected president of Teamsters Local 556.  Enlace trained the local team and supported them with strategic planning for the fight.

Two years ago Tyson started a decertification campaign to kick out Local 556 from its plant. Enlace developed an integrated plan with the union team, and the workers voted in favor of their union in the election held by the federal government in April 2004. But Tyson rejected that election, denied an extension of the union contract, cancelled permission for President Maria Martinez to be on leave from work at the plant in order to work full-time as union president, and stopped the automatic union dues deduction from the workers’ pay.

The union staff responded by cutting their salary to the minimum wage, and Maria returned to work full time in the plant. In the middle of January, Bush ordered the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to grant Tyson’s request to annul the election that the workers won in April 2004.  After the NLRB announced that there would be another election in February, Tyson dismissed all the workers of the night shift (more than 600 workers).  Enlace helped with an emergency plan to reorganize the dismissed group, and Enlace staff Mary Mendez and Vy Nguyen, organizer from Enlace affiliate KIWA, went to support this fight. Unfortunately we could not win against so much pressure by the company, which was supported by local media and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters who also wanted to get rid of Maria Martinez.