IX

THE CHAIN OF COMMAND

The UFCW made a mistake. . . . It should have cooperated fully with the tough men and women of Austin, and thus might have struck a spark in its whole organization.

—Monsignor Charles Owen Rice¹

In late April, NLRB attorneys went before U.S. District Court Judge Edward Devitt—the judge who had enjoined P-9’s First Bank activities back in September 1985—seeking federal restrictions on P-9 plant gate protests. It was the first time in a decade that the NLRB had sought such an injunction. The board said it needed a restraining order while it considered Hormel’s charges that the union’s mass demonstrations had violated federal labor law. According to both the board and the company, the state injunction was not enough, as it had failed to prevent “multiple acts of violence and property damage at the plant.”

Citing 42 incidents in which strikers had engaged in mass picketing, rocked trucks, pounded on auto windshields, threatened or photographed crossovers, and encouraged civil disobedience, along with two cases of assault, Devitt issued a sweeping order. Union members were prohibited from threatening or harassing crossovers by any means. Mass picketing was out, as was any photographing of those who went in to work. The injunction would stay in effect until the NLRB issued its ruling. The U.S. Marshals special operations group announced that, if necessary, as many as 150 marshals augmenting 22 sworn federal deputies could be sent to Austin to enforce the order.²

There was very little mass activity during the days that followed. Union members were left waiting to see what would happen next, and local officers gave their attention to the many legal considerations that lay before them, including their lawsuit against the International. Yet a problem had arisen. In the words of attorney Winter, “At a board meeting where David Twedell and I were present, he had spoken in favor of the lawsuit, and I thought he was going to do the legal work on it. Instead, he left town the next day, and that was the last we saw of him for a while.”³ This left the suit in the hands of Winter and Bass. The two attorneys spent some time studying the trusteeship hearings for errors committed by the UFCW and working on a lengthy affidavit that would clarify the history of P-9’s dealings with the UFCW and the Hormel chain.

On May 6 they filed suit in Washington, D.C., federal court, asking for $13 million in damages because of the parent union’s “malicious, willful, and bad-faith” effort to undermine the local and to bring an end to the strike. Among P-9’s charges: The UFCW had waged a publicity campaign against the local, withheld money sent to Region 13 for the strikers, lied about the contents of the agreement that allowed the 23 percent wage cut (the “missing language”), and sent spies to interfere with local activities.

Al Zack called the suit “foolishness” and a “publicity stunt.” For a stunt, it brought a quick reaction: Two days later, the UFCW announced that it would trustee the local.

Zack said that Wooster’s report recommending trusteeship happened to arrive on the same day that the local filed its lawsuit, and the executive committee took only a few hours to decide the issue. Unsurprisingly, Wooster had found that the local had not followed orders to end the strike, adding “Directly and indirectly the membership of this International union . . . granted the International Executive Committee its own authority.”

That same day, International union lawyer Harry Huge appeared in Minneapolis before Judge Edward Devitt, who he knew had ruled against the local and for Hormel on two previous occasions. There, the UFCW filed its own lawsuit against Local P-9 and asked for an injunction to enforce and validate the trusteeship.

Local union attorneys argued that Washington was the proper venue for the cases, as the key decision about trusteeship had been made in that city at International union headquarters. Asserting, on the contrary, that the UFCW lawsuit was related to the NLRB injunction, the International’s lawyer said that the proper site for considering these matters was in Devitt’s Minnesota courtroom.

Meanwhile, Joe Hansen, appointed trustee by the International, announced that along with deputy trustees Ken Kimbro and Jack Smith, he expected to take over the Austin union hall and begin negotiations with Hormel soon.

In Austin, as television reporters buzzed around seeking reaction, several dozen people lined the sidewalk outside the Labor Center. Anticipating the trustees’ arrival, they had chained the union hall door shut from the inside. How would they resist, the reporters wanted to know—with force? Most members were armed with nothing more than placards carrying slogans such as “What are your ties with Hormel, Lewie?” one P-9er fulfilled the reporters’ wishes by carrying a baseball bat as he silently patrolled the front entrance. Others mocked the media’s ever-present desire for violence. Carole Apold wore “P-9 Riot Gear”: a helmet consisting of a plastic ice-cream bucket and a cardboard shield. Meanwhile, Hormel affected distance from the controversy—Deryl Arnold said that the company now wasn’t sure who it was supposed to be negotiating with.

Lawyers shuttled back and forth across the country in a flurry of activity. The Washington judge, Gerhard Gesell, first rejected Winter and Bass’s request for a temporary order to restrain the trusteeship; at the same time, he scolded Huge for making a “clear end-run” to avoid his court, adding that the UFCW had “thumbed its nose” at him and “run out of town.” Devitt, meanwhile, denied the UFCW’s request for an injunction to enforce the trusteeship, but forbade the local to remove any documents from the union hall or any funds from bank accounts.⁴

Then Huge appeared before Gesell and moved to transfer P-9’s lawsuit to Minnesota. The judge denied this motion, agreeing with P-9 that the central focus of the case was the activity of UFCW officers in Washington. Al Zack announced that the UFCW would still go ahead with its court actions in St. Paul.

Pressure was building on Gesell. On the 15th he again refused to give the local a temporary restraining order blocking trusteeship; on the 19th, Devitt again held back from issuing a UFCW-requested order to enforce the trusteeship, saying, in deference to Gesell’s jurisdiction, that the Washington judge must rule first on the legality of the trusteeship. Devitt also accused both sides of “judge shopping” and said that it would be “preposterous” to permit two separate trials.

By degrees, P-9 seemed to be getting its way. But for unknown reasons, Gesell then did a complete about-face. “I don’t see any substantial possibility in the papers I have presently before me that the local is going to prevail in setting aside the trusteeship,” he announced. In his musings, he ignored arguments that the UFCW had not given the trusteeship matter a full hearing and allowed the International broad authority to trustee a local. “What you’ve got is much like a divorce case,” he said:

The question of being whipsawed here is clearly something the plaintiff [P-9] can avoid. Of course, it’s being whipsawed. . . . But if the plaintiffs don’t like being whipsawed either because they don’t have as many lawyers or they don’t have as much money or whatever, it is in their hands to resolve it or change it. The minute you want to go to Minnesota, I’ll sign the order and you’ll go

You have your hearing on the 23rd. It will not last beyond the 23rd. We will have it resolved shortly after the 23rd, and any other aspect of the plaintiff’s case, if any remains, will have to go to the other jurisdiction.

First, he had seemed willing to arm-wrestle Devitt for the case; now, he seemed to want nothing to do with it. After the hearing Guyette told reporters, “I can’t believe we went through all of this just to move.”⁵ But Gesell had suggested that unless the local came up with something new, he was going to rule against it. And in a few days time, the judge called P-9’s local counsel, Ben Lamberton, and Huge to his chambers, where Gesell made his position absolutely clear.

“I got the sense that the judge didn’t want to deal with the merits of the case,” recalled Lamberton.

This case was, on its face, a very interesting case, yet he characterized it as a catfight. He kept on with this line, asking “Why are you bringing your dirty linen before me?” and suggesting that it was the plaintiffs’ fault.

He was angry at the other side for its forum shopping, but ultimately I think he was more comfortable with them—they came across as being smooth players in the Washington power game. Peggy [Winter] and Emily [Bass], on the other hand, were outsiders who were presenting a difficult case backed by a lot of emotion and push. Whether it was a matter of the Establishment versus radicals off the street or his being just tired, I don’t know, but he was uncomfortable with the whole thing.⁶

Having received several clear signals that there would be adverse results if they failed to agree to a transfer, P-9’s attorneys signed the papers on the 22nd that authorized transfer of all issues to Devitt.

In the Minnesota court, the local argued again that it had not been given a full and fair hearing on trusteeship; that the trusteeship was being imposed for reasons not allowed by law; and, furthermore, that any injunction enforcing the trusteeship would violate the restriction of the 1932 Norris-LaGuardia Act.

P-9’s case was, Bass argued, the mirror image of an earlier precedent-setter, Benda v. Grand Lodge of International Association of Machinists, though in the other case an International union had imposed a trusteeship in order to continue a strike rather than to end one. Both cases dealt with the same gut question: Who had the right to bargain for the employees involved? In both cases the NLRB had previously certified the bargaining agent to be the local, not the International. P-9 attorneys argued that if the International wished to supplant the local as agent, it must, as the court had ruled in Benda, petition the NLRB and follow its procedures for recertification. Any trusteeship imposed to get around those procedures would run counter to, rather than be justified by, the Landrum-Griffin provisions that allowed trusteeships in order to “restore democratic procedures” or “insure the performance of collective bargaining agreements.”

Bass said, moreover, that any injunction issued by Devitt would violate the Norris-LaGuardia Act’s firm prohibition on judicial strikebreaking. What were the avowed goals of the UFCW’s trusteeship? Nothing less than terminating all strike and picketing activities in Austin and at other Hormel plants and ending the boycott.

In response, the UFCW’s counsel justified the limitation of issues at the trusteeship hearing with the statement that in the past all the courts had required was that Internationals hold “some form of hearing.” And, he said, if the local had wanted a hearing of the constitutional issues involved, it should have appealed from the hearing to those union officers empowered to consider constitutional issues—the International president and executive committee.

Huge emphasized P-9’s “unauthorized strike activities”—the roving pickets and boycott—which he inaccurately suggested had taken place before the reopening of the Austin plant. He recounted the local’s resistance to the trusteeship, referring to reports that said P-9 members had removed books and records from the hall and threatened trustees with violence. (Physical assaults on crossovers were also specifically mentioned, as were strikers guarding the hall with baseball bats.) Landrum-Griffin, he said, clearly permits the imposition of trusteeship upon locals that have acted to endanger the lives and livelihoods of other union members and violated the union’s constitution.⁷

On June 2 Devitt ruled the trusteeship valid, ordering local officers to recognize Hansen as the trustee and to deliver to him control of all P-9 assets. He ignored the arguments raised by both sides concerning the matter of a full and fair hearing. Nor did he address P-9’s assertions about the relevance of the Benda ruling or its Norris-LaGuardia Act arguments. Instead, Devitt’s 13-page statement asserted flatly that “the basic issue here is a contract, not a labor dispute.” And that contract, he said, existed between the local and the International as embodied in the UFCW constitution, which “reflects a vesting of controlling authority in the International.”

An uninformed reader might mistake Devitt’s remarks for a treatise on military chain of command: Ignoring the constitution’s emphasis on rank-and-file validation of all decisions, the judge spoke only of its “broadly expressed grant of authority [that] may be exercised for, among other purposes, enforcing compliance with directives of the International.”⁸

The ruling immediately touched off another battle over how much P-9 could salvage. Whenever confronted by a seemingly overwhelming obstacle in the past, Guyette and Rogers had asserted that they would not be stopped. Would they now?

The UFCW—which, for the moment, was doing business out of a storefront on Austin’s Main Street—correctly perceived that the key to P-9’s undoing lay in the trustee’s taking over the union hall. But, technically, the P-9 hall was the property of an entity called the Austin Labor Center. Was that separate from P-9 or a mere alter ego? And what about the United Support Group and its Adopt-A-Family, Emergency and Hardship, and Legal Defense funds? The UFCW wished to take over each of these, destroy the strikers’ organization, and make the loyalists wholly dependent upon the trustee and Hormel. It had already gotten banks to freeze P-9 accounts and the post office to hold for the trustee all mail addressed to P-9 and to the other entities. Now the court would have to decide in each case whether or not the other entities were separate or under Hansen’s jurisdiction.

On June 2 the pickets at the Austin plant came down after 291 days. The next day, having already made an unconditional offer to return to work on behalf of all strikers, Hansen began talks with the company. And on June 5 the loyalists took the ultimate step to rescue their fight: With a petition carrying over 680 signatures, they filed for an NLRB union recertification vote under the name Original Local P-9.⁹

•   •   •

The courtroom activities had not removed all the pressure from Hormel and the UFCW. In early May, hundreds attended an Ottumwa rally in support of the fired workers. On May 17, P-9 supporters in cities across the country celebrated “National Boycott Day” with rallies and leafleting in front of major supermarkets. Texas sponsors of a heavily publicized annual spoof event, the SPAM-O-RAMA barbecue, announced the event’s postponement, saying that they had instead “decided to honor the nationwide Boycott of Hormel products.”

In Minnesota, support for the boycott was announced by the state’s 6,000-member National Organization for Women chapter, the statewide branch of the Letter Carriers’ union, and a large Graphic Communications’ union local. On the first day of fishing season, P-9 bannered along Interstate highways, encouraging drivers to “Boycott Hormel—Eat Fish,” and the local even raffled off an outboard motor, selecting the winner from those who sent in labels of Hormel competitors.

On May 19 the company reported a 26 percent earnings decline for its second quarter, or a drop of $1.8 million from the previous year, while sales increased by 25 percent to $442.2 million. Numerous costs related to the strike, including that of training replacement workers, along with heavy discounting of products to hold on to market share and costly sales promotions (including stepped-up advertising and baseball ticket giveaways) accounted for the discrepancy. Adding $2 million more to the company’s costs was the state of Iowa’s late-April ruling that the 500 fired Ottumwa workers were eligible for unemployment benefits.¹⁰

As for the UFCW, further troubles lay ahead. In January its leaders felt compelled to announce that the union would accept no further concessions. The International faced a year crowded with contract negotiations and a general membership restlessness that was breaking out into further open rebellions in places such as Madison, Wisconsin. In the wake of the P-9 trusteeship, meatpacker locals there and in Cudahy, Wisconsin, and Albert Lea voted to withhold their national dues. Meanwhile, the union’s leadership had, by its own actions, raised serious doubts about its nerve and its integrity.

In late May the Massachusetts AFL-CIO announced that it would be awarding its annual Gompers-Murray-Meany award to Wynn. The announcement met with a chorus of complaint, and over a hundred P-9 supporters—including 40 members of the Lynn Electrical Workers’ local at G.E., textile workers from New Bedford, and Boston city employees—trekked out to Cape Cod and staged a protest outside the Sheraton Hyannis Hotel as the awards dinner was in progress. Ten leaders of large unions in the area signed a letter to state federation president Arthur Osborn expressing their unhappiness. Wynn canceled his appearance, saying that his mother was ill.¹¹

"The potential for support remained enormous,” Rogers recalled later. In spite of the UFCW’s best efforts, an embarrassingly steady stream of resolutions pledging moral and material support for P-9 emanated from the various national union conventions held during the summer. At the Hotel and Restaurant Employees’ convention, Boston P-9 supporter Domenic Bozzotto was called to the podium to give an update on the Austin strike; then the union’s International president pledged to raise $100,000 for the strikers on the convention floor. In spite of open hostility from International Association of Machinists president William Winpisinger, that union’s Western States Conference passed a resolution of support. The nationwide Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, too, passed a resolution that openly acknowledged the need to send donations in a way that circumvented the UFCW. Other national unions that went on record for P-9, or at least against Hormel, included the National Education Association, the State, County, and Municipal Workers, the Postal Workers (who, in August, endorsed the boycott), and the Letter Carriers. Meanwhile, contributions and letters of support rolled in from unions in Britain, Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and South Africa.¹²

Still, with Devitt’s sweeping injunction in force and hundreds still facing trial for a variety of misdemeanors and felonies, there was little rank-and-file strike activity. Instead, local members threw themselves into a massive art project: an 80-by-16-foot mural adorning an outside wall of the Austin Labor Center. Denny Mealy and Ron Yocum, mainstays of the sign committee, had earlier painted a small mural honoring the local’s officers inside the hall. At the April 12 rally, Mealy and a professional muralist, Virginian Mike Alewitz, came up with the idea of the much larger project.

“The reason for it was to maintain rank-and-file participation, which had fallen into a lull,” Mealy told me later. With the trusteeship hearings in session, the three painters, along with attorney Winter’s son Alex Rottner, spent a week composing drawings that might be worked into the mural. The complex result incorporated elements of fantasy and harsh realism: A huge green serpent ran much of the length of the outside wall; at its tail-end, faceless workers marched into an industrial plant. Near the front of the building, an enormous woman meatpacker wielded an axe labeled “P-9” to chop off the serpent’s head. Below her, the workers reemerged—now with faces, having gained identity as a result of union struggle. The now-organized workers and farmers carried signs and a banner reading “All for one and one for all.” Rising above the serpent were a worker holding a torch (painted just where a light bulb protruded from the wall), the face of a man behind bars, and an inscription from an old Wobbly poem: “If blood be the price of your cursed wealth, good God we have paid in full.”

“We needed a basic theme for the mural,” said Mealy:

Everyone felt it should somehow be that of corporations’ squeezing workers and causing turmoil. We assimilated the serpent to stand for the corporations from a Russian revolutionary poster. The torch wasn’t lifted from [Picasso’s] “Guernica” but was Alex’s idea of the guiding light of the union. And the jailed man, who people saw as a persecuted striker, was really meant to represent this business agent from a 1930s strike who was jailed for collusion between a union and a company.

Over a hundred union members worked on the project, building scaffolding, sealing the wall, and painting backgrounds and details, while a great many more looked on. The paint and brushes were donated by a St. Paul sign painters’ local, and others contributed compressors, rags, and ladders. Round-the-clock security was set up to prevent vandalism. After a discussion, the rank and file voted to dedicate the mural to jailed African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela. And on May 27 a thousand people, including Babs Duma of the ANC, turned out for the dedication.

Drawing a parallel between Mandela’s persecution and that of P-9, Guyette noted that the South African could be out of prison if he would give up his fight for freedom for others, and “we could have a contract agreement if we would give away our freedom and self-respect/’¹³

With the trusteeship vise closing, almost a month elapsed before the next significant mass action. During the second week in June, Guyette and Rogers announced that a tent city demonstration would take place in Austin during the week of the 22nd to the 28th. It was a carefully worded statement in which Guyette said he spoke only as an individual, “not as a representative of P-9 or its suspended leadership—the local’s only legal spokesman is Joe Hansen.”

The pickets have been withdrawn, backed by the threat of many years of imprisonment. P-9 members also have been ordered by the trustee, again backed by court sanction, not to engage in a boycott. Again, I am complying under protest. Yet the boycott is being carried forward by tens of thousands who are simply exercising their First Amendment rights.

The call for the tent city was formally issued by the United Support Group. During that event, he said, union members and supporters from around the country would gather for workshops and discussions, and “spend a week discussing our common problems.”¹⁴ Because of the “unavailability” of city facilities, the gathering actually took place in a large outdoor area just north of town.

Supporters were slow to appear, but by the start of that week, a mineworker and his family, then an Indiana auto-worker, a New York longshoreman, and a Colorado machinist had joined the campers at what became known as Solidarity City. Only around two hundred people turned out for a Monday evening rally at which a new local flag, emblazoned “Fighting P-9ers,” was raised over the campsite. But during the week several hundred participated in demonstrations at the UFCW’s Main Street office and the post office (which P-9 supporters felt was improperly diverting support group mail). And on Saturday a thousand turned out for yet another march through town and an afternoon rally at Solidarity City.

Marchers came from 20 states, including Massachusetts, Florida, New York, Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, and California. The fired Ottumwans and Fremonters were there, along with representatives from the Rainbow Coalition and the American Indian Movement.

Crystal Lee Sutton, the former Carolina textile worker on whose union exploits the movie Norma Rae was based, addressed the rally, as did Monsignor Charles Owen Rice, a 77-year-old priest from Pittsburgh who had attained some notoriety for his long association with labor causes. Each condemned both the company and the International. “The role of the unions at the top level is more company-oriented than worker-oriented,” Sutton told the crowd. “They have become corrupted by the wealthy and are doing the bidding of the bosses.” Rice, who had earlier challenged the UFCW’s actions in his weekly Catholic Bulletin column, took note of the International’s attempt to hide its repression of P-9 behind liberal posturing on other social issues. The priest instructed the strikers in a persuasive Irish brogue: “My advice to you is to hang in there. What worse can happen to you?”

And, true to form, Rogers announced, “This campaign will not de-escalate.”

But it had already de-escalated. Local police were in contact with both UFCW and Hormel attorneys, and had arranged for a contingent of U.S. marshals to be in town to assist with any possible plant blockage. But there was no blockage—the only activity that remained for the local was building the boycott. And it could finally be said that the original goals were lost, since Joe Hansen was now negotiating with the company, hoping only to get terms similar to the mediators’ proposal that he had tried to force members to accept back in December.¹⁵

•   •   •

Unless . . . The strikers’ last hope lay in decertification of the UFCW and recertification of the independent local union, Original Local P-9.

Ironically, though, all recertification matters were put on hold by the NLRB, pending resolution of the unfair-labor-practice charge filed against Hormel for its failure to pay profit-sharing money owed the strikers. It was not even clear who would get to vote on recertification—would strikers, P-9 crossovers, and replacements all get a ballot? On July 30, the principals behind Original P-9 held a press conference in which they declared that the delay represented “a conspiracy between the Hormel company and the International union.” Significantly, most of the talking was done by attorney David Twedell.

The UFCW would proclaim that the attempt to recertify under Original P-9, soon to be renamed the North American Meat Packers Union in order to avoid confusion with trusteed P-9, revealed Guyette’s and Rogers’ longstanding goal—the creation of a new union. For better or worse, though, neither Rogers, Guyette, nor many of the executive board members ever had much to do with the direction of NAMPU. Originally, the board members (except for Carl Pontius, who formally resigned from the UFCW to join the NAMPU board) kept their distance for legal reasons. Some, like Skinny Weis, disagreed with the tactic, feeling that everyone should stay and fight within the UFCW. In time the group of rank-and-file activists running the new union made it clear that NAMPU was their baby, not that of the board. In reality, the new union was never much more than a cats-paw of David Twedell, a former UFCW staffer who had a personal grudge against the International, which had fired him, and who was already involved in other recertification efforts in Texas.

“P-9 had a hard time reaching agreement before, due to outside interference from the UFCW,” Twedell proclaimed at the press conference. “Once the UFCW is out of the picture, it’s going to be Austin workers against an Austin company, and we think we can get a contract.” Twedell offered the group many pat answers involving the recertification process and wrote radio spots to woo the scabs away from the UFCW, but did not get an election in Austin until April 1989, when NAMPU was soundly defeated. In the short run, NAMPU’s primary achievement was to push Hormel and Hansen into speeding up their negotiations.¹⁶

One month to the day after Devitt’s order upholding the trusteeship, the judge turned over the union hall to the UFCW, ruling that the Austin Labor Center was an alter ego of P-9. But Devitt refused to allow the UFCW to take over the United Support Group or its funds, which he found to be independent.¹⁷

The International had already initiated a campaign of repression in the town. In June strikers had received letters ordering compliance with Devitt’s first order and threatening them with arrest and prosecution should they interfere with the trusteeship. Union officials circulated through the town photographing cars with anti-Hormel bumper stickers and telling activists that they would lose all hope of reinstatement if they continued to speak out. At least one store owner was told that he was violating the court order by refusing to stock Hormel products. In addition to having P-9 and support group assets frozen and their mail diverted (acts that were partly rectified by United Support Group lawyers), Hansen fired P-9’s clericals, its lawyers, and Corporate Campaign. The local officers, too, were fired, Hansen asserted, as he formally challenged their right to receive the unemployment benefits that other P-9ers had begun getting after the return-to-work offer was made. And he announced that he would not call any local meetings without a petition signed by 600 local members.

With the takeover of the hall, the UFCW sent in 30 organizers to claim possession of the building and exert an intimidating physical presence in the town. Though local officers had cleaned out most of their possessions back in June, support group members had only a couple of hours to remove their belongings following the July court order. The International changed the locks and left the building vacant for a period. The effect of the takeover would be to fragment union business among four locations: the UFCW office on Main Street, a new support group office, the mostly unused P-9 hall, and NAMPU’s office, the last three within a few blocks of each other on 4th Avenue.

The UFCW’s organizers would remain on through the summer, policing the loyal strikers and attempting to enroll the strikebreakers into the UFCW while Hansen continued to bargain with Hormel. On July 3 Nyberg announced that the talks were proceeding smoothly, and since the two parties had resolved all other outstanding grievances (the UFCW dropped most of the over fifty grievances that had been earlier cited for arbitration), he said that the long-overdue profit-sharing money would be paid to the strikers. But since this opened the way for a recertification election, the International filed other charges against NAMPU (it alleged that the new union was harassing its organizers), delaying the election further. Meanwhile, deputy trustee Kimbro met occasionally with selected groups of “replaced workers,” assuring them that Hansen would get them their jobs back as part of the settlement he was working on.¹⁸

The United Support Group continued its attempts to maintain the P-9 community, though it was largely unable to continue the struggle. Over 800 families still received Adopt-A-Family stipends of from $100 to $600 a month. Wednesday evening community suppers were provided for all who would come. And the group organized an August 17 strike-anniversary picnic that drew several hundred people to Todd Park.

On the occasion, Guyette declared, “This war will continue until each and every person gets their jobs back.” Supporters from New York, Boston, and Phoenix pledged their continuing support. And Rogers was unflagging: “As long as you people are willing to stand up and fight, we will stand with you and fight with you with everything we have,” he pledged on behalf of the Corporate Campaign staff. Like Guyette, he remained focused on holding out, raising funds to support the loyalists through door-to-door canvassing, and building the boycott.¹⁹

Meanwhile, Nyberg and Hansen announced that they expected to have a contract wrapped up by September 1. Hansen said that the negotiations were adversely affected by the company’s implemented contract and the presence of replacement workers in the plant. His goals, he told the New York Times, were to win recall rights for as many strikers as possible, to dismantle the two-tier wage system, and to get common expiration dates for all Hormel contracts. To that end, Hansen opened negotiations for six other Hormel plants as well as the Austin facility.²⁰

On August 27, Hansen and Hormel’s Dave Larson announced that they had reached a settlement after eight days of intensive talks. But in that first announcement, after saying, “I think we’ve achieved our goals for Austin,” Hansen admitted that no terms had yet been reached on two of his key goals: recall of strikers and common contract expiration dates.

Two days later it was clear that the contract did not provide for recall of any strikers, only phased out the two-tier schedule over four years in exchange for ending all of the old escrow payments, and provided for common expiration dates at all plants but Austin, where the contract would run for a year longer. By 1988 wages would rise to $10.70—a penny more than workers made back in 1981. The only return-to-work victory came, by coincidence, in Ottumwa, where an arbitrator ruled that the 507 who had honored the picket line must be reinstated by mid-September with full seniority. As for P-9’s other issues—safety, seniority, job security, the guaranteed annual wage, past practices, some kind of expedited arbitration—there were no changes. The company language that had led members to strike in August 1985 stood.

Hansen said that all P-9 members would be eligible to vote on the contract, including 300 of the 600 replacement workers who had signed up for the union, strikers who crossed (even those who had resigned from the union in order to cross), and those who stayed out. “What we have is a hell of a victory for the union,” announced a long-silent Lewie Anderson. “This is the best contract in the meatpacking industry. . . . It proves we are making up for lost ground.”²¹

Two years later, Anderson was less positive. “My impression was that Joe was not supposed to bargain until we could get the rest of the [Hormel] local unions involved,” he told me.

I thought the only way to save things was to use the strength of the other locals in negotiations. But it didn’t happen that way. What started out as a negotiation to preserve a bargaining unit ended up as in-depth negotiations. As a result, we incurred greater losses than we should have.²²

•   •   •

The contract was ratified—according to the UFCW’s count, by a vote of 1,060 to 440—in another mail ballot that was tabulated on September 12. A week earlier, the UFCW had explained the settlement during separate meetings held with those who had crossed the line and with those who stayed out. Turnout among the crossovers was light; around 500 of 800 strikers showed up for their meeting. As in 1981, all were asked to vote on the basis of a two-page summary, rather than the contract itself. As Lynn Huston recalled, “We went over the summary and people asked questions of Lewie and Hansen.”

Our guys tried to pin them down, but they’ve got a knack for not answering. Finally, Hansen would say, “I just don’t know.” People were so disenchanted that they didn’t ask over and over—a lot just got upset and left.

Near the end, Merrell Evans, who hadn’t said anything, got up and asked Lewie, “How can you stand up there and call yourself a union man?” Lewie directed [Larry] Kohlman to turn the mike off. Evans turned it back on, and Kohlman turned it off again. Then Guyette got up to speak and put his hand over the switch. Kohlman tried to push Guyette’s hand away. That made about half the people there jump to their feet. Hansen said, “Everybody, calm down,” and to Kohlman, “Get the hell away from there.” Then all the UFCW organizers ran up to the front of the stage, while Lewie and Hansen ran out the back door.

That was the end of the meeting. Overall, we were given the message that the only chance we had to get our jobs back was if the agreement was ratified.²³

Anderson predicted that Hormel would rehire “everyone who wants to go back within two years.” In the cover letter sent with the mail ballot, Hansen noted, “There are approximately one thousand employees in the plant at this time but I believe as most of you, that for that plant to run most efficiently . . . hundreds of more employees will be needed.” The strikers remained skeptical: “I don’t like it,” said 35-year veteran William Barnett, “but if it doesn’t pass, then what have you got?”

Huston is certain that no member of the trusteed P-9 executive board voted for the settlement. But according to the UFCW, the vote among strikers was 55 percent against, 45 percent in favor.²⁴

•   •   •

Those who lose must pay the penalty. What happens to those who refuse to admit they’ve lost—must they pay even more?

Over the summer, supporters of the local had begun raising funds for the legal defense of those charged with felony riot in April. Attorney Kenneth Tilsen accused the Austin police and the county attorney of indiscriminate arrest and lodging bogus charges.²⁵ An emergency appeal letter, calling for all charges to be dropped, was signed by Miles Lord, Eugene McCarthy, Pete Seeger, and writers Studs Terkel and Tillie Olsen among others.

Given the manner in which Goodnature had treated the strikers arrested in March, it was reasonable for the defendants to worry that the authorities intended to persecute them further. But by the fall it no longer mattered that much: The strike was broken, and there was little likelihood of more mass activity. Thus in September Judge James Mork terminated the prosecution of 200 people, dropping their misdemeanor charges in exchange for 8 to 20 hours of community service each and pledges not to repeat their offenses.

Since no one was required to admit guilt, only a few refused the offer in order to contest the charges. Most agreed to work in area schools, parks, or charities, though, as a matter of principle, many would do no work within Austin’s city limits. “People jumped at the chance to do community service—a lot didn’t want to be fined because they didn’t have the money,” recalled Jeannie Bambrick.²⁶

It would be early December before the court ruled on the felony and gross misdemeanor charges. But at that time Judge William Johnson dismissed all felony charges for lack of evidence against the charged individuals, along with most of the associated assault and gross misdemeanor charges. All charges against Rogers and Guyette were dismissed on constitutional grounds. For what it was worth, though, the judge agreed that “a riot occurred.”²⁷

There remained the issue of relations between the strikers and Hormel. The activists sought to continue pressure by means of an October 11 rally and the efforts of rank-and-file boycott organizers sent out across the country. Both Hansen and Deryl Arnold sent letters to P-9ers noting that “disciplinary action up to and including discharge” could result. The UFCW also argued that boycotting would lead to fewer jobs, and thus less likelihood of anyone’s being rehired. But, with three other acts, the trustee inadvertently encouraged the loyalists to keep on fighting. First, he sent letters urging them to sign cards withdrawing from the union; then, deputy trustees began sandblasting the mural, concentrating their efforts first on the word “Solidarity” and on the faces of the previously faceless workers.²⁸

Finally, during November it came out that, in a formal strike settlement, Hansen had agreed to limit strikers’ legal claims upon their old jobs—rather than unlimited recall rights, they would be eligible for rehire only during the next two years. The “unreinstated employees” were also required to return recall registration forms by early December. Those “terminated for misconduct”—that is, picket line activity—had no right of recall, though the UFCW filed a grievance on their behalf.²⁹

“The company must have had it planned who they wanted to fire before the strike ever started,” said Jim Getchell, who along with two others had been fired in the early spring for unlawful picket line activity. “We just saw a carload of scabs going into the plant and hollered at them, ‘Stay out of there.’ The next day I got a letter in the mail saying I’d been fired.” Altogether, 16 were fired in this way.³⁰

A large group of disabled workers came in for a special raw deal. “Under the workers’ comp law, disabled workers have 90 days after reaching ‘maximum wellness’ to return to work,” explained Frank Collette.

After that, they must either go back to a job that doesn’t reinjure them or they receive a one-time payoff. Well, none of those out on disability at the time of the strike were recalled, so everybody got the payoff. But now, when they go to look for another job, everyone gets asked if they’ve ever been on disability, and they have to say, “Yes, at Hormel.” They don’t get hired because of a double stigma: as disabled workers and P-9 strikers.³¹

With no one back to work, the town of Austin settled into a kind of long-term, low-intensity civil war between those still out and those inside. Each side attacked the property of the other: A favorite union tactic employed weed-killer to write the word “scab” on a crossover’s green lawn. The crossovers in turn defaced strikers’ property.

Police reports include complaints from one crossover that poison had been dumped into his swimming pool, causing his daughter to become violently ill; from Skinny Weis and his daughter, who said that three scabs had repeatedly driven by their house cursing and ultimately threw a smoke-bomb into their yard; and from striker Dick Shatek, who said that someone had shattered a window in his house. According to Chief Hoffman’s year-end summary, there were 1,047 reported incidents of vandalism during 1986, up from 560 in the previous year.³²

Jim Getchell, whose family was solidly union, believes that three of his sister’s horses were poisoned by scabs. His brother’s car was “torched.” He himself received letters in the mail threatening his children, and his wife got sexually threatening telephone calls. Jim Getchell, Jr., one of the leaders of the high-school-age union supporters, was jumped and beaten up by a group of crossovers, then arrested by police, who he says planted marijuana on him.³³

Like many others, Darrell Busker’s family disintegrated after the strike. His wife, who took their three kids and left him, is now “running with scabs,” he says. She was once a support group member, but in the end the strike “just got to her.” Busker, who now earns $5.00 an hour making archery equipment, remains extremely bitter toward the crossovers.

It made my stomach sick to see people who were my friends going in there. My dad and I were looking at my high school yearbook this afternoon, and I could point out 15 of my classmates who were scabs. A lot of close friends who I used to play ball with, now I can’t even look at them. But this town is owned by Hormel . . . it’s just a one-horse town.³⁴

Lynn Huston, Merrell Evans, former mayor Tom Kough (defeated in a bid for state senate), Jim Retterath, Cecil Cain, R. J. Bergstrom, and scores of others left town to find work, sometimes only to return frustrated with the alternatives. Many tried to sell their Austin houses, but were unable to find buyers. Mike and Jeannie Bambrick saw their house repossessed by the bank. They moved to Florida but returned after four months, feeling the pull of family and the small town they had always lived in. Skinny Weis, Buck Heegard, and others who had put in sufficient years retired.

A number of union sympathizers—and those who were perceived as inappropriately tolerant of the union—either lost their jobs or were forced to leave town. Catholic priest Father Charles Collins was transferred elsewhere because of his too-obvious P-9 sympathies. High school principal Kevin O’Dell was fired for renting the school gym to P-9 for a fundraiser, while history teacher Robert Richardson was forced out for wanting to talk about the strike in his classes.

Hormel shut the Ottumwa plant in the summer of 1987—it had only rehired around 250 of the 500 fired workers, and now they were displaced again. In the fall of that year, it leased the plant to Excel Corp., a low-wage subsidiary of Cargill Inc. that paid $5.50 an hour. Over twelve hundred people applied for the Excel jobs, including many who had worked for Hormel at $10.30. About a dozen of the former Hormel workers were able to take advantage of an arbitrator’s ruling and “bump” into Austin plant jobs held by crossovers with lower seniority; 20 others opted to take a “one-time, lump sum settlement of all claims” that amounted to between $14,000 and $20,000.³⁵

Two P-9 supporters, Ottumwa steward Dan Varner and Fremonter Bob Langemeier, were singled out for special punishment by Hormel. Varner was fired for aiding and encouraging the Austin pickets. (In our interview, Nyberg expressed particular resentment toward Varner, “the first employee we hired in Ottumwa,” for speaking against the incorporation of Ottumwa seniority language in the mediators’ proposed settlement for Austin.) His firing was upheld in arbitration, and the NLRB denied his “failure to represent” charges, filed against the UFCW for what he claimed was a mishandled arbitration. Langemeier was fired before any extended picketing in Fremont—he says merely for wearing a P-9 hat in the Hormel plant. But the company has refused to place Langemeier on a recall list (unlike the 23 Fremonters who were fired for honoring P-9’s picket) and has appealed an NLRB order that it rehire him.³⁶

Bob Johnson, the Hormel worker accused of making terroristic threats against the company in 1985, saw all charges dismissed after two weeks of trial when the county was unable to present testimony from a voice expert. Its case collapsed, but the company immediately filed a lawsuit against Johnson.³⁷

Guyette pushed ahead with a “don’t buy Hormel” campaign, at first quietly, then without restraint. He began traveling around the United States and England, where he got the national executive committee of the British Labor Party to endorse the boycott. Boycotting became his full-time work.

Meanwhile, he was becoming an outcast in Austin. His brother-in-law had him expelled from their small Lutheran church, which saw civil disobedience as “the devil’s work,” in light of Biblical injunctions to submit to authority. Since the beginning of the strike, the family had received numerous telephoned and written death threats, and these continued. One included a drawing of hanged children. The Guyettes were reduced to living off food stamps and paying the mortgage with loans from a group of Hormel retirees.³⁸

And Guyette continues to be hounded by the UFCW. Soon after the trusteeship was imposed, the International began making accusations that Guyette had misused money. In July 1987 the UFCW filed suit against him and Financial Secretary Kathy Buck, charging that they had used pension funds to finance the strike. Guyette maintained that the events in question happened before the strike, when he was a newly elected local president, and that he was assured of their legality by the then-serving financial secretary and union attorneys. And he in turn asserted that UFCW Region 13 is guilty of misappropriation of donations intended for P-9—how else could the trusteed local have repaid the UFCW $1,373,000 for P-9’s “strike advance,” as the UFCW’s 1986 labor-management reporting forms show it did?

As far as Hormel is concerned, there is some evidence that it still has private security men on Guyette’s trail. He told me that while in Chicago in 1987, he was approached by a man who identified himself as an operative of California Plant Protection, the private security service hired by Hormel to maintain security during the strike. Moreover, an alleged Cudahy striker who came to Austin in 1987 and traveled with former P-9 strikers to the AFL-CIO meeting was later identified by Wyoming mineworkers as a security operative who had videotaped strikers at a Decker Coal strike.³⁹

The community of strikers and supporters has been torn by division. Old dislikes, put aside for the duration of the strike, resurfaced, and new disaffections arose. After a bit, NAMPU leaders had nothing good to say about Guyette, the support group split down the middle over money problems, and the trusteed executive board members started pointing fingers at each other.

Some of this infighting may have been the result of stepped-up police infiltration of support group and “Original P-9” activities during 1987. Internal memos to Chief Hoffman reveal that one turncoat reported on the most mundane details of support group meetings, the group’s successes and failures, and which persons remained active. Spying on protests against the company’s 1987 “Spam’s 50th Anniversary” bash, another police agent delivered a lengthy and very giddy report, which read in part:

. . . there was one guy from Milwaukee, that came over here just to quote the P9ers. He worked in either auto or something of that sort. . . . At these things there was also a lot of different people, some really I don’t know what you’d call them, talking to one guy from political rights defense fund on Socialist party stuff and Nicaragua and all this other stuff . . . and how the Hormel Company has dealings with South Africa and all kinds of gobbeldy goop. . . . I listened to quite a few of them, I really didn’t understand what they were trying to say. . . .

As for the painting of the Mayor’s house and the digging up of the greens at the golf course, I didn’t—the whole weekend I didn’t hear anyone mention anything of it.

I always kinda laughed to myself when they talk to highly [sic] of the police and law enforcement that they would really be burnt bad if they knew that sitting right in front of them was a cop. . . . I thought it would be harder getting in and kinda being a supporter but I found out that there’s such a weird group of people that does come and support some of these P9ers that . . . they just don’t really suspect anybody.

For his part, Police Chief Hoffman began to promote himself as something of an expert on labor disputes and civil disobedience, touring the state and speaking at a variety of police institutes and seminars. According to what appear to be Hoffman’s speech notes, obtained from police files, from the start of the strike his “primary objective was to keep the police image in the best possible light.” This required staying in communication with all parties and remaining low-key and impartial.

But impartiality was apparently difficult to maintain. In the face of “so much civil law that we were unfamiliar with,” lawyers from the International UFCW were “happy to provide me with their input,” as were “the local staff of management,” his notes say. While expressing a certain wariness, he suggests that he was able to reach an understanding with the company’s legal staff, who “were helpful and tried to be patient and understanding.” The mayor, however, was biased, interfering, and a “spy for the union.”

The union, his notes say, was composed of “basically good people” plus “a few hotheads.” However, Hoffman was quite concerned about the left-wing groups who were drawn to Austin by the strike, particularly the Socialist Workers Party and the “Communist Party”—by which he likely meant the Progressive Labor Party, since the CP was hostile to the strikers and had no presence in town. Other memos and photocopies in the police department’s files refer to the International Committee Against Racism (INCAR), a PL front group whose members once attended a rally bearing a “Fight for Communism” banner. The chief’s anxiety about this Red Menace led him earlier to write to the local Veterans of Foreign Wars post commander, urging “that we make a public statement about Americanism and Communism,” without “tak[ing] sides in the labor dispute.”

After April 1986 Hoffman seems to have turned solidly against the local union’s leaders. He wrote to U.S. Senator Rudy Boschwitz, a number of federal agencies, and to President Ronald Reagan, among others, regarding his suspicions that P-9 was skimming money off the Adopt-A-Family funds. Boschwitz was “helpful,” he notes, though the Internal Revenue Service was not, since it viewed the situation as “too hot politically.”⁴⁰

Hoffman had met regularly with Hormel security consultant Gary Baker since July 1985, but kept his distance since, as he noted in his post-strike presentations, private security tend to engage in “overkill” in order to “keep the employer nervous.” Now the police began accepting Baker’s reports on P-9 supporters. A June 12, 1986 report from an unidentified officer states, “Ken Carlson and the sheriff stopped in with the report from Baker on [Twin Cities Support Committee head] Peter Rachleff.” Elsewhere in Hoffman’s files is an unsigned report on Rachleff—probably the Baker paper—that is filled mostly with innocuous data, noting his excellent credit rating, clear driving record, and lack of criminal record. But in an attempt to associate Rachleff with “subversive or militant factions,” it states he is “indirectly connected” to the American Indian Movement, “which had private meetings with Muammar Qaddafi . . . concerning militant activities in the United States.” (Rachleff says he met AIM leader Vernon Bellecourt once.) The report also alleges links between Rachleff and “4 to 5 Trotsky groups,” the Honeywell Project, Women Against Military Madness, the Revolutionary Communist Party, and “Green Party terrorist groups.”⁴¹

Investigations, surveillance, and open hostility from the authorities led to further opportunism. Striker Dale Francis had traveled all around the country speaking on the local’s behalf and had written letters and articles for such diverse organs as The Militant and The Bulletin, in which he defended P-9 and NAMPU and denounced the UFCW. Many P-9ers never trusted him, knowing that he had once scabbed at IBP. In November 1986 Francis confirmed these suspicions by addressing a UFCW National Packinghouse Conference, where he told delegates, “you could almost say I was brainwashed” and “the International union was totally right from the beginning.” In 1987 Francis took his story to the Austin police and the FBI, where he described Socialist Workers Party involvement in the strike and identified various strikers as likely to “involve themselves in vandalism.”⁴²

None of this was particularly healthy for the children of the town. Peers’ kids could no longer hang out with management kids or scab kids. The schools, public playgrounds, and streets were areas of conflict; fist-fights and name-calling became part of the daily routine. The family doctor told Vicky Guyette that her children were too serious and needed to be able to laugh more. “Now, you tell me how to make that possible,” she replied.⁴³

•   •   •

Supporters elsewhere suffered too. In New York, Ray Rogers and Corporate Campaign were, as Wynn had foretold, blacklisted. Far from getting rich off P-9, CCI received around $111,000 for almost two years’ work—not nearly enough to pay modest staff salaries. Between fees not paid and other offers that he let pass by, Rogers estimated that CCI lost about a half-million dollars. The staff was forced to move from a suite of offices into a shoebox. “What’s this?” Guyette asked during one New York visit; “This is the house that Guyette built,” replied Ed Allen.

From the time the strike started until spring of 1986, I believed that P-9 would reach some sort of settlement and that members would go back to their jobs in the plant. But after April, it seemed that P-9 had lost absolutely, and most staff members fell into a deep funk. Rogers, though, simply refused to disengage from the strike, to acknowledge that there had been at least a serious setback, or to leave Austin. For months after the trusteeship was imposed, he was still sending crews out to do door-to-door fundraising in order to continue the fight. Finally, though, he managed to get CCI involved in the strike of the non-AFL-CIO Independent Federation of Flight Attendants at Trans World Airlines and to disengage emotionally from P-9 without ever turning his back on the members. Less than two years later, CCI was working for the Paperworkers International Union, running a campaign against the world’s largest papermaker, International Paper.

“Anyone who says that Rogers is a has-been had better look at his history and how he operates,” Nyberg said to me in April of that year. “Ray Rogers and Corporate Campaign are alive and well.”⁴⁴

Jan Pierce, one of the few union figures of national stature to support P-9, also came under attack. During a Democratic Socialists of America meeting in May 1986, former UFCW vice president Jessie Prosten cursed him before an audience of several hundred people. Pierce has been shunned and admonished by CWA colleagues, spat at and physically assailed by UFCW men, but he says he has never regretted his support. “The experience helped me grow and get back to the rank-and-file members and the sacrifices they’re willing to make. It was a source of revitalization for me.”⁴⁵

•   •   •

It seems safe to say that many P-9ers will never throw in the towel. They certainly had not by February 1987, when 40 of the “replaced workers” traveled to Bal Harbour to protest against their treatment at the hands of the UFCW; or by March 1987, when a boycott rally drew a thousand people to Austin; by the July 4 weekend of that year, when they timed another set of activities to coincide with “Spam’s 50th Anniversary”; or even by March 1988, when the Twin Cities Support Committee sponsored a “jailbird party” in honor of all who had been arrested in the P-9 cause.

“It won’t be over till everyone is back to work,” Nyberg admitted to me. Yet there is not the least indication that Hormel ever intends to rehire the strikers. It says it has no use for them. The post-strike business press is filled with articles saying how well Hormel is doing—how, during record years for profits, it has been moving away from meatpacking and into packaged convenience foods.

The strike cost the company plenty. When I asked, Nyberg would not offer an estimate; Forbes suggested that it cost Hormel around $2 million. But that figure seems very low: If you consider only the company’s reported loss in earnings from the first quarter of 1986 (which Hormel said went to train replacements, and which likely included considerable security expenses) and the unemployment paid out to fired Ottumwa workers, costs approach $4 million. Then you can throw in the further costs of transferring or buying out the Ottumwans and Fremonters held to have been unjustly fired, and further millions spent on stepped-up advertising and promotions.⁴⁶ And then there is the boycott.

Numerous meat-industry observers and company executives have called the boycott ineffective. But for some reason both the company and the UFCW have worked hard to stamp it out. In October 1986 they put together a joint effort aimed at vendors. Advertisements in Vending Times and Automatic Merchandiser boldly proclaimed, “Together! . . . we’re proud to say that Hormel, Dinty Moore, and Mary Kitchen vending products continue to be made by union workers who earn the highest wages, receive the top benefits and enjoy the best working conditions in the industry.” The advertisement was signed by Richard Knowlton and Joe Hansen.⁴⁷

In February 1987, eight trusteed executive board members, who had sent out a mass mailing promoting the boycott, received in the mail notices of their termination and removal from the recall list. (Executive board member Floyd Lenoch took the news hard: The day after he received it, he died of a stroke.) In October 1987, the UFCW promoted an anti-boycott resolution at the state AFL-CIO convention (it was beaten back), while in 1988 several Democratic Farmer Labor Party members attempted to rid the party platform of its formal endorsement of the boycott (they were also defeated). As recently as May 1988, former striker Steve Lovrink received a letter from the company notifying him that he faced removal from the recall list because a vehicle registered in his wife’s name still sported a “Boycott Hormel” bumper sticker. Dozens of such letters have been sent out since the ratification of the contract negotiated by Hansen that ruled out boycotting.

Can it be that the boycott has become permanent among many of America’s pissed-off but beaten-down union men and women? “I can’t boycott USX,” one such person told Labor World editor Dick Blin, “but I sure as hell never have to buy Spam again.” Perhaps such an unofficial boycott is still costing the company some undetermined number of dollars. Or perhaps Hormel is going after boycotters because CEO Dick Knowlton, winner of Carnegie-Mellon University’s 1987 “outstanding crisis manager” award for his handling of the strike, just cannot regain his cool. According to the Bureau of National Affairs, he still refuses to refer to Ray Rogers by name.⁴⁸

Meanwhile, what might serve as the UFCW’s last word on the strike was spoken by its executive vice president, Jay Foreman.

The 40 P-9ers who traveled to the AFL-CIO meeting in 1987 included many of the most senior workers, who felt that the truth about the Hormel strike must be told. They found that the UFCW had told other union leaders that all the strikers were back in the Austin plant, working under an excellent contract. “Most had no idea that 25-year-plus veterans were out in the street,” said one worker.

On Sunday, the opening day of the executive council meeting, the workers gathered in the lobby of the sumptuous Sheraton Hotel wearing their blue “Cram Your Spam” and “Union Solidarity” T-shirts. For the next several days they stood outside the building holding signs that spoke in no uncertain terms of the UFCW sellout. And they interrupted the UFCW men’s leisure moments in restaurants, in bars, and at poolside.

Rich Waller, a 27-year Hormel veteran, approached Lane Kirkland while the AFL-CIO leader was lunching at a hotel restaurant. Kirkland told him that he would be better off speaking with Foreman, who was at a nearby table with his wife. Waller then went over to Foreman and asked him how it was that the strikebreakers got to vote on the proposed settlement with Hormel when they were not yet dues-paying members. Foreman told him that such a vote was allowed by executive privilege, something like the president of the United States could do.

Waller persisted in asking how he could get his job back. But Foreman, whose lunch was getting cold, was tired of the conversation. “What can I tell you?” he said at last. “You lost your jobs—the scabs are the new union.”⁴⁹