Bad Old Days

A violent strike at Iowa Beef

The riots outside Iowa Beef Processors' slaughterhouse in tiny Dakota City (pop. 1,440), Neb., over the past two weeks recalled the labor wars of the 1930s. As union workers hurled railroad spikes and ball bearings at state troopers and strikebreakers, stinging clouds of tear gas and chemical spray swirled into protesters' eyes. Earlier, enraged members of Local 222 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union had spread nails across the highway. Then, screaming "Scab! Scab!" they threw rocks and bricks at newly hired workers trying to enter the plant. Republican Governor Charles Thone was finally forced to summon 160 National Guardsmen to aid the 100 besieged state police. It was the first time that the Guard had been mobilized since an Omaha streetcar strike in 1934.

The confrontation at Iowa Beef, the largest U.S. beef processor, comes at a time of generally quiet labor-management relations in the U.S. The last thing most workers want is a long strike in a deep recession. Many unions are giving back past contract gains or accepting meager wage hikes. Nearly 2 million union members, primarily in the auto and trucking industries, have forgone raises in contracts negotiated in the first half of the year. The Labor Department released figures last week on major collective-bargaining agreements showing that from January to June, average salary increases, including cost of living adjustments, slowed to 2.9%. This compares with 4.9% during the same period in 1981.

Iowa Beef, though, has often been an exception in many areas. In the early 1960s the company revolutionized the beef-packing industry with a new process for handling meat known as boxed beef. Cuts of everything from sirloin to stew meat were prepared right at the packinghouse plant and then shipped frozen, ready to cook, to retailers. Previously, all beef packers had shipped whole carcasses out to butchers, who cut the meat down to retail-size portions.

Iowa Beef was acquired last year by Occidental Petroleum Corp. for about $800 million in stock. In 1981, Iowa Beef earned $58 million on sales of $5.2 billion. Company officials have consistently pumped profits back into upgraded facilities. Says Spokesman Charles Harness: "We have a philosophy that if we can still recognize a plant after ten years, we must have done something wrong."

The company seems to have gone wrong mainly in labor relations. Union workers have struck the Dakota City plant four times since it was organized in 1969. A bloody strike that year culminated in the burning of a company executive's home and the fatal shooting of a 16-year-old girl. A union member was later convicted of manslaughter.

The latest Iowa Beef clash grows out of a disagreement over a new union contract for the Dakota City headquarters plant, one of eleven slaughterhouses that the company operates in seven states. Union members turned down a four-year agreement that required a wage freeze with no cost of living adjustments and the introduction of a a two-tiered pay scale that would pay new slaughterers $2 less than the current hourly starting wage of $9.27. The company also demanded a contract clause that would allow it to reduce wages in the Dakota City plant if any other local of the union signed an agreement at a lower rate. Iowa Beef negotiators said that these measures were necessary in order to ensure profitability.

Underlying the current unrest is the union's conviction that the company is out to destroy it. Some 2,400 of the 4,300 workers at the Dakota City factory are union members. Says Lewie Anderson, a union vice president: "They're antiunion. The company is trying to break us at Dakota City." Since the strike started on

June 7, company officials have hired more than 1,700 nonunion workers to replace the strikers.

Union leaders at the John Morrell & Co. meat-processing plant in neighboring Sioux Falls, S. Dak., are nervously watching the Iowa Beef strike. Morrell temporarily shut one plant this year and permanently closed another after workers balked at the company's request for a pay cut. Says Jim Jarman, a spokesman for the local Sioux Falls union: "If Iowa Beef is able to force the strikers into concessions, there's no doubt it would bring pressure on everybody else."

The current dispute is costing Dakota City and other towns that rely on the plant's $58 million payroll about $1 million a week in lost revenues. Moreover, the conflict has begun to turn once sympathetic local public opinion against the workers. Said one citizen: "Every time there is violence, public opinion always swings behind the company."

After National Guardsmen had cooled down tempers, Governor Thone won an agreement from both sides to reopen negotiations this week under the watchful eye of a federal mediator. The talks will be held on neutral turf, a state office building in Omaha. Angry words will undoubtedly fly, but that will still be an improvement over the tear gas and railroad spikes at Iowa Beef.

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