by Evelyn Hsieh

I am currently working with Massachusetts Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice- we seek to educate and mobilize people of faith around issues directly affecting working families.

One of our current initiatives deals with Smithfield Meat Products and their workers. Smithfield produces pork products that are distributed around the country, and is one of the biggest pork producers in the USA. Unfortunately, it also has a bad track record of treating its workers in one of its largest plants in Tar Heel, NC. Faith communities from North Carolina to Boston are rallying behind these oppressed workers.

The National Labor Board has continually cited Smithfield for intimidating and threatening its workers if they indicated interest in unionizing, refusing to pay employees for work, and physically harming employees. A federal appeals court found that the company had intimidated and harassed employees looking to organize.

Working a pork processing plant is dangerous work; the process as much as 32,000 hogs a day and 2000 an hour. Human Rights Watch has cited Smithfield for violating international human rights standards.

What can we do?

You can start by not purchasing Smithfield pork products, visiting the website, asking grocers to pull Smithfield products off their shelves, and praying for the workers there.

(info taken from Human Rights Watch report “Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Workers’ Rights in U.S Meat and Poultry Plants,” and UFCW materials).

For more information, please visit www.smithfieldjustice.com

Boston Faith & Justice Network’s Global Poverty Films presents:
Black Gold (click here to watch the trailer)
Saturday, April 21, 3:30 pm
Harvard Law School, 1563 Mass Ave,
Cambridge, 02138 Pound 107

From the New York Times:

Black Gold tells an unresolved modern version of the age-old David and Goliath story.
By Stephen Holden

“The giants in this case are multinational corporations that control the worldwide coffee market. The heroic little guy, Tadesse Meskela, represents the Oromia Coffee Farmers Co-op Union, which encompasses 74 co-ops in southern Ethiopia. That country, the birthplace of coffee, produces some of the highest-quality beans in the world…
Instead of wielding a slingshot, [Mr. Meskela] works circuitously by eliminating many of the middlemen who drive up the price of coffee and bypassing commodities exchanges to sell his product directly to buyers. His cause has been embraced by the fair-trade movement, which is working to bring so-called fairly traded commodities like chocolate and bananas, as well as coffee, to increasing numbers of American grocery stores.”

Join us Friday to learn and respond to the reality that we coffee drinkers of the western world pay $3-$5 for our high-priced espresso drinks – while the crushingly poor farmers producing those espresso beans barely make ends meet.

Even if you can’t make the film, check out info & potential actions at Oxfam.