Hormel Union Rejects Offer, Strikes in Minnesota

About 1,500 meatpackers struck Geo. A. Hormel & Co. on Saturday, refusing to accept the same wages paid at other Hormel plants in spite of a company threat to move its headquarters out of town.

The strike follows months of feuding between the union and Hormel, which last October cut workers’ base wages 23%, from $10.69 to $8.25 an hour, in what it said was an effort to remain competitive. Before the strike, Austin wages had risen to $9.25.

Members of Local P-9 of the United Food and Commercial Workers union struck at 12:01 a.m. Saturday after overwhelmingly rejecting Hormel’s final contract offer earlier in the week.

Hormel offered to pay Austin workers a base wage of $10 an hour starting Sept. 1, which matches the wage at nine other Hormel union plants. The industry average is $8 to $9 an hour, the company said.

Union officials said the proposed pay offer is inadequate because cuts proposed in benefits would effectively lower workers’ incomes. The union also opposes a company request for concessions on seniority, attendance control and plant assignments.

“If we don’t stop it now, every meatpacker in this nation is going to look for concessions,” union member Nancy Sobolik said.

The dispute prompted Hormel’s board of directors to say it may move corporate headquarters from Austin, where the company was founded in 1891. The plant had not been struck since 1933.

The company recorded $1.4 billion in 1984 sales of such products as Spam luncheon meat, Cure 81 ham and Black Label bacon.

“Things are not violent this morning,” said Chuck Nyberg, Hormel vice president and general counsel. “We are proceeding to shut down the facility.”

Nyberg has said the plant will close temporarily and reopen using supervisors, temporary workers or permanent replacements.

About one-third of Hormel’s slaughtering and processing operations are at the Austin plant. Hormel provides one of every four paychecks in this southern Minnesota town of 23,000.