Hormel Local Told to End Strike

Striking workers at the Austin, Minn., Hormel meatpacking plant were ordered by leaders of their parent union today to abandon their bitter, violent 7-month-old strike and offer to return to work.

The executive committee of the United Food and Commercial Workers said in its order that “progress toward a contract is nonexistent.” But the head of the local said that if the international is proposing that he “negotiate away” strikers’s jobs as part of a settlement, “they’re going to find that it’s a mistake.”