Striking Catfish Processors Boycott Big Grocery Chain

In one of the most closely watched labor actions against repetitive work, a bitter strike against the nation’s largest catfish processor escalated Friday when workers began a boycott drive against a huge grocery chain that is selling the fish.

About a dozen of the 900 workers who in September went on strike against Delta Pride Catfish of Indianola, Miss., held a rally here at a Winn-Dixie store to demand that the chain stop selling Delta Pride’s products. A corporate spokesman said the store would not comply with strikers’ demands.

The workers, mostly black and female, complain that they are underpaid and underprotected in jobs that result in repetitive stress injuries to hands, wrists, arms and shoulders.

Before the strike, many workers--some of whom were required to fillet 300 fish an hour--said that their injuries had disabled them. Since the strike began, the community, situated in the Mississippi Delta, has been rocked with violence and anger, including charges of police brutality.

The strike has become a civil rights issue that is spreading across the South.

“This is part of the struggle for economic justice,” said the Rev. Joseph Lowery, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and a chief advocate for the strikers.

Lowery, who spoke at the rally, said the strikers would pray for Winn-Dixie executives, then added: “If we have to go further, we can hold some prayer meetings around the cash register.”

Activists say Winn-Dixie is the largest buyer of the product, with 1,222 stores in the nation’s Sun Belt states buying 60,000 pounds of catfish a week. Several grocery chains have stopped selling Delta Pride products.

Mickey Clerc, Winn-Dixie spokesman, said from Jacksonville, Fla., that “our longstanding company policy has been not to participate in labor disputes,” adding that “our customers come first, and we intend to continue to adhere to our longstanding policy.”

Promising solidarity with the strikers, who are members of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, Herb Mabry, president of the Georgia AFL-CIO, vowed to “get all labor together” and “do a march on Delta Pride.”

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has cited Delta Pride for “willful” violations of federal safety and health standards and fined the company $32,000. The company has appealed.

In Indianola, Carolyn Ann Sledge, assistant director of marketing for Delta Pride, defended the company as “very fair to our employees,” saying it is the “only one in the industry” that has initiated an ergonomics program and redesigned tools to prevent repetitive stress injuries.

She said that the company’s salaries, ranging from the minimum wage of $3.80 to $7 an hour, are the highest in the business.

But several of the workers at the rally said the company can afford to pay more. Debra Morgan, a seven-year employee, said, “I cannot survive” on the $4.30 an hour she earns. “I’m tired of working to make everybody else rich. They treat the fish better than they treat us.”