Ruffling Feathers : Ex-Poultry Worker Donna Bazemore Challenges the Industry on Behalf of Those Still on ‘the Line’

On the day she left the Perdue Chicken plant for good, her hands crippled with pain and her spirit nearly broken, Donna Bazemore vowed not to become just another victim. As plant supervisors watched her go, she turned and let them have it.

“You’re never going to treat another black woman the way you treated me,” she said, fighting back tears. “I’m never going to forget what happened.”

It was August, 1985, and Bazemore--like so many other workers in poultry plants dotting the South--had come down with a painful injury to her hands and arms. According to her doctor, it was the result of jobs that forced her to repeatedly cut, trim, hack and slice open the chickens whizzing past her on a line at the rate of 70 per minute.

After months of complaints, Bazemore underwent surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome, a hand and wrist injury that plagues growing numbers of American workers. Perdue officials wanted her to return as soon as possible, but Bazemore was angered by their demands and quit her $4.25-an-hour job months later.

If she had been typical, the young mother would have kept quiet. But Bazemore broke that rule--and plenty more. Today, she has become a tough critic of the poultry industry and an outspoken voice for labor reforms. Call her the “Norma Rae” of chicken, except the 31-year-old woman is not part of a union and works out of a drab storefront with five other women.

This is a story about poultry and the people who help put 64 pounds of chicken on the average American’s table each year. Although the $16-billion industry is booming, few consumers ever think about the thousands of poultry workers, many of them black women, who labor behind the scenes.

The recent disaster in Hamlet, N.C., where 25 poultry workers died in a plant fire, focused attention on an industry that has been criticized for caring more about profits than about people. Poultry officials call the tragedy at the Imperial Food Products plant an aberration, but Donna Bazemore’s experience shows that conflicts between chicken workers and the mega-companies that employ them are nothing new.

For her and other activists, it’s been a lonely, sometimes frustrating battle in the eastern flats of North Carolina. Most folks are grateful for the jobs Perdue provides and would never dream of taking on the nation’s fourth-largest poultry company.

But just as Bazemore learned to fight back in her own life against those who had wronged her--including an absentee father, an abusive husband and a man who stole everything she owned--she has taught others to fight back on the job. To stand their ground and never be intimidated again.

“I’ve learned that you have to speak out, even if that seems like the most dangerous thing you could ever do,” says Bazemore, a slightly built woman who speaks slowly and intensely in a low, earthy voice.

“There are thousands of black women just like me who work in the chicken business, and if I do anything at all, it’s an effort to make them feel empowered. They have to learn that it’s OK to protect their rights.”

Bazemore’s work has become more urgent since the Hamlet fire, but the problem goes beyond fire inspection. Workplace injuries hit the chicken industry hard in 1989, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics: Repetitive stress incidents occurred at a rate of 68.9 cases per 10,000 manufacturing workers--but at a rate of 527 per 10,000 workers in chicken plants.

In their defense, poultry spokesmen say the industry is mounting an aggressive attack on such hazards. At Perdue, officials insist they provide instant medical attention--and generous support--for people who suffer crippling injuries. But activists are skeptical that the problems will diminish.

It’s easy to understand why poultry processing plants are a breeding ground for such injuries. Employees stand for hours at work stations and cut up thousands of birds passing by them on metal hooks. And the line of dead birds, which rotates through the plant like a giant dry-cleaning operation, is swift and never-ending.

In recent years, the line speed has increased at many plants from 70 to 91 birds a minute. Poultry officials have refused a slowdown, saying there is no proof that rapidity causes the injuries.

“We’re talking about a business that is very, very tough on its workers,” says Margaret Seminario, director of occupational safety and health at the AFL-CIO. “And since it’s not heavily unionized, you’re dependent on grass-roots activism to force changes. That’s certainly been the case with (Bazemore) in North Carolina.”

In fewer than six years, Bazemore has left her mark on the poultry industry. Bucking company pressure, she was the first person in North Carlina to win a workman’s compensation award for repetitive stress from Perdue. More important, she helped focus national attention on labor conditions at the company, and the resulting state investigation led to citations and fines against the firm.

Earlier this year a settlement was reached in which both sides claimed victory. Labor activists said they had forced Perdue to make sweeping changes. Company officials, however, insist the improvements were well under way and had little to do with mounting criticism against them.

It isn’t the first time that a poultry company has been fined for labor conditions. But the Perdue case stands out because it was sparked by a small group of non-union activists who have limited resources.

Bazemore is one of six staff members at the Center for Women’s Economic Alternatives, a nonprofit group supported by $300,000 in grants from the Z. Smith Reynolds and Ms. foundations, among others. Under the leadership of Sarah Fields-Davis, a labor activist, Bazemore works with former employees of the Perdue plants in Lewiston and Robersonville. She helps them file workmen’s compensation claims, hands out leaflets and counsels workers on how to deal with their bosses.

On a recent afternoon, with the temperature pushing 100, Bazemore chatted with several women who had gone to the center for help or conversation. All claimed that Perdue had treated them badly.

Dolores Dickens claims she had a minor stroke on the line and was told to get back to work, even when her speech began to slur. Jacquelyn Perry recalled that when she was pregnant and spotting badly, a supervisor ordered her back to work. Carolyn Hall complained that the company urged her to quit and go on welfare when her hands began to ache.

Told that Perdue would dispute their stories, the women laughed. Asked how the company viewed Bazemore, they exchanged knowing glances. Addie Wilder explained that she was once scolded by a supervisor for complaining about her hands.

“I’m gonna go talk to Donna Bazemore,” she told him. He answered with an expletive.

In a quiet town like Ahoskie, labor activists measure progress slowly. The work is often disheartening, and there are no Hollywood endings in sight. Unlike “Norma Rae,” Bazemore is not about to stand up in a Perdue plant holding a union sign aloft. If two women from the plant agree to meet with her in one week, that’s a victory.

“I can’t begin to say how courageous and important her work has been,” says Bob Hall, research director at the Institute for Southern Studies, a think tank based in Durham, N.C., that has been critical of the poultry industry. “She’s got real guts and spirit, even though she’s been vilified.”

Indeed, Perdue officials contend that Bazemore’s public comments have been unfair, inaccurate and designed to fan consumer hysteria.

In 1989 she submitted testimony about Perdue to a congressional panel that was debating protections for corporate whistle-blowers. Drawing national headlines, Bazemore described stomach-turning conditions in the plants.

“Consumers get chicken we wouldn’t feed to our dogs,” she said, charging that the plants were filled with cockroaches, bugs, fecal matter, diseased intestines and pools of blood. She cited cases where women relieved themselves in a drain by the work station or wet themselves because supervisors would not let them take a break.

The company’s reaction was swift and furious.

“Donna Bazemore’s statements were untrue, and we submitted affidavits to show they could not possibly have been true,” says Stephen McCauley, a spokesman. “They weren’t just inaccurate, they were outrageous.”

In testimony submitted to Congress, Perdue attacked Bazemore, calling her a poor employee who had declined medical help when it was offered and was guilty of insubordination. If Bazemore was interested in solving problems, officials said, she would spend less time in front of TV cameras and more time working with management officials.

These days, however, the company is mounting its own media offensive.

On a recent tour of their Lewiston, N.C., facility, Perdue officials pointed out new machines that are performing the stressful tasks once assigned to human hands. They said workers either have been or will be phased out of jobs that once required them to cut open chickens, slice breast meat off the bone, tear off skin and wrap giblets.

Perdue employees “fully support our efforts, and they don’t like these people (Bazemore and Fields-Davis) speaking for them,” says Terry Ashby, who manages the Lewiston plant. “She’s said she wants to organize our workers. I think that’s her real motivation.”

In North Carolina, where union-bashing is almost a religion, those are fighting words. They strike a chord with workers who believe organized labor is synonymous with graft and corruption. They also arouse poultry officials, who pay salaries barely above the minimum wage. Chicken is the state’s leading agricultural commodity, and few of the industry’s 24,000 workers there belong to a union.

To Bazemore and Fields-Davis, the union charge is laughable. The center believes that workers should be organized in the plants but is not sure that a traditional labor campaign is appropriate. Meanwhile, organized labor has cast a skeptical eye on the center’s work.

“I don’t know what (Bazemore) can accomplish, but they’re the only game in town, and you have to respect that,” says Valerie Ervin, an organizer for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. “North Carolina is a tough nut to crack. It’s a hard place for a worker to fight back.”

Less than 15 years ago, Perdue chicken got no complaints from Donna Bazemore or anyone else in North Carolina. Run by Frank Perdue, a shrewd businessman, the Maryland-based company opened plants that promised jobs and health benefits to a largely black work force.

As Perdue and other companies expanded, so did their employee rolls. When Bazemore’s family moved from Ohio to North Carolina in 1967, her mother went to work in the poultry plants, a job she holds to this day.

Growing up in Williamston, Donna showed flashes of the independence that would stamp her later in life. As a teen-ager, for example, she was angered that her absentee father did not pay child support.

“I had been chosen to be on the school cheerleading team, but I had to drop off because we couldn’t afford a car,” Bazemore recalls, relaxing on a sofa in her small brick home. “I told my mama that if she would stand up to him, we could have had a car. And she smacked me.”

Hoping to be a nurse, Bazemore studied hard in high school but dropped out when she became pregnant by a man who later married her. It was her biggest mistake, she admits, and Bazemore is determined that her two daughters, LaTrasha, 15, and Christina, 10, not do the same thing.

The young mother-to-be took night classes and got a high school diploma. But the demands of raising a family--and fighting off an abusive husband--soon took a toll. The relationship ended when he broke her arm.

It was 1983, and Bazemore suddenly had to find a job. The Perdue plant in nearby Robersonville offered the best opportunity, and she began to work there, still vowing to someday become a nurse.

But the grind consumed her. Bazemore says she was a hard worker until the pain in her hands became unbearable. At first, she tried to ignore the throbbing and numbness. When she complained, the plant nurses’ standard cure was to wrap her hands in bandages and offer her pain relievers or vitamin B. Soon, officials began to view her as a troublemaker.

It wasn’t until she went to her own doctor and carpal tunnel syndrome was diagnosed that Bazemore finally understood her condition. Then, one afternoon in 1985, two strangers knocked on her door.

The two had recently established the Center for Women’s Economic Alternatives and were seeking women who had injuries similar to Bazemore’s. Was she interested in filing a workmen’s compensation claim?

Bazemore was suspicious but had no reservations when she learned that workmen’s compensation would pay her $140 per week, compared to the $55 to $60 in sick leave Perdue offered. She marched down to the plant to file a form and immediately ran into a stone wall.

“The supervisors wanted to know who had told me about workmen’s compensation,” she recalls. “They said this wasn’t the company’s practice and that they wanted to take care of their own.”

Undeterred, Bazemore filled out the forms and was referred to a company doctor, who confirmed the diagnosis. But she says the firm began pressuring her to quit her job. She eventually qualified for a $1,200 award, but Bazemore believes that her victory came at a price.

“The minute that award was made, they were trying to get rid of me,” she says. “But I didn’t want to quit. I wanted to get better. I needed my job.”

Perdue officials scoff at the story, saying it would have been illegal to terminate Bazemore for filing a claim. But they were insistent that she return from surgery as soon as possible. According to the company, Bazemore never showed up after the operation and was terminated.

“As I see it, and as I told a nurse who called me, I felt I had already been fired,” says Bazemore. “At that point, my life was in turmoil.”

About the same time, she had a one-night stand with a man whom she barely knew and became pregnant, an action she called “another huge mistake.” To make matters worse, Bazemore learned later that the man had broken into her home and stolen most of her belongings. A friend told her he was selling the goods that very minute in front of a bowling alley.

Infuriated, Bazemore rushed to a hardware store, bought a hammer and began attacking him. The melee was broken up by friends and police.

“There was a lot of anger building up in me, I guess,” she says. “I figured it was time for me to kick some man’s ass.”

The pair decided not to press charges against each other, and Bazemore began picking up odd jobs. Her luck changed in 1987, when she was offered the job of an organizer at the women’s center. Suddenly, she found a way to channel her anger.

Now the mother of three, Bazemore had greater family responsibilities--and a larger sense of social responsibility as well.

“I’ve learned a lot about me. I’ve been through therapy, something that I never thought a black woman like me would be able to do,” she says, watching Brian, her 5-year-old son, sleep in the late-afternoon heat.

“And what I get from it all is this belief that when my sister hurts, I hurt. . . . I can give something back to people who have worked and felt badly, like I did.”

These days, Bazemore plans to continue with her work, but she also hopes to go to college. She’d like to study political science. She wants to live in a community where where there are better male role models for her son.

Meanwhile, the chicken wars continue. Although Perdue has agreed to improve its plants, Bazemore and other activists want to monitor the progress.

“After all that’s happened, I don’t mind being called a liar or being attacked, because that’s something I’ve learned to live with,” she says. “If it means that I can help one more woman to stand up and say, ‘I matter,’ that’s worth it all.”