On Strike at Hormel: The Struggle for a Democratic Labor Movement

Green participated as a consultant in ``corporate campaigning''--professionally organized pressure on a company's out-of-town units, banks, retail outlets, etc.--which is only one of many distinctive aspects of the strike against pay concessions and a high industrial-accident rate waged in 1985-1986 by scrappy union Local P-9 against Geo. A. Hormel & Co. in the once liberal meatpacking company town of Austin, Minn. Opposed even by their own United Food and Commercial Workers national parent union, P-9 workers endured zero-cold picketing, police and militia action, jail time, Washington labor-government apathy, jurisdictional lockout from their headquarters, family friction and ``scab'' defections, consistent company hardlining, a maze of legal suits and court rulings and eventual defeat. From his own journal, interviews with labor officials and others, plus research in public and private files, Green constructs an almost hour-by-hour account of this landmark labor struggle in an important study that will be of interest to executives as well as unionized workers. (May)