JEFFERSON, WI, Nov. 20-A lonely handful of striking workers clustered outside the entrance to the Tyson pepperoni plant at 5:30 a.m., some bundled up in winter coats and stocking caps to block against the biting wind. Their breath fogged in the chilly dark as they huddled 10 feet from the plant's only open gate, talking and holding picket signs. A car approached down the short street leading up to the plant entrance, and they turned toward it, ready.
As it got closer, they began yelling.
\Scab!"" ""Get a real job!"" ""Dumbass!""-their shouts bounced off the car's closed windows as the driver stared straight ahead and rolled past the knot of strikers and through the plant gate. The shouts died off into stillness and the group waited for another car to come. Each time, they took out the frustration brought on by months of tested resolve. ""Scumbucket!"" ""Cocksucker!"" ""Go back to the 'hood!"" Most of the replacements drove past silently, their faces impassive. Some glanced at the strikers apprehensively, and others defiantly flashed their middle finger or a flippant peace sign.
Each striker has to put in two two-hour shifts on the picket line per week to receive their $100 a week union stipend, but many contribute more than their required share.
""There's quite a few people that are down here every day no matter what,"" striker Greg Peters said. ""It relieves a little stress.""
Peters, the chief steward for the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 538, noted on a clipboard the license plate numbers of each of the cars as they came through so he could get a rough estimate of how many replacements work at the plant, something Tyson will not disclose. This is Peters' first strike, and he has had to learn how to facilitate it along the way. Eight months in, he estimates the plant employs approximately 250 replacement workers in place of the 470 who went on strike Feb. 28.
Five people have crossed the line since then, and the majority of the remaining 465 have had to find other jobs to supplement their stipend. Debbie Kitsembel, a mother of three who walked off the line in February, has taken a job at a hospital. But it pays $5 an hour less than her job slicing pepperoni, and she gets eight to 10 hours a week, whereas she was worked full time at Tyson.
Kitsembel said others like her have had trouble finding jobs. Most work in town or commute for now, she said, but they may have to start moving away from Jefferson to find other work.
""A lot of people are talking-myself included,"" she said.
Yet the bulge protruding from her heavy winter coat hints she will not be able to start a new job any time soon. She is pregnant with what she expects will be her fourth son-""I'm only allowed to have boys,"" she says with a laugh-and that limits her job mobility. Meanwhile, she and her family have had to tighten their belts. They have cut out entertainment, like going to the movies, and allowance for the boys, who are 15, 11 and eight years old. Christmas this year will be lean too; Kitsembel told her sons they have to pick out one thing they really want. Only her 15-year-old really knows why she is on strike, but the others only understand some parts-at school, she says, ""my kids just won't eat lunch on days they have chicken.""
The holidays will be tight for a lot of the Tyson families, some of whom have multiple members on strike, according to Peters. To help out, Epic Resins from Palmyra, Wisc., donated a Thanksgiving turkey for every family and $5,000 to put toward Christmas gifts for children of the union families. Kearns Motors in Jefferson matched that with another $5,000. Other businesses and citizens have donated to the union's food pantry.
""The community's been awesome-I've never seen anything like it and I probably never will again,"" Peters said.
Outside of Jefferson, members of the UW-Madison community have lent strikers their support as well. The Student Labor Action Coalition and the International Socialist Organization have been the most active, successfully lobbying the university this summer to cut its contract with Tyson. Since then, students have concentrated on making more personal connections with the strikers by joining them on the picket line, according to SLAC member and UW-Madison sophomore Ruth Castel-Branco. They are also trying to raise awareness to get other Midwestern schools to cut their contracts. To that end, she brought two Jefferson strikers to the United Students Against Sweatshops conference in Indiana earlier this month to bring their story to more students.
Although the greater student body is not as invested in the issue as the SLAC and ISO students, Castel-Branco said that should encourage the student groups to raise more awareness instead of giving up.
""It's so close to Madison in relation to other things that we've done or are working on right now, like wage disclosure or something,"" she said. ""This is so close to home that instead of getting disheartened [by] the fact that the strike has been going on for so long, you try to think of ways to increase the momentum of the strike-get people talking about it, get it moving. So I mean, yeah, it's a challenge, but you don't want to get frustrated by it; you don't want to be put off by it.""
Thursday, a group from ISO came to join the picket line. Armed with coffee, six students arrived when it was still dark at 6 a.m., grabbed signs from a shed near the gate, and mixed in with the strikers. Union members said they appreciate support from students and other unions that occasionally join their line.
Two of the students, UW-Madison senior Kevin Prosen and freshman Nathan Fuller, said they have been coming to support the workers on the picket line since the strike began. The Tyson strike is emblematic of the great momentum in labor across the country right now, they said. It illustrates the importance of companies paying workers a fair wage.
""When that doesn't happen, it's wrong, and we want to be there on the side of the employees who are getting the short end of the stick,"" Fuller said.
Like Castel-Branco, Prosen and Fuller said they would not let their commitment to the workers wane as the strike wears on.
""As long as they're struggling, we'll be there alongside them,"" Fuller said when asked how long he will stay involved.
""Uh-huh,"" a nearby worker on strike said sarcastically.
Support from the community in and outside Jefferson and a new sense of solidarity among the striking factory workers has bolstered their determination over the past eight months. While workers from the raw and finished sides of the plant were not allowed to cross into each other's departments and thus never mixed, they have now gotten a chance to know each other, Kitsembel said. Striker Tom Burns said the union tries to organize a solidarity dinner for the families every other week.
""People you didn't see in the plant before now, you know them pretty well now,"" he said.
Part of that sense of unity manifests in the act of shouting at the replacement workers every morning. The strikers divide their venom between the Tyson corporation and management, and the ""scabs.""
A large portion of the replacement workers who drove up Thursday were minorities, and the strikers' shouting involved a lot of racial slurs. They yelled ""puta!""- Spanish for bitch-at cars of Hispanic girls that came in. ""You're a perfect example of what Tyson hires!"" one yelled at a black man driving through the gate. ""You fuckin' Puerto Rican shit!"" another yelled.
Fuller has noticed similar racial comments in his previous trips, but he noted there are Hispanics on the picket line, and focusing on race issues distracts from the strikers' overall struggle. Historically, issues of racism benefit the corporate class by dividing workers amongst themselves instead of uniting them against the corporation, he said.
""It's preying on people's differences to take away from things they have in common,"" Prosen added.
Kitsembel concedes the majority of replacement workers are minorities, whereas most of the strikers are white. But she said strikers' animosity toward the replacements centers on the way they derail union efforts, not their ethnicity.
""I don't consider it a racial thing at all,"" she said.
Both parties walked away from negotiations last February and, when questioned, each said they are waiting for the other to come back to the table.
""Nobody wants a strike,"" Tyson spokesperson Ed Nicholson said. ""Nobody wants the situation that is currently in place there, but the offer we made was made with an effort to keep the plant competitive.""
But certain aspects of that offer were unacceptable to families, especially the change in health care benefits. Kitsembel and Burns said that was their major point of contention with the offer. Kitsembel's family was covered under her insurance when she worked at Tyson, and now her husband's insurance covers some, but one of her children has no insurance. Burns' four children are covered under the state's Badger Care program, but he and his wife do not qualify, he said.
Nicholson said Tyson made a better offer than the average blue collar worker receives. Tyson pays 70 to 75 percent of employees' health care package, and while the average American worker has to pay $208 a month for their share in a family health plan, Jefferson workers were offered a basic family plan for $117 a month, he said. But Peters said that plan does not include certain simple benefits, like mammograms. The union realizes health care costs have gone up, and they were willing to pay more, but ""we just want something we can use,"" he said.
Faced with what they see as no alternative, the workers will continue to picket as the weather turns colder and snow covers the ground. When asked how the conflict could finally be resolved, Peters did not have much in the way of solutions.
""We're willing to meet any time,"" he said.
Nicholson did not have much either.
""We have not received any calls from the union requesting that we go back to the bargaining table,"" he said.
