MRNY has achieved a lot, but it has not gone beyond being a mobilizing model. Like most community ‘organizing’ groups, with the exception of the isolationist-inclined Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF)

MRNY has adopted a detailed and transparent decision-making process. Most decisions are made by consensus, and rotating leadership is standard practice at meetings. MRNY’s “Decision-Making Authority” document (available to members in both Spanish and English) specifies in detail how people are chosen for every role and every sub-body in the organization, and specifies the authority embodied in each role and sub-body, much like a union constitution.31

The idea was to ratchet up the amount of back-pay claims a resistant employer might face, then offer a no-cost alternative: The workers would drop the claims in exchange for the employer’s agreement to not fight the unionization effort.

They won confidence in themselves—including the confidence to go down the street to a chicken factory to help teach 2,000 unorganized workers exactly what they need to do to beat their employer.

Smithfield then reversed its decision, but did so in a manner that denied the workers’ victory; the company announced a new policy to give all workers in all their facilities nationwide the holiday, effectually denying their decision had anything to do with local worker demands.

As a newly elected national president, Hansen had publicly led his union out of the AFL-CIO on a pledge to organize the unorganized; now he was under pressure to deliver a big organizing win for the union.

the NLRB agents were hiding under the voting tables, the company was having people arrested outside as they tried to come in and vote, Smithfield had hired and deputized their own police force dressed in riot gear and stationed them all around the plant for the election, forcing workers to do something like walk the plank if they attempted to vote in the election.15

Meat production is considered one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, and a Human Rights Watch report in 2005 listed six factors that make meat factories deadly to the humans as well as the hogs: Line Speed, Close-Quarters Cutting, Heavy Lifting, Sullied Work Conditions, Long Hours, and Inadequate Training and Equipment.

And it happened in the South, in the state with the lowest rate of union membership in the entire country: 3 percent.

People trying to win these fights with morality or race off the table, versus front and center, are starting fights with one hand tied behind their back.