Lawyers: Firing protesting workers at West Columbia chicken plant likely illegal
Supervisors at a West Columbia poultry processing facility may have violated federal law when they fired about a dozen employees who raised concerns about the facility’s safety and sought better pay amid the coronavirus outbreak, according to labor lawyers.
On May 6, Naesha “Shay” Shelton and June Miller gathered with about a dozen other workers at the House of Raeford chicken processing plant in West Columbia to ask supervisors about getting hazard pay and better working conditions.
More than ever, the job that involves cutting raw chicken by hand while standing next to co-workers seemed more dangerous because of the virus, workers said. Hearing news reports about the coronavirus swarming meatpacking workers across the country, Shelton, Miller and their coworkers felt their request for hazard pay and improved safety conditions were reasonable.
Instead of getting an open ear from a manager, Shelton, Miller and their coworkers were fired, according to them.
The supervisor “didn’t even want to hear us,” Shelton said. Instead, the response was get back to work or get fired, she said.
When they demanded that their concerns be heard, they were fired, according to five former and current plant workers who spoke with The State.
“I know they’re a powerful company but they don’t need to treat us like that,” Miller said.
House of Raeford does not comment on personnel matters, a company spokesperson said.
Miller and her coworkers’ firing was likely illegal, according to Sarah Rich of the Southern Poverty Law Center and other labor attorneys.
For almost a decade, Rich’s legal career has focused on workers in meatpacking and poultry processing facilities.
Generally it is unlawful to fire a group of workers for protesting conditions and pay, she said.
“Workers are dying and they’re just trying to take care of themselves and their coworkers,” Rich said.
Meatpacking workers have been plagued by the coronavirus, with more than 10,000 workers falling ill across 170 plants in the United States with at least 45 deaths, according to national media outlets and research groups. Over a thousand cases of the coronavirus are connected to a pork processing plant in South Dakota, giving the plant one of the highest concentrations for a COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S.
As of May 26, House of Raeford’s West Columbia plant hasn’t had any known cases of the coronavirus, a company spokesperson said.
But from what’s happened at other plants, meatpacking workers are clearly at a higher risk for contracting the coronavirus, Rich said.
The increased danger comes from the high number of people working close together inside the plants. Though they’re provided masks and other safety equipment, workers on the chicken cutting lines are “shoulder to shoulder,” Shelton said.
The proximity to others inside the plant as social distancing became the norm outside the plant was one of the reasons workers felt they deserved increased pay for working under more dangerous conditions, which is often called hazard pay.
“We’re risking our health and our lives around these hundreds of people and we’re going home to our kids,” former worker Amp Fulmer said. “If we’re going to risk our lives for moving chickens out of here, maybe we deserve more pay.”
Fulmer felt strongly enough about getting the pay increase that he protested on May 6 outside the plant. The protest was the culmination of a month-long wait to hear about the raise, according to workers.
Concerted activity
Workers started discussing hazard pay about a month ago, according to Mary Greene, who’s worked at the plant for 45 years and is a union steward, a position that acts as a volunteer liaison for workers to the union representative and plant supervisors.
The United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1996, based in Georgia, represents workers at the West Columbia poultry plant.
Seeing news about the coronavirus’ impact on meatpacking workers, employees at the plant started talking among themselves and to Greene about wanting hazard pay.
She spoke with the plant supervisor and the workers’ union representative about workers wanting hazard pay, Greene said.
“They never said we’re working on it or looking to it,” Greene said. “I couldn’t tell the people nothing.”
About a month passed with no word about hazard pay. By May 6 workers decided they would protest for the higher pay and better conditions.
Some workers said they approached a company manager inside the plant to ask for the increase pay but were told to get back to work. Workers contend they protested while on a work break, when they’re allowed to leave their stations.
A couple of managers for the plant met the protesting workers outside, but instead of hearing the workers out, the managers said “’you need to go back to work or give me your badge,’” according to Greene. Taking a worker’s badge meant the worker was fired.
The managers’ main concern was for the workers to go back into the plant, Greene said.
Workers bringing concerns about pay and safety directly to management or through their union steward are protected from firing by the National Labor Relations Act, according to attorneys with the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The federal law says “employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.”
Employers are not allowed to retaliate against workers who engage in concerted activity, Rich said.
If managers at House of Raeford’s plant told workers to get back to work or hand over their badges, the managers were “threatening to violate the law,” Rich said.
Threatening workers is a form of retaliation, lawyers said.
An unprotected island?
The West Columbia poultry plant is a unionized plant. The contract between the workers’ union and the plant could effect the legality of the workers’ firing, Rich and other lawyers said.
The United Food and Commercial Workers local 1996 likened the protest to a “wildcat strike” and said the workers’ actions was activity that was “unsanctioned” by the union. But the union is also investigating if the workers were illegally fired, and it recently filed a grievance against against House of Raeford alleging that the workers being let go broke the union’s contract with the company.
If the union contract with House of Raeford had a no-strike clause, the workers’ termination could be considered legal, according to Mike Carrouth, a lawyer who works for companies in labor disputes.
“You’ve given over the authority to the union to represent you and speak on your behalf,” Carrouth said about a unionized workplace.
The West Columbia poultry workers who protested “were on an unprotected island” when they went outside the union process for addressing grievances, he said.
Typically workers who want to bring up an issue report their concern to their local union representative or the union steward who communicates with the representative.
Workers like Fulmer and Miller as well as others believed they did go through the union’s process when they spoke with Greene.
A spokesperson for local 1996 of the United Food and Commercial Workers said that talks with House of Raeford concerning a raise for working during the virus outbreak were in the works during the weeks building up to the protest. The talks ended with an agreement for a $1 per hour raise, the union said, which the company called an “appreciation pay increase” and started the week of the protest
The workers who were fired said they never received the raise but a dollar wouldn’t have been enough to stop them from protesting. After a reported month of waiting for answers about hazard pay from the company and the union, and when safety concerns weren’t addressed, the workers’ concerns could have been too urgent to go through the union process again, Rich said.
But no matter the process or the laws, Fulmer left House of Raeford with this understanding. “They don’t care about your health. The only thing they worry about is that chicken.”
This story was originally published May 27, 2020 at 5:00 AM.