Hog Wild: The Battle for Workers' Rights at the World's Largest Slaughterhouse

by Lynn Waltz

When Smithfield Foods opened its pork processing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, in 1992, workers in the rural area were thrilled to have jobs at what was billed as “the largest slaughterhouse in the world.” However, they soon left in droves because of the fast, unrelenting line speed and high rate of injury. Those who stayed wanted higher wages and safer working conditions, but every time they tried to form a union, the company quickly cracked down, firing union leaders, assaulting organizers, and setting minority groups against each other. 
Author and journalist Lynn Waltz reveals how these aggressive tactics went unchecked for years until Sherri Buffkin, a higher-up manager at Smithfield, blew the lid off the company’s corrupt practices. Through meticulous reporting, in-depth interviews with key players, and a mind for labor and environmental histories, Waltz weaves a fascinating tale of the nearly two-decade struggle that eventually brought justice to the workers and accountability to the food giant, pitting the world’s largest slaughterhouse against the world’s largest meatpacking union. 
Following in a long tradition of books that expose the horrors of the meatpacking industry—from Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle to Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation — Hog Wild uncovers rampant corporate environmental hooliganism, labor exploitation, and union-busting by one of the nation’s largest meat producers. Waltz’s eye-opening examination sheds new light on the challenges workers face not just in meatpacking, but everywhere workers have lost their power to collectively bargain with powerful corporations. 
 

Genres: History, Food

280 pages, Paperback

Published May 15, 2018

Reviews

[Don Gerstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

More than once during “Hog Wild,” I questioned that the events I was reading about could happen a mere 20-25 years ago. The mixture of race and labor violations at one facility appeared mind-boggling. The disregard for the environment and welfare of a state’s inhabitants (North Carolina), at first glance, also was difficult to believe. Fortunately, the book is backed up with a ton of facts and references.

Author Lynn Waltz waded through thousands of pages of documents to present the story of Smithfield Foods and the efforts to unionize and protect their workers (one NLRB document, detailing hundreds of charges against Smithfield Packing in the late 1990s, was almost 8,000 pages long). Other court documents were also used to provide background for the book, and numerous people were interviewed. Many newspaper articles are also listed, as well as numerous books about food and the meatpacking industry. In short, Ms. Waltz has more than done her homework.

In 1993, Smithfield Foods opened a massive meatpacking operation in North Carolina. The book documents the violations of workers’ rights and the efforts of management to cover up the illegal aspects of how they were doing business. The efforts to unionize the plant (as well as Smithfield’s subsequent reactions) are humanized, as we are allowed access into the lives of those who were affected. The book moves with the pace of a well-written novel, and the people involved are defined with all their humanistic qualities.

If I had anything negative to say, it would involve the author’s attempt to unnecessarily inject opinions on racism. For instance, stating that one of the most difficult jobs was handled by “…the largest, strongest me, almost always black…” might indicate racism except for the lead sentence of the chapter which tells us that the majority of the workers were black. There are plenty of potential racist episodes between Smithfield management and employees without these asides. Thankfully, they are not littered throughout the book, but one can only wish that the Reverend Jesse Jackson’s words would have been consistently heeded: “This is not an issue about black and white. It is about right and wrong.”

Despite these small hiccups, Ms. Waltz has put together an incredible story, one that everyone should be interested in reading. The mass of research required to put together a book of this importance cannot be denied. Giving voice to those folks who stood up for what they thought was right is a bravery of its own. Five stars.

My thanks to NetGalley and The University of Iowa Press for an advance reading copy of this book.

[Wendi White · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this noteworthy book, Lynn Waltz offers readers a southern take on the perennial struggle for workplace justice in the face of seemingly insurmountable corporate power. Hog Wild: the Battle for Workers Rights at the World's Largest Slaughterhouse follows the stories of whistle blower Sherri Buffkin and union organizer, Gene Bruskin, among others, locked in a fifteen year cage match against Smithfield Food's production practices at the company's flagship plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina.
The author delivers an impressive feat of reportage with her detailed coverage of three votes to unionize, complex regulatory hearings and bruising civil suits. She also manages in 230 short pages to analyze the rise and fall of federal labor relations regulations in the United States from their inception during the New Deal to their Waterloo in the Reagan years up to their present day toothlessness in the workplace.
Where most journalists would find themselves lost in the tangled weeds of federal law, political patronage and corporate intrigue that comprises this saga, Waltz manages to clear a path for the reader by juxtaposing the stories of the workers lives against the plodding response of the government and courts. She drives her tale like a truckload of hogs onto the kill room floor to arrive at a similarly messy conclusion. It's never pretty to watch sausage being made or workers being mangled by a high-speed production line, but Waltz doesn’t shy away from describing what is required to put pork on our plates or profits in a company's pockets. With a keen eye for the telling human detail, she keeps us reading as Buffkin experiences sexual harassment, Bruskin's ancestors escape from the progroms of Russia, and union supporter Raymond Ward is nearly lynched after the UFWC loses a second vote to unionize the plant. Not all of the character sketches are equally compelling, but as a whole they keep the book from becoming a slog through drawn out legal proceedings.
Though Hog Wild masterfully maps the historic, racial and economic currents which swept Smithfield Foods into the national spotlight during the Justice@Smithfield campaign, it does omit at least one key piece of context: quarterly returns to stockholders. Certainly Wall Street's insatiable demand for quick returns, in addition to the CEO's zero-sum greed, drove Smithfield to treat its workers, hogs and the environment with the same cruel math. Nevertheless, Hog Wild achieves what all literary works must accomplish; it tells a particular story in a particular place and time, and in doing so, helps us to imagine and resist the universal forces that would slice us up for bacon.

[Diane Hernandez · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hog Wild
Lynn Waltz

Well-researched story of the fight for union representation in Smithfield’s North Carolina hog slaughterhouse.

All the players in the union vs. Smithfield fight are examined in Hog Wild. The book also describes how modern vertical integration moved from chicken to hog slaughtering. It includes cringeworthy details of what the hogs endure during the birth to bacon process. Hog Wild has much to say about the use of right-to-work rural states and non-white and/or illegal workforce to lower costs. Smithfield is shown using violence, threats, intimidation and ultimately lawsuits to avoid unionization.

Union membership dropped by more than two thirds since the 1950s. Hog Wild postulates that the drop is correlated with stagnant wages and a similar drop in the size of America’s middle class. The book is clearly on the union’s side and anti-Republican. However, that is not my biggest issue with the book. The author is constantly caught up in seemingly extraneous details. Worse, there are large swaths of Hog Wild that were just boring. It reads like a Master’s thesis trying to reach a particular length. Indeed in the preface, the author states that was the genesis of the book.

Clearly, Hog Wild includes a tale that needs to be told. But it is a hard slog through so many facts. Consequently, the book receives only 2 stars from me.

Thanks to the publisher, University of Iowa, and NetGalley for an advanced copy.

[Red Fox · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read as a NC resident and kayaker on the Cape Fear river (and with Hurricane Florence moving in and potentially impacting the containment ponds for hog waste).

Waltz has a bias and is trying to make a point, but she at least makes the effort to tell the "other" side of the story and hint at some of the benefits (lower prices for millions for pork products, efficiency gains in transition from thousands of small pork producers to several large ones, improved regulations and work standards vs. hundreds of years ago) of the rise of "Big Pork," and she also seems to understand when she gets caught in the crux of an issue - in her telling it is humane to allow undocumented workers into the U.S., but inhumane to have them compete for jobs with those already here - all tough choices.

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Journalistic account of twenty years fighting against worker abuse at the Smithfield packing plant in North Carolina, and the ineffectiveness of the NLRB in providing any protection even as it repeatedly finds the company egregiously in violation of labor law. Blends in the environmental, immigration, and racist costs of corporate centralized agriculture.

[Raja · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was an eventful organizing campaign and well-told, but I kept wishing it had been written by a lawyer, I had questions