Smithfield Foods, a company that slaughters more pigs than any other in the world, has filed a RICO lawsuit against a union local that had publicized the pork giant's environmental and labor practices and compared them to what muckracking reporter Upton Sinclair described more than 90 years ago in The Jungle.
The lawsuit basically suggests that union activity is not protected speech and even truthful statements can be used as examples of Mafia tactics. If the lawsuit is allowed to stand, the right of union workers to picket or even issue press releases could exist on paper but in reality they would be squashed like cockroaches by the corporate friendly Bush Administration and its two newest allies in the Supremes, Sam Alito and John Roberts.
In the Sidebar column in today's New York Times, Adam Liptak writes about the disturbing situation in North Carolina that would have the union, the United Food and Comercial Workers International, on the hook for a $17 million verdict.
Liptak writes that Smithfield claims the UFCWI was guilty of violating RICO laws when it issued press releases, contacted civil rights, and environmental groups, organized protests and advocated boycotts.
Unfortunately, the word frivelous lawsuit only seems to apply to those filed AGAINST corporations like Smithfield. Moreover, they perverted the meaning of RICO by hiring one of the men that helped craft the 1970 law.
That man, G. Robert Blakey, called the tactics used by UFCWI economic warfare. "It's actually the same thing as John Gotti used to do," Blakey said. "What the union is saying in effect to Smithfield is, 'you've got to parner up with us to run your company.'"
The director of the union calls Blakey's claim nonsense and the Mafia analogy insulting and overblown.
"If we kidnapped the CEO and we said, 'we know where your children go to school,' that's a Mafia-like act, said Gene Bruskin, who was also named individually as a defendent in the lawsuit. "If we told the truth about how the company abuses its workers to its customers, that's traditional free speech."
Smithfield devotes five pages to the 93 page brief to the charge that the union was engaged in racketering when it lobbied New York City, Boston, and other local governments and convinced them to pass resolutions condemning Smithfield, Liptak writes.
Smithfield even has the audacity to suggest that material taken verbatim from a federal appeals court ruling that said "Smithfield had engaged in intense and widespread coercion" in fighting the UFCWI's efforts to unionize the plant in Tar Heel, NC.
The author of the NY City resolution said that Smithfield's decision to sue was a naked attempt to silence its critics and she suggested that the union countersue.
"It's a wacky strategy that is aimed at coercing the union into backing off," suggested NYC councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito.
Smithfield contends that UFCWI interfered with a contract between the pork producer and a television host on the Food Network and also strongarmed Oprah Winfrey into not letting the tv personality on the Food Network, Paula Dean, to promote Smithfield products on the "Oprah Winfrey Show."
Blakey maintains that even the First Amendment doesn't protect unions from RICO suits. Where does this end? If Smithfield and other corporations have their say, we won't have ours. Daily KOS and other sites could also be cited by the corporations and be forced to spend resources defending a truly frivelous lawsuit.
Smithfield is asking the court, in addition to the $17 million, that the UFCWI be prohibited from issuing statements or press releases; that it be barred from ever demonstrating at Paula Dean events, and that the union be barred from particpating "in the drafting, encouraging, sponsorship, and or passage of public condemnations of plaintiffs by cities ,townships, or other organizations."
Blakey admits the goal of Smithfield is to force the union to settle. He mentions that in five of the six cases where a corporation sued a union under RICO, the union settled because the judge did not dismiss the case, Liptak writes.
Sinclair, who later ran for governor of California, figured in the suit nearly 100 years ago after he grimly detailed the working conditions of a Chicago slaughterhouse. The book was instrumental in the passing of the Pure Food and Drug Act signed into law by President Teddy Roosevelt.
On or about April 20, 2007, a union organizer Jason Lefkowitz had the temerity to quote Sinclair in a critique of Ms. Dean in an online newsletter, Smithfield claims.
Basically Smithfield is saying some liberal Jew (I'm one too BTW) is coming down here and messing with your job and interfering by quoting some faggot (in the context Bill Maher talks about because you know he reads) author that was really a communist troublemaker.
Liptak closes by suggesting that Smitfield was perverting the meaning of Sinclair as well as twisting the RICO statutes to silence the union. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something," Sinclair wrote "when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
The case is headed to trial in October in U.S. District Court in Richmond, Va.