The union election on Wednesday and Thursday of this week may finally mark the close of the 16-year-long battle between the United Commercial Food Workers union and Smithfield Packing Co. Or, it may open yet another pugilistic chapter.

At issue are the wishes and the rights of some 4,600 employees at Smithfield's giant Tar Heel, N.C., pork processing plant.

What has made the ongoing struggle notable are the lengths to which both parties have been willing to go to try to stack the deck in their favor. Two previous elections, both of which the union lost, were marred by intimidation tactics by the company, and a federal court threw out the results, according to a report by the Associated Press.

On the other hand, Smithfield Packing had sued the UFCW via a racketeering statute, contending that the union's blistering publicity campaign against the company represented economic and political pressure that amounted to extortion. On the day the trial was to begin, both sides announced that a deal had been struck that provided for a secret ballot election, the voting process favored by the company.

Silent partners

As the election draws near, the only parties not talking about the vote seem to be the union and the company. Both had been ordered by a federal judge not to make any public statement or communication about the election, and so both sides have been uncharacteristically quiet for weeks.

If workers vote in favor of the union, it won't be a new experience for Smithfield. The company already works through union representatives at eight of its 13 pork processing plants and distribution facilities in the United States. Almost 24,000 of the total 35,300 employees in Smithfield's pork segment were covered by a collective bargaining agreement as of April, the AP said, quoting the company's annual report.

Also, while the average hourly wage for slaughtering and processing workers in the United States was $10.80 in 2007 (according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics), in North Carolina, where Smithfield has four non-union processing plants and a distribution center that is unionized, the mean wage was $9.76 an hour, the AP reported. In Virginia, where Smithfield runs three unionized processing plants, the wage was $11.02.

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