workingclasshistory:

On this day, 17 August 1985, workers at the Hormel meatpacking plant in Austin, Minnesota went on strike in protest at a 23% wage cut which came following 8 years of a pay freeze. The strikers held firm through the winter, until the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) negotiated a compromise involving a two tier workforce with lower pay for new hires and a smaller pay cut for existing staff. A majority of members rejected the union deal, however the International union ordered its members to return to work, and some union officials in the plant joined some others to begin working as scabs while the rank-and-file workers kept up pickets. Authorities instituted martial law and brought in the National Guard to work alongside police in beating, harassing and arresting strikers and ensuring that scabs could get to work. The strikers in the union local P-9 set up roving pickets, to try to spread the strike to other plants, which had some success but was fought tooth and nail by the International union, which denounced P-9 as “fascists” and eventually deregistered the local. The Communist Party joined the union leadership in attacking the strikers, and the AFL-CIO refused the strikers’ request to call a boycott of Hormel foods. So eventually by June 1986 the strike was defeated. More info here: https://www.iww.org/about/how-iww-differs-business-unions/TWetzel1 https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1786998111485331/?type=3