The challenge

The meatpacking industry leads the nation in lost time injuries and debilitating repetitive-motion disorders. Industry critics charge that large meatpacking corporations violate wage-and-hour laws and recruit immigrant workers to ensure a pliant, low wage and disposable workforce. During the 1980’s, the federal government fined Iowa Beef Processors (I.B.P) for not reporting workers’ hand injuries caused by meat-cutting techniques. Nevertheless, María Martínez charges, such injuries continue, the result of the excessive speed of the modern production-line chain. She also points to the ways that deregulation and budget cuts have “weakened the efficacy of government agencies in combating workplace injuries or food safety violations.” Industry critics also charge that members of the meatpacking workforce have received inadequate protection from their own unions.


Seeds of commitment

The daughter of Mexican farm workers, Martínez was the first member of her family to be born in the United States. She began working 15 hours a day in the plum orchards and vineyards of California at age 14. “My earliest memories are of work,” she says. “The work I did from a young age picking grapes and plums.” After moving to rural Eastern Washington, Martínez took a job as a meat processor. “It pays very little; it’s dirty and it’s hard,” Martínez says. “But for many years, I felt that because I didn’t have education, there was nothing I could do to change it. Teamsters for a Democratic Union (T.D.U.) taught me that it’s not about the education you get in school. It’s about what’s in your heart. Workers have what it takes to be leaders.”


Accomplishments

Beginning in 1997, Martínez has led a grassroots movement of immigrant meatpackers to reform the Teamsters union and challenge the industry’s unsafe, unsanitary and discriminatory practices. Working with T.D.U. (a rank-and-file union-reform movement), Martínez organized educational workshops where workers learned about their rights and how to organize. Activists formed a volunteer network to share information and help coworkers challenge labor-law violations. Workers won the right to use the restroom during work hours; they ended supervisors’ widespread use of profanity and abusive language; and they overcame other violations of their labor rights.

During a six week strike in 1999, Martínez attracted national coverage in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times when she organized demonstrations in Wallula, Pasco, and other towns, as well as protests at the offices of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Pasco, to draw public attention toward links between worker and consumer safety. She also served as lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit against I.B.P. for failing to pay workers for setup or cleanup work. As a result, Martínez and 800 other workers were awarded $3 million in back pay and damages. Martínez is now organizing a second class-action lawsuit for other unpaid, off-the-clock work. Recently, she helped organize a public forum, attended by hundreds of community members, where workers joined Eric Schlosser, the author of the best selling book Fast Food Nation, to testify about the connection between unsafe working conditions and unsafe food. “Out of that forum, we began working with students who have organized a student organization to fight sweatshop conditions in meatpacking plants,” she says. Martínez also teamed with the Humane Farming Association to expose industry conditions. Workers equipped with hidden cameras took graphic footage of assembly line slaughter that was aired on prime-time television, leading to a state investigation.
Martínez has also helped gain fairer representation in her union. Today, most workers in the meatpacking industry come from Mexico. They represent 80 percent of the membership of her union, Local 556 in Pasco. But for decades, Mexican immigrants had not been well represented. Working with T.D.U., Martínez led campaigns to win members the right to elect their own shop stewards, have union documents translated from English to Spanish, and obtain worker representation at the bargaining table during contract talks. She also compelled her local union to hold the first contested election in decades. In September 2000, Martínez and a slate of Latino T.D.U. members were elected to office. For the first time, the local’s leadership reflected its workforce.

The local is using hard data and applying worker and public pressure to push the meatpacking industry toward a comprehensive safety and ergonomics program. “We developed a worker-to-worker survey that showed in numbers what our jobs do to us: more than three-quarters of workers had some sort of work related health problem in the past 12 months, and more than two-thirds said they had witnessed unsanitary conditions,” Martínez says. “Now, Teamsters in other parts of the country call and ask us for help. Our challenge now is to build alliances with meatpacking workers across North America to struggle together for justice on the job and in our unions.”


Leadership style

“When we organize a march, workers do the planning, the organizing, the speaking,” Martínez says. “When we negotiate a contract, workers train each other to develop shop-floor networks and conduct member surveys to figure out what we want, and members elect their coworkers to be on the bargaining committee.” When a high ranking Teamsters official came to a strike line and tried to coax the rank and file negotiating committee into meeting with him in a posh hotel, Martínez told him that workers were accustomed to meeting outside on the grounds. She told him he would have to get his suit dirty if he wanted to meet with meatpackers. When the official complied, it set a different tone for his relationship with the immigrant workers. Described as naturally shy, Martínez is nonetheless a fiery motivator of employees and fearless when dealing with management. Martínez is also a leader in the national Teamster reform movement. As elected Co-chair of T.D.U., she was the first Latina to run for Teamsters International Vice President.


The future

Martínez is currently helping 2,000 immigrant workers at a meatpacking plant in Colorado organize to win the kind of changes won in Pasco. “Our challenge now is to build alliances with meatpacking workers across North America to struggle together for justice on the job and in our unions,” Martínez says. “I want to be a part of a national movement for reform in the meatpacking industry that will protect workers from injuries, consumers from unsanitary meat and animals from inhumane slaughter.” Martínez says. Locally, her number-one goal is to continue developing leaders.


More about María Martínez and her work

“She’s extremely honest. She’s in no way self serving. She’s selfless and authentic. Direct. Not intimidated by anything.”
— Gail Eisnitz, author of Slaughterhouse