Union Time: Fighting for Workers' Rights

Streaming video - 2019

"It's Union Time, people!" — the rallying cry of workers at the Smithfield Foods pork processing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina. Since its opening in 1993, employees of the plant have endured various abuses such as intimidation tactics, low pay, and dangerous working conditions which resulted in bodily injury and, on one occasion, death. Often treated as expendable, the workers came together and engaged in a 16-year-long struggle for the right to unionize and receive safe, fair working conditions — and won. UNION TIME shows how unions can still be a potent force for economic and social justice, and the role they play in a just society. The Tar Heel victory demonstrates that, even in an anti-union climate, forming a uni...on is possible and even essential. Above all, it celebrates the courage of meatpacking workers who refused to quit and gives voice to how they broke a cycle of poverty and injustice. Now the 5,000 workers at the Tar Heel plant have fair working conditions, better wages and, above all, respect. Union Time lays out a compelling blueprint for unionizing when all the odds have been stacked against workers. more