P-9 Members Still Proud 25 Years After Strike

On the night of August 9, 1985, workers at the giant Hormel meatpacking plant in Austin, Minnesota, voted overwhelmingly to reject the company’s “final offer” and go on strike. The strike by the P-9 local would challenge the very definition of the word “solidarity.” It would mobilize and divide the national labor movement, raise questions that still have not been answered, and create wounds that still have not healed, 25 years later.

Some would later say that striking the Austin plant at that time was the wrong thing to do. Others, like labor cartoonist Mike Konopacki, say “I don’t think they had any choice but to fight. Ever since PATCO, we all knew that the bosses wouldn’t let up, so why make it easy for them?”

Hormel’s “final offer” to the union included a 24 percent pay cut, major take-backs in seniority and grievance language and, ominously, a change in the contract expiration date, so that the P-9 contract wouldn’t expire at the same time as other Hormel unions. It was clear from the “final offer” that the company planned to bust the union.

In the first few weeks, the strike seemed to be going well. Unionized workers went out en mass under the slogan “P-9 Proud.” They used traditional picket line tactics to stop scabs at the plant gate and creative tactics, like a “stall-in,” to keep cars and trucks from getting to the plant. And the International seemed, on the surface at least, to be behind the local.

Union members at other Hormel plants in Nebraska and Iowa honored P-9 picket lines and closed down plants. Hundreds were fired as a result.

Early on the P-9 local made a controversial decision to hire Ray Rogers to organize a “corporate campaign” to pressure Hormel into settling up with the union. Rogers advocated a consumer boycott of Hormel products, putting pressure on Hormel’s corporate partners and building broad public support for the union. When the International refused to go along with the plan, rank and file members of the local voted to raise their dues to hire Rogers.

Soon the split between P-9 and the International spilled out into the open. The International, and some on the Left, went on to denounce P-9 for “breaking solidarity” with the other unions in the Hormel chain and engaging in an irresponsible “go it alone strike.” They urged people to ignore the boycott call and buy Hormel, since most of the products were still produced by union workers.

David Poklinkoski, now President of IBEW Local 2304 in Madison, spearheaded the Madison-area “P-9 Solidarity Committee” back in 1985. That ad hoc group coordinated the regional boycott of Hormel products, organized car caravans to rallies in Austin and set up the “Adopt a Striking Family” campaign. And, along with members of UFCW Local 538, they collected $20,000 and tons of foodstuffs for the strikers.

Representatives of the International union began circumventing local P-9 leaders to urge members to accept the company’s “final offer.” In March of the following year, the International president sent a letter to P-9 members ordering them to call off the strike. When rank and file members voted 2 to 1 to continue the struggle, the International placed the local in trusteeship, and appointed loyalists to run the local.

This reliance on democratic decision-making was an important feature of the P-9 strike, says Poklinkoski. “There was an openness and honesty of the leadership, the democracy of the entire process, the involvement of whole families at union meetings,” he says. “This is great stuff, and something not seen in the American labor movement for a very long time.”

The new trustees, now backed up by scabs who had been crossing picket lines, made an “unconditional offer” to return to work. And they soon had a new contract, which was Hormel’s “final offer” of a year earlier. But the union (and dues deductions) were preserved by the unconditional return to work.

The P-9 strike was lost. The workers who went back faced big pay cuts and a gutted contract. Hundreds of strikers at Austin never went back. Nor did hundreds who were fired in other cities for going out in solidarity with P-9.

Meatpacking used to be a fairly good job. This was the a result of hard fought union battles going back to the 1933 sit-down strike that established the new independent union in Austin. Meatpacking was always hard and dangerous, but eventually workers at Hormel, Oscar Mayer and Armor were able to improve working conditions and earn a decent wage.

But in the decade of the ‘80s, packing companies demanded, and got, major concessions from the unions. Average real take home pay fell by 44 percent. Today much of the work is done by non-union workers. And, as a highly visible defeat, the P-9 strike was a turning point in that protracted class war.

One lingering question is whether a “corporate campaign” and a consumer boycott work, either as a substitute for a solid strike or in support of a strategy to stop production. Labor historian Peter Rachleff, who literally “wrote the book” on the P-9 strike (see sidebar), warns that corporate campaigns may take a long time to bear fruit. And people on strike don’t have a long time to wait.

Rogers would later say, “However this turns out, there has been something very positive here….” And labor author Jane Slaughter declared the P-9 strike a “moral victory.”

Rachleff points out that the events of 25 years ago gave lie to the notion that American workers are cautious and passive. “That strike demonstrated that rank and file workers were prepared to fight the new management offensive signaled by Reagan’s firing of PATCO strikers. And it also demonstrated that other rank and file workers, in meatpacking and throughout the working class, recognized that their own lives were at stake and were willing to support the strikers.”

“P-9 gave us a brilliant glimpse of what a revitalized labor movement can look like,” says Poklinkoski.

“These folks made labor history,” adds Konopacki, “and they should be proud.”