Posts Categorized: Meat Packing

Over 300 workers at the Daily’s Premium Meats plant in St. Joseph, Mo., joined UFCW Local 2 in November and ratified their first contract in December. Daily’s Premium Meats is a bacon processing plant, and these workers produce sliced prepackaged bacon.  

UFCW Local 2 organizers have been meeting with workers at the Daily’s Premium Meats plant in St. Joseph since the plant opened in 2017. These workers joined our union family because they wanted the better wages and benefits that their unionized colleagues have at the Seaboard Triumph Foods plant in Sioux City, Iowa, who are members of UFCW Local 222, and the Triumph Foods plant in St. Joseph, Mo., who are members of UFCW Local 2. Daily’s Premium Meats is owned by Seaboard Foods and Triumph Foods, and the vote took place via card check on Nov. 18.A month later, on Dec. 4, these workers ratified their first union contract with UFCW Local 2.

The three-year contract includes:

• A one-time ratification signing bonus of $500
• A perfect attendance bonus built into the base rate and an additional $1.00 per hour
• 33 guaranteed hours of work
• A grievance procedure
• An earned time off program, with up to nine additional paid days off per year
• Double time pay for work on Sunday
• A 401(k) 6 percent match
• Seniority rights

“A union will make a tremendous difference at our plant, with better wages, better benefits and a better workplace for our company,” said Clinton Eldrege, who has worked for the Daily’s Premium Meats plant in St. Joseph for five years.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced a set of first-round investments under their Meat and Poultry Processing Expansion Program. $73 million will be invested across 21 grant projects with the goal of increasing competition and expanding meat and poultry processing capacity in the United States.

“As America’s meatpacking and food processing union, UFCW applauds the Biden Administration and the Department of Agriculture for working to improve capacity and create a fairer, more diverse meat and poultry industry,” said UFCW International President Marc Perrone in a statement.

“The investments announced this week through the Meat and Poultry Processing Expansion Program are admirable, but they’re missing a crucial focus: workers.

“Any attempt to expand or improve this industry moving forward must include specific provisions for fair labor standards that protect workers and safeguards the hard-fought protections they’ve already won at unionized processing facilities around the country. The goal of expanding capacity and diversifying the amount of producers in the industry is naturally aligned with the needs of the workforce who will ultimately make these operations run.

“Let’s not leave those processing and agriculture workers behind and diligently build programs that prioritize their needs too.”