Smithfield Packing, union agree on NC contract

TAR HEEL, N.C. — Smithfield Packing Co. and the union that worked for years to organize one of the world’s largest pork slaughterhouses said Friday they reached a tentative agreement on their first contract for the plant.

The United Food and Commercial Workers and Smithfield Packing, a wholly owned subsidiary of Smithfield, Va.-based Smithfield Foods Inc., said workers would vote on whether to ratify the contract’s terms Tuesday and Wednesday. Both sides declined to offer details of the deal until they were shared with the roughly 5,000 employees.

“It is a big deal,” union spokeswoman Jill Cashen said. Plant workers on the bargaining committee “are recommending acceptance of the contract, so I believe they are happy with it.”

The company began negotiating the contract with UFCW Local 1208 in February after workers narrowly voted in December to back a union. The two sides spent 16 years in a bitter dispute over the UFCW’s efforts to organize the work force at the rural North Carolina meatpacking plant.