Employees at the Pilgrim’s Pride plant in Waco, Texas, have voted to unionize.
Those workers will be represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 540, based in Dallas. According to a report by Fox 44, the vote was “overwhelming.”
Early on the agenda will be negotiations between the union and Pilgrim’s Pride concerning a first contract covering pay, benefits and working conditions.
According to the UFCW website, the union represents workers in the packing, processing, grocery, retail, health care, cannabis, chemical and distillery industries.
Carl Green, UFCW internal organizing coordinator, told the Waco Tribune the efforts to get Pilgrim’s workers in Waco to unionize began mid-May.
While the union has not had much of a presence in Waco, it hopes to expand its reach to include a Sanderson Farms poultry plant, which opened as a big bird deboning plant in 2007, and a Cargill Protein plant, both also in Waco. The Cargill plant is a cooked meats facility which produces pre-sliced and other deli products. A portion of the Cargill plant was also devoted to fresh and frozen whole turkey production, but the company announced it would cease those particular operations in 2019.
The Pilgrim’s plant in Waco was the site of a fatal accident in January, when a contract worker from Baker Refrigeration died and two others were injured when a ceiling where they were working collapsed, causing them to fall.
Headquartered in Greeley, Colorado, Pilgrim’s Pride is the second largest broiler producer in the United States. According to the WATTPoultry.com Top Companies Database, the company produced 161.66 million pounds of ready-to-cook chicken on a weekly basis. It operates 25 slaughter plants, 32 hatcheries and 25 feed mills.
In addition to its operations in the U.S., Pilgrim’s Pride also has facilities in Mexico and in Europe.
