WHY THESE CANDIDATES?

SMITHFIELD TAR HEEL CHAIRMAN Joseph Luter III

Smithfield operates the largest pork slaughterhouse in the world. Located in Southeastern North Carolina, Smithfield’s Tar Heel plant employs 5,000 workers and kills and dismembers over 32,000 hogs each day. The plant remains one of the most dangerous worksites in the United States, where workers who have not been adequately trained are forced to work at exceedingly fast line speeds while making repetitive hand motions in processing the pork. Workers are injured, harassed, intimidated, and threatened by Smithfield management.

Smithfield maintains an environment of fear and intimidation. For over ten years now, workers at the Tar Heel plant have fought relentlessly for a voice on the job. In 1994 and 1997, workers tried to hold a union election but were met with the company’s coercive fist. After the vote count at the 1997 election, one union supporter and one union organizer were dragged out of the plant, beaten, insulted with racial epithets, and arrested.

Plant injuries have increased so dramatically in recent years that this summer thousands of workers signed a petition that was delivered to Luter and other Smithfield executives at the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting. Luter refused to look at the petitions, and instead lectured the workers in front of shareholders and their religious community supporters on the principles of “democracy.”

In many ways, 21st century meatpacking conditions in Tar Heel, North Carolina, have changed little since Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle in 1906. Tar Heel workers know that a union presence means no longer having to fight endless struggles for bare minimum standards of workplace health and safety. This spring, for example, workers in one department were forced to initiate a months-long campaign for the company to make clean and drinkable water available on the job.

Joseph Luter III revels in the benefits granted to Smithfield’s upper echelon. Even in retirement, he continues to bring in $83,333.33 each month in consulting fees. He also receives cash incentives and is entitled to use the company jet. Meanwhile the workers in Tar Heel are forced to bear the burden of Luter’s indulgent lifestyle.

Smithfield Foods has filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against Jobs with Justice, UFCW Local 400, the Change To Win (CTW) labor federation, and the union organizing its employees in Tar Heel, NC, the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) International union. The suit is being filed under the RICO statute designed to fight organized crime. The company’s RICO suit is ironic given the well documented violations of state and federal law that the company has been found in violation of. It seeks to stop all such campaigns in the future and is a clear violation of the constitutional rights of all supporters of workers’ rights.

For these reasons, and many more, Joseph Luter III of Smithfield deserves the title of Grinch of the Year. To learn more about the struggle, visit www.smithfieldjustice.org.

VERIZON BUSINESS' Bob Toohey

Join the brave techs at Verizon Business who are standing up to Grinches like Bob Toohey. Vote Toohey for Grinch of the Year!

ASSOCIATION OF MOTION PICTURE AND TELEVISION PRODUCERS J. Nicholas Counter III

J. Nicholas Counter III, President of the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). The AMPTP represents the six major media conglomerates in contract negotiations with the Writer’s Guild of America.

Led by J. Nicholas Counter III, the AMPTP had over three months to respond to important proposals the Writer’s Guild had put on the table, which addressed issues unprecedented in previous negotiations, including Internet reuse and original writing for new media.

J. Nicholas Counter III deserves the Grinch of the Year Award because:

• He forced 12,000 members out on strike, putting tens of thousands of people out of work just before Christmas.
• Oddly, he can’t count. He says the writers can’t get a share of the hundreds of millions of dollars the conglomerates are making over the Internet because they can’t count the money coming in. (Apparently, it’s coming in way too fast!)
• The WGA’s proposal would cost the media conglomerates $151 million dollars over three years. The strike is costing Los Angeles alone an estimated $21.3 million dollars a day* – and writers have been on strike since November 5th, 2007.

He’s ruining Christmas for tens of thousands by keeping them out of work.

*According to FilmL.A., the nonprofit group that handles film permits and promotes the industry.

BURGER KING CEO John W. Chidsey

Farm workers who pick tomatoes for Burger King's sandwiches earn 40 to 50 cents for every 32-pound bucket of tomatoes they pick, a rate that has not risen significantly in nearly 30 years. Workers who toil from dawn to dusk must pick two tons of tomatoes to earn $50 in one day.

McDonald's, the largest restaurant chain in the world, and Yum Brands, the largest restaurant company in the world (parent company of Taco Bell, KFC, & Pizza Hut) have committed to guaranteeing improved wages and enforcing a code of conduct for conditions in the fields. They have agreed to pay workers a penny more per pound of tomatoes picked. But Burger King -- the second-largest hamburger chain in the world -- has so far refused to work with farm workers and heed the call to improve wages and working conditions for those who pick their tomatoes.

AMERICAN AIRLINES President and CEO Gerard Arpey

American Airlines CEO Gerald Arpey asked employees to "Pull Together, Win Together", and they did. Approximately 95,000 workers at American Airlines agreed to deep wage and benefit concessions in 2003 in order to save the company from bankruptcy.

Now that the company is making money again, how are the workers being repaid for their sacrifices? They're not!

Arpey awarded millions of dollars in bonuses to more than 800 of the top-paid executives at American this year. Lining the pockets of the top-paid executives while workers suffer is true grinch behavior!

You can vote until December 19th at http://www.jwj.org/grinch.html.