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Growers say that when they complain about the arrangement, the processors sometimes retaliate by terminating the relationship. Other growers say they have been penalized by processors who underweigh their chickens or give them ailing chicks to raise. In a trial in Arkansas last June, a former manager for Cargill, a major turkey producer, testified that "if you've got ((a grower)) you've just had it with, you might give him the bad ((birds)) just so he'd quit." Despite the testimony, the grower was unable to prove his case.
So far, neither growers nor plant workers had found much success in organizing or in finding powerful advocates. "The workers didn't feel they could organize and maintain their jobs, because many plants have an economic stranglehold on their towns," says Kelly Mitchell-Clark, an official of the Women's Project, a nonprofit group in Little Rock that conducted a study of the state's poultry belt. "Sometimes it's a big deal for these people just to be able to get off the processing line to go to the bathroom."
Fewer than 10% of Arkansas poultry plants are unionized. The main impediment to organizers is high job turnover, which means that most employees are new and feel fortunate just to have a job. When asked about the absence of unions in all but two of his 23 Arkansas plants, John Tyson says this is the desire of the workers. "In 1984 we bought a plant in Dardanelle," he points out. "Last year 80% of the workers signed a petition to get rid of the union. They just didn't want it." But in July a judge overturned the decertification of the Dardanelle union because the employee who led the drive was an "agent" of Tyson who "threatened" new hires into signing the petition. In a stinging 44-page decision, Judge Wallace Nations concluded that the company's main witnesses were "not credible." Tyson has appealed the decision. "The union is the only hope these people have of achieving any dignity and a decent wage," argues Bill Burns, an official with the United Food and Commercial Workers. "Just try to raise a family on $6.25 an hour. It's impossible."
Growers too have been frustrated after decades of attempting to organize. But a year ago, 35 growers from nine states met in a hunting lodge in the Arkansas Ozarks and launched a national group. Since then, hundreds of farmers in Arkansas alone have signed on, many of them paying dues anonymously. "Yes, I'm afraid," says grower Don Allen, a leader of the Arkansas movement. "And that's a terrible thing to say in the land of the free and the home of the brave." Last February a Tyson memo to managers urged them to spread the word that the organizing was being led by "shady characters" such as socialists and animal-rights activists.