From Collective Bargaining to Social Justice Certification: Workers’ Rights in the American Meatpacking Industry

Abstract

This article examines the economic and political forces that shape the characteristics of jobs in the meatpacking industry and assesses worker- and consumer-based strategies to improve pay and working conditions. I analyze one example of each strategy: first, the mid-twentieth century United Packinghouse Workers of America labor union and second, ongoing efforts to create a social justice certification program for kosher meat products. I argue that neoliberal patterns of economic organization and policy have undercut labor unionism and supported consumer-based strategies, but that these latter strategies have a limited potential to restructure power relations in the meatpacking industry and may even contribute to market fragmentation and worker exclusion. These programs are contradictory in their effort to use market mechanisms to resolve the exploitative conditions created by the market, and they raise important questions about the relationship between political rights and economic democracy in contemporary American society.