So was it a protest or wasn’t it?

I had to snicker at this attempt at AP making news of a protest of Smithfield Foods, Inc. decision to not recognize Martin Luther King, Jr. Day with a paid day off;

A few hundred employees at a massive Smithfield Foods Inc. hog slaughterhouse missed work Monday after a union called for a walkout to protest the company’s decision to not make Martin Luther King Jr. Day a paid holiday.

But it was difficult to tell if the workers didn’t come to work because of the union or because of other reasons, Smithfield spokesman Dennis Pittman said.

On a typical day, about 100 to 150 people miss a shift, and on Monday there were as many as 150 additional employees absent, Pittman said. He said he couldn’t tell why the workers didn’t come but that the plant — which has two daily shifts of 2,500 people — continued operations.

The United Food and Commercial Workers Union estimated that 400 people among the 2,500 scheduled to work Monday morning walked out or did not come to work. The union has been running an organizing campaign at the plant and already lost one election.

“Compared to the last Martin Luther King Day, it’s about the same,” Pittman said. “There was no walkout. We’re going to have a real good day.”

So it was pretty much a typical Monday. And if they’d gotten MLK Day off with pay, what would they have done to honor the man? Besides sit home and watch Combat and Rawhide DVDs like I did.

Category: Media