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Share Hormel strike stories with ADH
Published 10:43am Friday, July 30, 2010With the 25th anniversary of the 1985 Hormel strike approaching later this month, the Austin Daily Herald is looking to gather stories from the strike — both good and bad — and share them with the Austin community.
If you have a story to tell, or a picture to share, please contact the Herald’s newsroom via e-mail at newsroom@austindailyherald.com.
Please keep written submissions relatively brief and appropriate for publication, as the Herald is planning on using select stories in a special issue set to run Aug. 15.
With photos, please include appropriate caption information, as well as the name of the photographer, if possible. If you don’t have a photo in a digital format but would still like to share it, please stop at the Herald’s office (310 Second St. NE) so we can scan it.
Also, if you’d be more comfortable talking with a reporter about your strike story, please call (507) 434-2232.
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That’s Dan Allen screaming, isn’t it?
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Unfortunately I have have no good memories of this strike. Many innocent people were hurt by it.
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While both sides were to blame for ripping the town apart it is clear that P-9′s position was wrong. I do not blame them for holding on as long as they could for what they had. Based on past experience they were right to fight – the intervening years show that they were not going to win no matter what.
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the reality it the strike failed
take a look at hormel 2010
they are no longer loyal to austin or america
they are a multinational corporation
the time will come soon when they will leave austin
strikes are so last millenium…..
austin is now a dieing town because it refuses to deal with the reality ……..its only growth in 20 years
are immigrants…….legal or illegal
without them
the town would already be on the deceased list
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Austin was never the same after it…
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At least now everyone can see what a cohesive living wage community becomes when an entire workforce is uprooted and replaced by aliens who have no loyalty or allegiance to a city.
Austin isn’t even a shell anymore it is a standing reminder of corporate domination.
A great working class living wage society can never rise from these ashes, only an elite robber baron class has emerged victoriously.
Loyal only to wall street, not main street.
RIP Austin …… shamtown USA rules now.
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the immigrants are not the problem
they are the scapegoat for our own failures
the immigrants have loyalty to austin by the mere fact they have families and community
didn’t they resurrect the old terp ballroom
they have invested in austin………
have we…..NO
austin has not been valued by its whitebread/inbred citizens
instead of making the strengths of the town its future
taking the worldwide celebrity of spam and making austin the mayberry we grew up in
they could have invested in what might have been a really
great experience and make austin a must do for tourists
instead we spent our time bashing immigrants and going into debt to become a prison town versus a mayberry town
do you people know how many former austin residents came back just to go to the original george’s pizza and take their grandkids there and show them the tower where we would dance every weekend and the pranksters would lift the cheerleader’s renault on to the sidewalk
today’s austin ………those guys would be arrested
when your growth industry is a prison…..you are doomed
and you created your own demise……..by blaming others
instead of yourself
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There was a spiritual scar left by the strike, the heart and soul of the town was forever changed. That being said I believe people make up the character of a community and there are still good people that reside here, good people that will never say they live in “Spamtown” but live in Austin, Minnesota.
I’m attempting a fictionalized version of the strike, the toll and the scars more so than the physical events, which have certainly been duly recorded.
http://dwilliamgreen.wordpress.com/
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I and several other resident people rebuilt the Terp with our (not immigrant hands)
If you think the allegal aliens are divested in Austin think again.
The town is loaded with transients period.
Scapegoats ? immigrants ? well they sure keep rounding those goats up for crimes don’t they ?
Baaaaaaad baaaaaad goats.
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excuse me…
..i remember reading this story concerning the terp
i was speaking of this article in my post…..
Austin Daily Herald | Old Terp Ballroom to reopen soon
Nov 20, 2009 … The old Terp Ballroom as seen from the roof of the Salvation Army. Austin’s historic Terp Ballrom will soon open its doors again in Austin …
http://www.austindailyherald.com/…/old-terp-ballroom-reopen-soon/
as far as the transients……..what do you think you will have when you build a jail..when you become a prison town
it is a build it and they will come scenario
and as far as the illegal aliens arrests……last one i saw was for forgery…..actually many of them are for forgery..they punish the weak tgey destroy the weak
they ignore the powerful..
the poor hard working fool is easily replaceable by the next desperate to work illegal
and they will be the next to be punished/destroyed
but never never ever……..do they go to the powerful
and destroy them …
the demand..they do not destroy
…they destroy the supply
which is the desperate for work
not the demand……..which is hormel
the demand goes on…….and the taxes you pay go up to destroy the supply that the multinational corporations need to make profits for their international shareholders
we have a serious problem ……capitalist immorality
greed feeds greed not need
it is what will make capitalism fail and the usa too
austin is just a little peek at what looms on the horizon for all of america….self destruction
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It’s sad that 25 years after the strike, wages at that plant are pretty close to the same as they were then yet the price of the products produced has dramatically risen.
The old chorus of ‘they’re working the jobs Americans don’t want to work’ is really thin – Americans were obviously willing to work those jobs 25 years ago – provided they were paid a living wage. If it wasn’t for the massive influx of immigrants (legal and illegal) the wage would have to rise to attract employees – but to keep the wage low migrants are recruited by the busload – flooding the labor supply to artificially keep the wages low and to keep the hogs rolling in and the product rolling out while making massive profits.
Austin today is all about the welfare, corporate or otherwise. Remember not too long ago that Hormel threatened tax court to get their property taxes cut to the bone? Then to have their employees so poorly compensated that they qualify for welfare – essentially having the taxpayers of Mower County subsidizing their workforce? Do the dollars passed out to a few by the foundation make up for the millions paid for by taxpayers annually?
25 years – and this town has dramatically changed for the worse. Skyrocketing crime rates, massive increases in welfare, and destroying 3 blocks of downtown to build a jail to try and keep up with the increasing number of criminals. It’s not a ‘build it and they will come’ – it’s that they are already here and we need a place to put criminals instead of simply strapping a bracelet on their ankle and returning them to society.
The people who claim to have Austins best interest in mind do not act that way – just look at the current mayor, elected to office on a promise to make Austin unfriendly to illegals and to drop the sanctuary city b.s. only to continue with the status quo. It appears it’s going to take an uprising of the population to take our city back, an event that will make the ’85 strike seem like a dress rehearsal.
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Just like there’s no such thing as being a little bit pregnant, there’s no such thing as having a little Capitalism over here and a little Socialism over there. You can’t have two economic systems operating in one country at the same time, at least not if “all men are created equal” is written in that country’s founding documents.
Sorry, my friends. You either have Capitalism or you don’t.
And here in the USA, we no longer have it. It’s dead….. just as dead as a cooperative labor agreement where both side give and take in order to preserve stability.
Hormil saw the heart and they had the dagger. Hootch
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Couldn’t agree more. Spot on comments.
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I am one of those casualties of the Hormel Strike. I had the best job in the plant when the union put us out on strike. I could not cross the picket line because of my loyalty to the near retired people who had helped me, the youngster, in every way they could. I did not own my job and would surely have replaced one of those courageous hard working fellow senior employees. When we went out on strike, after our wages were dropped from 10.69 to 8.25 an hour and were made to pay back medical deductions previously taken, we thought our International union were upstanding people. Unfortunately that was not true! The International union had removed certain contract language that sealed our fates. Unfortunately, we the local union including our officers were not aware of this language being omitted, after the contract was signed in 1977. We thought we had every right to maintain our standard of living for Austin and future workers. Well, we all know how that ended up. Everyone lost in the strike, the Hormel company, the P9ers, the replacement worker scabs and the city of Austin. The only ones that didn’t lose were Lewie Anderson and the International Meatpackers Union.
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Well said my friend, very well said.
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how did the hormel company lose anything
they have thrived
you can not say that about austin
you can not say that about workers
you can not say that about unions
they are all in a state of decline
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I can remember giving my neighbor a job, who was a P-9er, a job doing construction to support his family. Once some of them found out, they poisoned his dog, harassed his wife at the grocery store and belittled his children. I also remember the union officials sitting down at the hall eating and drinking coffee, while the guys out on the lines froze their kiesters off. I hold no grudges against the members of the P-9, but i think their elected officials were overmatched from the start. To this day there is still a lot of bad blood.
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Hmmm…no stories about families and children being threatened and beaten by P9ers during the strike?? No…huh…how about the vandalism that occurred on a regular basis by P9ers and their supporters? No…no stories? huh…well how about me, as a 7th grader, being threatened with a pipe by a grown man, wearing a P9 button on his hat, as I biked down the street wearing a Spam shirt…got any of those fond memories to print? No…guess not.
I can’t speak for either side, only from personal experience, but I guarantee you I wouldn’t have turned on my fellow citizen like a pack of wild dogs. I am sincerely sorry for those who lost their jobs, wages, benefits, etc. As a grown man with children I understand the emotions that run up in those situations…but this community shouldn’t be afraid to remember that it wasn’t just a one-sided affair.
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I do not think it is fair of you to blame the P-9 for everything bad that happened in the strike. There was bad on both sides and some involved that didn’t even work at Hormel. My family had experiences that changed our lives and they were not inflicted by the P-9 and they were scary and threatening too.
As far as the “wild dog” statement that is basically what happened but not the way you think. Just look at Austin today and compare it to any time before 1985. It was not the company spending that kept it that way, it was not the wages being paid now, obviously, so that leaves the pre-strike worker who was spending their money in town and Austin flourished, grew and prospered because of it.
And Hormel did lose because they lost the most loyal, hard working, generous people that they had ever seen or will ever see again! My grandfather worked there 52 years and never missed one day of work. That is the kind of people Hormel lost in August 1985.
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I was a child that was involved in the strike. I was 7 years old when I stayed at “Solidarity City” and stood on the picket line with my dad and the rest of our family. We didn’t even live here at the time (we were from a hormel plant in Iowa) but did eventually move here. The strike changed my life – in both good and bad ways. I had to leave my childhood home and move to a different state when the strike was near over and that was not an easy time. I saw actions from all sides (P-9rs, “scabs”, and by-standers) that was down right wrong. When the strike happened there was literally no money for my parents to raise 2 kids, now as an adult with a family of my own I don’t know how they did it. But I also saw my dad not back down from something he believed in and my mother stood there right beside him. I have great admiration for both of my parents for that. Though I moved away from family I also gained new P9 family members. There were many families who were walking through the same shoes as my family was and it brought us close to one another in a time that we all needed that.
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It is hard to believe that it has been 25 years! Looking back at all the events that unfolded during the stike It can surely be said there were no “winners”. It was unfortunate there had to be a strike in the first place, there is never any good that comes from it for all parties involved. I have always backed the union and have been a livelong member, but, there should never be a need for a union. Companies should be loyal and fair,taking care of the people that made them prosper. Unfortunatly that is not always the case, never has been, and probably never will be.
Could there have been more productive ways of handeling the confict on all sides? perhaps. Did all parties make mistakes? perhaps. Did all parties involved think they were doing it right? perhaps. Did all parties involved get to a point were there was no turing back? perhaps. however you want to look at it, it happened and it happened the way it happened there is no changing the events that unfolded, we all thought we were right and reacted accordingly. I am sad to think of all the relationships that were destroyed between family and friends even to this day. I don’t believe the town of Austin and its residents will ever be the same. I grew up in Austin it was my home for many years. I have many fond memories. We moved away in 88 after we decided not to ever go back to the plant. It was the best decision we ever made. I still grieve for the town and its situation post strike 25 years later.
Were there any winners I think not.
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