Program to commemorate 20th anniversary of Hormel strike

Several organizations plan to mark the 20th anniversary of the Hormel strike with an evening of celebration, reflection and analysis Monday, Aug. 22.

The St. Paul Labor Speakers Club has organized the program, in collaboration with the Meeting the Challenge Labor Education Committee, the Steelworkers’ Associate Member Fightback ’05, the Macalester College History Department, the Union of Radical Workers and Writers, the Twin Cities chapter of the Industrial Workers of the World, the North Star Anarchist Collective, and United Food and Commercial Workers Local 789.

The evening starts at 6 p.m. at the St. Paul Labor Centre, 411 Mahoney (aka Main) St., in downtown St. Paul, with refreshments and music. The program starts at 7 p.m. and will include books, a visual exhibit of photographs, posters, and the like, music, video, story-telling, and a few talks. Invited participants included veterans of the strike, the Austin United Support Group, the Twin Cities P-9 Support Committee, and activists in current labor struggles, including immigrant workers, AMFA Local 33 from Northwest Airlines, and local packinghouse workers.

The program is free and open to the public.

The Hormel strike of 1985-1986 is not only one of the most important labor conflicts in Minnesota history, but it was one of the key national struggles of the 1980s (along with PATCO in 1981 and Pittston in 1989), a decade which marked the emergence of an anti-labor climate in the United States, from the halls of Congress and the White House to the corporate boardroom and the shopfloor. Hormel workers in Austin, Minn., sought to resist this shift in climate and policy, insisting that workers employed at a profitable company should not be expected to give concessions and givebacks on wages, benefits, and workrules.

Their struggle inspired hundreds of thousands of workers to visit Austin, walk their picket lines, contribute to their support, and boycott Hormel products. In 1991, their struggle was represented in a documentary film, American Dream, which won the Academy Award. Future labor historians and labor activists will look back to the Hormel strike as a critical chapter in the movement’s overall history.

For more information on the program, contact Macalester College Professor Peter Rachleff at 651-696-6371 or rachleff@macalester.edu