The Former Turkey Processing Plant in Boulder (Denver, Fort Collins: fit in, sales)
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I can remember when Longmont Turkey was on Main Street and the birds were out under the sheds to be processed.
The turkey plant is still on Main Street! It is Butterball now. (It is just south of the downtown area, for those who don't know the area. Definitely an eyesore!) But now they don't do any slaughtering, so there are no live turkeys coming into the plant. A few years ago, I saw a turkey wandering around the outside of the plant as I was driving by... I wanted to say "Go! Run away! Freedom is yours!" But the poor soul just wandered back into the plant on his own.
The turkey plant is still on Main Street! It is Butterball now. (It is just south of the downtown area, for those who don't know the area. Definitely an eyesore!) But now they don't do any slaughtering, so there are no live turkeys coming into the plant. A few years ago, I saw a turkey wandering around the outside of the plant as I was driving by... I wanted to say "Go! Run away! Freedom is yours!" But the poor soul just wandered back into the plant on his own.
Sorry, DressageRider ... but the old "Longmont Foods (nee Strear Turkey Plant), that went through several hands to ultimately become a Butterball branded facilty ...
Is no longer either a Butterball facility or a poultry processing plant.
Hasn't been for several years, either. That would have been quite some number of years ago when you last saw a turkey on the loose from this facility.
The union employees struck this plant in sympathy with a strike in the eastern USA Butterball plants, and the wages/contract agreement that was reached back there was much higher than the Longmont Plant could afford or justify. At that point, they'd already discontinued the slaughter operations and were only processing carcasses shipped in from slaughter plants back east. The Strear family and their partners sold off many of their local turkey raising facilities because they no longer had a local place to process them; a lot of the changeover came about because the younger generations of the families didn't have an interest in the turkey/food business and simply wanted to cash out.
The plant owners could not afford to re-open the Longmont facility, and sold the poultry processing equipment to an operator in Mexico ... which was where much of their product was going in recent years. They then sold the facility to another food process operation, which was processing hog carcasses ... again, no kill floor operation, just processing.
The facility now employs a fraction of the workforce that it did in the years of handling 25,000 turkeys per day, 5 & 1/2 days per week.
Sorry, DressageRider ... but the old "Longmont Foods (nee Strear Turkey Plant), that went through several hands to ultimately become a Butterball branded facilty ...
Is no longer either a Butterball facility or a poultry processing plant.
Hasn't been for several years, either. That would have been quite some number of years ago when you last saw a turkey on the loose from this facility.
Oh well, I didn't realize it wasn't Butterball anymore. As I said, I saw that turkey go on the lam "a few years ago" and they stopped slaughtering in '08.
That would have been quite some number of years ago when you last saw a turkey on the loose from this facility.
That's too bad. Makes you wonder what the original company was doing wrong, that forced people to strike. Probably unsafe or unsanitary working conditions, knowing poultry processing facilities. Probably that way now, too, just over the border where our USDA can't reach them.
That's too bad. Makes you wonder what the original company was doing wrong, that forced people to strike. Probably unsafe or unsanitary working conditions, knowing poultry processing facilities. Probably that way now, too, just over the border where our USDA can't reach them.
Your comments strike the cord of "shooting from the hip" liberalism that all business must be bad and there is conspiracy of silence--which is not necessarily the case.
The strike, as I remember, was over wages when the company become part of a larger corporation and the eastern workers demanded more money, which was not compatible with the living costs in the west. You cannot assume that it was over unsafe or unsanitary working conditions though these issues are generally brought up in wage negotiations, not because there are problems, but because it adds pressure to the employer.
Almost all fresh poultry processing is done in this country--not over the border. In addition, over the border meat food processing is still subject to U.S. Government Inspection.
I have been to the Longmont Turkey Plant, two times as I remember, in the past because I bought food in the wholesale market. It was also one of those junkets were you get invited to the plant to encourage your interest in buying their products. Longmont Turkey (Strear) was a pioneer in development and processing of many new Turkey products that are common today in the markets.
I have been to many food plants, including many poultry plants where I wrote specifications for contractual purchasing. I saw nothing that would indicate an alarming work condition at Longmont but I only had a cursory look. The proper inspection would require onsite government inspectors, which were present. I can remember that event because I had a conversation with the inspector about how the birds were kept calm, outside the plant, and the fast cooling of the carcasses.
Livecontent
Last edited by livecontent; 07-03-2011 at 04:57 PM..
That's too bad. Makes you wonder what the original company was doing wrong, that forced people to strike. Probably unsafe or unsanitary working conditions, knowing poultry processing facilities. Probably that way now, too, just over the border where our USDA can't reach them.
As Livecontent observes ... none of the above.
In fact, the Longmont Butterball operation was one of the few making a profit for the company because they had a sizable local supply of live birds and a well developed export market for processed product ... as well as a developed market to the USA fast-food market (sliced turkey loaf products used in sandwich shops).
I've been in the Longmont plant many times as a vendor/contractor, and it was a pretty clean operation compared to many in it's trade.
Again, the local strike was in sympathy for their brethren workers in plants back East seeking higher wages and had nothing to do with any local working conditions. When the wage contract was settled back East, it was at a scale that was unreasonable for the Longmont facility; hence the plant which had been operated by salaried workers in the interim was determined to be unfeasable to continue operations.
You've got to realize that the local supply chain was a perishable product. When you've developed a number of local poultry raising facilities supplying a continuing 25,000 birds per day, you can't just shut your doors and expect to have more birds next week ... or month. It's a vertically integrated process with a arrangement between the poultry producers/feed suppliers on the one hand, and the poultry plant able to accept the birds and process them.
Longmont Foods even had their own waste-water treatment plant to pre-treat the discharge water for the Longmont water plant at a substantial cost savings over paying Longmont to take all of their discharge. They were held to pretty high standards of operation by the city as well as the USDA. The live birds were held in sheltered areas while awaiting unloading, and the plant was very sensitive to the humane treatment of the birds during that time; it made a huge difference in the finished quality of their product to have unstressed birds entering the plant. They met or exceeded the USDA standards for humane slaughter and for cooling the birds to preserve freshness and quality along with sanitation.
What the local unions didn't factor into their bargaining position was that the principals of the local company were of an older generation that was retired/retiring, or had passed away. The younger generation saw the opportunity to shut down the plant and have that real estate, as well as all of their local poultry producing facilities, shut down and cash out the highly appreciated real estate in the local counties. There was a lot more at stake than the several thousand jobs in Longmont, and the union essentially pi**ed it all away ... getting no jobs for an entire regional industry instead of the handsome wages that the back East affiliate received.
One should also note that the turkey production shipped out to Mexico is not coming back to the USA. It's a totally lost market for the local producers, and is not being filled by south of the border production. Domestic Butterball sales now come from back East USA plants with a USDA inspected operation. If you'd ever taken the time to notice the turkey producing facilities, grain elevators (for feed), and other affiliated businesses in the local area, you'd have a glimpse of how many jobs were dependent upon the plant in Longmont that were lost.
Absent another poultry processing plant moving into the area, those poultry facilities and jobs will not be back. A major processor based in California did a local market study a year or two ago and determined that this region of the USA was a prime market for a new plant, with available water/sewer/land and an experienced labor pool. They located a site by I-25 in the Fort Collins area that met the industrial facilities zoning and needs, and invested a lot of money into developing the business here. Unfortunately, the powers that be in Fort Collins zoning & planning managed to raise so many obstacles to the proposed facilities that the company withdrew from the local market. So most of the poultry sold in the area continues to be raised and processed out of the region ... and that includes a number of companies purporting to have "local, natural" poultry that is in fact raised out of the area, slaughtered out of the area, and 40F carcasses shipped into the region for final processing and packaging.
Your comments strike the cord of "shooting from the hip" liberalism that all business must be bad
Just to test that theory, I did some research on the Longmont plant, during the ConAgra and then the Smithfield/Butterball operations. Thought it might be of interest:
1999-2002 ConAgra was cited 10 times for repeated safety violations at their Greeley, CO plant. I mention it because it establishes that ConAgra did run documented safety violations, as opposed to 'unions making things up'. In fact, in July 2002 ConAgra Foods had to recall nearly 19 million pounds of ground beef from its Greeley, Colorado, processing plant for contamination.
2001 – The Longmont plant under ConAgra had the HIGHEST rate of Salmonella contamination of all turkey processing plants in the US – 50% (that's HALF) of all birds processed there had Salmonella contamination. For reference, the industry average is 13% contamination. This from NYTimes.
2003-2005- Of interest, ConAgra tried to get the city of Longmont to vacate land worth 750K around Emery, 1st and 2nd streets under the guise of 'homeland security' in 2003 and 2005, rather than reorganize the existing plant footprint to be in Federal compliance. To show that nothing changes, Smithfield/Butterball apparently tried to get the city to give them that same land for free in 2008 as a development property.
2005 – Very messy contract negotiations between ConAgra and the two unions in-house. The union cited safety violations, line speeds, insurance and ConAgra's refusal to pay workers for hours worked (off the clock). The company had meetings, threatened to withhold in-house medical care, and sent out flyers warning of the evils of being union. Apparently it was a very tense working environment, according to a few worker reports I could find – lots of tit for tat between the two sides and even a debate on disbanding the union within the work force. Frustratingly, I could find no record of what the final outcome yielded.
2006 Oct - ConAgra sold it in Oct 2006 to Smithfield Foods/Butterball
Of note concerning the myth that ConAgra could not afford to keep the plant open because of worker wages – in this same year, CEO of ConAgra Gary M. Rodkin earned $9,573,444 in total compensation. That is equivalent to earning $184,104 per week. The purchasing company, Smithfield, reported $11.403 billion in revenues at the time of the purchase.
SmithField, by the way, has a history of dumping waste products (having been fined 12.6 million) into waterways and using an armed private police force in-house, complete with company jail at their NC facility. I have no idea of how they operated while in Longmont.
2008 Sept - Butterball/Smithfield ended slaughter and raising of birds, laying off more than half their workers, taking the plant from 889 workers to 398, not because of unions, but because, according to the company, demand for ethanol was raising the cost of corn, soybean and other feed.
2010 Butterball/Smithfield sells plant to Maxwell Farms/NC Goldsboro Milling.
2010 – Union secures a new 3-year contract which protects the workers from further layoffs without compensation. Apparently this happened without any of the conflict the previous contract negotiations with ConAgra had to endure, judging from the lack of articles I could find by comparison to the 2005 fight.
Who knew there was so much drama at a turkey processing plant?
Last edited by qfrost; 07-05-2011 at 01:42 PM..
Reason: decimal point
Incidences from many unrelated events, from different companies, over different periods of time does establish specific incidents, at specific times and at specific places. You use innuendos, hearsay and media exaggerations to somehow show that you did not make a quick blanket statements--as in "shooting from the hip". You alleged that you know about poultry plants and processing but you do not because you lack knowledge of the federal inspection service and experience in the industry.
Poultry processing as in all meat processing is a difficult business and the perfections can never be obtained. Sure, we want to get the best and cleanest and the safest we can get in this industry but it is constant struggle with the products which naturally contain pathogens which are harmful to humans.
In the real hard working world of labor, there are difficulties of management of workers in industrial production that are not apparent to some of the overindulged and comfortable individual. Yet, these people benefit inordinately more, with less labor, from the products of business and industry that allow them to live their free over consumptive liberal lifestyle; and at the same time having ready answers and solutions for all the difficulties of life.
That is not to say that there are no problems that need to be addressed. It has to come from people who have a knowledge and practices of industrial plants, food processing, food distributions and real hard-core labor management.
You use innuendos, hearsay and media exaggerations...
I used nothing but facts. The data on recalls and contamination are out there. The timeline is correct. Where I didn't find info, I said so. Look them up like I did, it's all out there, from new sources like the New York Times, the Rocky Mountain News (now defunct) and the Denver Post. I even used the press release from ConAgra concerning the reason for the layoffs, right from the company itself. I grew up on a farm, raised and butchered geese and chickens, lived down the road from an egg plant. I know how hard it is to maintain a clean environment - which is why I put in that the national average for accurate comparison - 13%.
'In the real hard working world of labor' - That's just insulting. Just because I want to move to Boulder doesn't make me a trustafarian. You ever bale hay? I have. Don't talk to me about hard labor. I just don't like hearing people attack hard-working taxpayers in unions for the evils of their employer.
Last edited by qfrost; 07-06-2011 at 04:41 PM..
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