Smithfield ads trumpet 'quality food, good jobs'

As critics pounce, meat processor toots its horn

Smithfield Foods, long battered by allegations of worker mistreatment, has stepped up attempts to burnish its image and attract new employees.

The company, which operates the world's largest pork slaughterhouse, in Bladen County, is running a set of TV commercials from Raleigh east to tout its benefits.

In one, nine workers take turns praising the company, which offers family health coverage for $100 a month and pays production employees average wages of $12.32 an hour. Another ad shows a medical center that Smithfield built to treat workers.

Each advertisement ends with: "Quality Food. Good Jobs."

"A lot of our employees have come to us and said they're tired of hearing the negative stuff," said Dennis Pittman, a spokesman for Smithfield Foods, which employs about 5,000 at the Tar Heel plant. "They wanted people to know they're working here, because it's a good place."

The company has faced a barrage of criticism about working conditions. The United Food and Commercial Workers Union for several years has tried to organize workers at the plant, about 85 miles southeast of Raleigh. The union has called the factory dangerous and said that workers have faced intimidation.

In 2005, the international group Human Rights Watch cited Smithfield's plant as an example of severe workplace abuses. That galvanized support across the country -- and added volume to the complaints against Smithfield.

Recently, protesters have tried to get grocers, including Harris Teeter, to pull Smithfield products from their shelves.

A union organizer said that Smithfield's decision to run television commercials suggests that the criticism is resonating.

"The best advertisement is word of mouth," said Eduardo Pena with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union in Tar Heel. "If this is such a great company, why are they having such a hard time hiring people?"

Pittman blamed a "tight" labor market in the area.

However, unemployment in the Lumber River Workforce Development Area, which includes Bladen, Hoke, Robeson and Scotland counties, was 6.6 percent in April, the most recent data available.

The state average, though not adjusted for seasonal effects for a fair comparison, is 4.5 percent.

Economists generally consider a jobless rate of 5 percent to be equal to full employment, a point where workers have a stronger hand in the labor market.

Pittman said that the advertisements have generated more applications, but he didn't have specific numbers available.

The advertisements will run for several additional weeks, he said.