UPDATE: Tyson Food Caves in.

Labor Day Reinstated At Tyson Foods!!

Your Calls and Emails Made a Difference!

On Saturday, August 2 I asked for you, my truth seekers, to Boycott Tyson Foods.

Tyson Foods, a large corporation, has decided to break Federal Law and not celebrate Labor Day. At the Shelbyville, Tennessee plant they will get Eid al-Fitr off instead. The next thing you know they will do will be to force their employees to work on Christmas.

In less than a week Tyson Foods caved in to all of our calls, emails and just the threat of a boycott. From ACT for America.

Springdale, Arkansas – August 8, 2008 - Tyson Foods, Inc. announced today it has reached a new agreement with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), an American union, reinstating Labor Day as one of the designated paid holidays under the contract for covered employees in the Shelbyville, Tennessee, plant.

Tyson made this request on behalf of its Shelbyville plant employees, some of whom had expressed concern about the new contract provisions relative to paid holidays. In an effort to be responsive, Tyson asked the union to reopen the contract to address the holiday issue, and the union agreed to do so. The union membership voted overwhelmingly Thursday to reinstate Labor Day as one of the plant’s paid holidays, while keeping Eid al-Fitr as an additional paid holiday for this year only. This means that in 2008 only, Shelbyville employees will have nine paid holidays.

For the remainder of the five-year contract period, the eight paid holidays will include: New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day and a Personal Holiday, which could either be the employee’s birthday, Eid al-Fitr or another day requested and approved by their supervisor.

This issue concerns only the plant at Shelbyville, Tennessee. Labor Day has always been celebrated, and continues to be, at the other 118 Tyson plants across the country.

The Shelbyville complex employs approximately 1,200 people. Approximately 1,000 workers are covered by the RWDSU union agreement at that location.

I still will not buy Tyson Food products. They have a history of unsanitary conditions at their plants, they use illegal immigrants in many of them and so-called legal immigrants with major health problems. Let them clean that up first, give the jobs to either healthy legal immigrants or US citizens. Let them bring their plants not up to code, but beyond code. Then I will buy their products and not before!