There is something weirdly fitting about a labor official named Slaughter who represents slaughterhouse workers. But whether fate or coincidence, it is no longer. On February 25, Terry Slaughter, former secretary-treasurer of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1208, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina to embezzling $62,315.38 from the union, which represents employees of the sprawling Smithfield Foods pork processing plant in Tar Heel, N.C., about an hour and a half’s drive south of Raleigh. Slaughter had been charged in early January following an investigation by the U.S. Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards. Evidence indicates that a far larger sum of missing funds is attributable to a former president.
United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1208 was born of trauma, in this case one of the most bitter labor disputes in recent U.S. history. The union in the early-90s launched a … Read More ➡