Union Workers Don’t Want Trucked-In Chopped Meat

Officials of the union representing supermarket butchers are protesting the way chopped meat is distributed at the new Pathmark at Aguilar Avenue and Kissena Boulevard.
The store, which opened Oct. 31, sells packaged chopped meat brought in from out-of-state meat-packing plants. The union says that Pathmark normally prepares its chopped meat in-store, and that getting the packaged meat from elsewhere "not only threatens the livelihood of many [union] members, but also compromises the store’s consumers," the local chapter 342-50 of the United Food and Commercial Workers union said in a statement.
"All recent news stories of contaminated meat involved companies that outsourced their production to a supplier’s factory," union spokesman Michael Mareno said.
The union also worries that the process at the new store will take away many butchers’ jobs.
Pathmark company spokesman Rich Savner said that Pathmark is well-known for creating, rather than reducing, jobs, by locating in economically depressed areas like Harlem and other urban locations that other chains neglect. "The more stores we open, the more jobs we offer, and we’re a union shop," he said.
Savner stressed that the mid-West plants which ship the chopped meat are fully inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and that the workers in these plants are union members as well. He said the process was no different than the shipping of pork, veal, or other packaged meats.