More Than Money At Root Of Catfish-Worker Strike

INDIANOLA, Miss. - No conversation with striking Delta Pride catfish workers goes long without angry talk about the restroom.

They tell how the company advises them to use the toilet during lunch or twice-daily breaks. And they describe how the company humiliates them by timing and noting other trips to the restroom: no more than six in a week, no more than five minutes each trip.

``You have to take your clothes loose on the way,'' said Ruth Bass, 34, shaking her head in disgust as she recalls the two times she was written up for taking a minute or two more in the restroom.

``You have to ask before you go,'' Bass adds. ``The majority of us is ladies, and if you tell them you have a personal problem, they might let you go. . . . I don't believe they would treat white ladies this way.''

Soon it seems clear this is no ordinary strike.

These are workers who skin and fillet catfish at two bustling plants deep in the Mississippi Delta. Ninety percent of them are poor African-American women, working for wages that are barely above minimum and still below the poverty level. Many have arms marked with scars from injuries on the job.

Their employer is Delta Pride, the country's largest catfish processor, owned by 180 white farmers.

For as long as 12 hours some days, Delta Pride workers labor at a feverish pace, aprons crusted with fish oils and scales. Those who operate head saws must slice 60 fish a minute, rippers must process 36 a minute and gutters must handle 12. Supervisors stand near, clocking them.

``Every time you move, you have to talk to a supervisor,'' said Sandra Brewer, 27, who has worked at the plant for six years.

``Even if you have to go to change your Kotex, you have to tell them that,'' said Charlene Walker, 36, a nine-year veteran. ``It's embarrassing, especially to tell a man.''

In the 10 1/2 weeks since workers walked off their jobs, their strike for more money and better conditions has become a fight for equity in the Delta, where the gap between rich and poor, white and black, is as stark as anywhere in the country.

Civil-rights leaders from Chicago and Atlanta have traveled to Indianola to stir up support at union rallies. Supermarkets such as AppleTree in Houston and A&P in Atlanta have agreed not to sell Delta Pride catfish.

On the picket line, tension has rung out in gunfire. Nearly 20 people have been arrested. Early on, an African-American female picket allegedly was clubbed by a white police officer. Last month, a federal grand jury indicted two men described as Delta Pride stockholders for allegedly offering $5,000 to a union negotiator to rig an end to the walkout.

The single sign of conciliation came last week, when Delta Pride agreed to return to the negotiating table Dec. 11. Workers walked out Sept. 12.

``The Delta has remained the most tradition-bound part of the South, and I think the strike represents real change in a lot of ways,'' said Charles Reagan Wilson, associate professor of history and Southern culture at the University of Mississippi. ``Blacks in Mississippi are more and more organized.''

The battle between old ways and new demands is being played out in an industry that has been one of Mississippi's few economic boons in the last decade. Since 1980, an increasing number of farmers, particularly in the Delta, have converted marginal cropland into profitable catfish ponds. Mississippi now is flooded with 90,000 acres of them.

The strike, the largest ever by African Americans in Mississippi, has evoked little sympathy from catfish farmers - virtually all of whom are white in Mississippi - and a lot of reaction that hardly sounds like the New South.

On a recent morning at the Pig Stand truck stop in nearby Belzoni, several catfish farmers echoed Delta Pride's primary argument that the industry cannot bear the cost of much higher wages, and then described the African-American laborers as unskilled and fortunate to be employed. A couple of the farmers characterized them as lazy former welfare recipients.

Delta Pride workers earn an average of $4.05 an hour, the company says. The union figures it's $3.90 an hour, 10 cents more than the minimum wage.

``Delta Pride doesn't really want you to work for them,'' said striker Eissie Ramiz, 30. ``They want to own you.''

Sitting on a milk crate beside her, Charlotte Jackson, 40, nods her head. Mary Taylor walks over. So does Brenda Wade. Together, they tick off what they say adds up to a ``plantation mentality'' at Delta Pride: They are scolded by supervisors, written up for the slightest infraction, threatened with firing, pressured as they work.

The anger in their voices burns like the fire in the rusted drum where they warm their hands.

``They know you need the job,'' said Jackson, who drives 40 miles to the plant. ``A lot of us are single mothers and poor. They know they got you and there's nothing you can do.''

Adding to the insult is injury. In recent years, more than 60 percent of workers have been diagnosed with repetitive-motion injuries such as carpal-tunnel syndrome, the union says. Many have undergone surgery more than once.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined Delta Pride nearly $33,000 last year for violations that included placing workers disabled by such injuries ``in the same or similar work activities that led to the problem, contrary to accepted medical practice.''

Delta Pride, which has hired an ergonomics specialist to redesign tools and work stations to reduce such injuries, has appealed the OSHA fine. ``Our people are very important to us at Delta Pride,'' said spokeswoman Carolyn Ann Sledge.

The company, which communicates primarily through written releases, says the strike is an economic issue - not a racial one. ``Ours is a classic union-company disagreement over how much the company can afford . . . vs. what the union wants,'' the company said in a statement.

As for complaints about the restroom, Sledge contended, ``no employee is ever, ever denied the right to go to the restroom.'' Sledge said that with so many employees, the company needed rules about restroom breaks, but supervisors ``don't stand there with a stopwatch and clipboard.''

Asked about other conditions, Sledge pointed out that Delta Pride had hired more than 500 replacement workers, supplementing about 300 workers who are not in the union and more than 200 union members who went back to work. ``How could we have filled those jobs in such short order if this was such a bad place to work?'' she asked.

Simple, the strikers answered: High unemployment leaves them few other choices.

In its contract proposal to Local 1529 of the United Food and Commercial Workers, Delta Pride offered what, for most, amounted to a 6.2 cent-an-hour increase above what it would pay anyway because the minimum wage will be $4.25 an hour on April 1. Delta Pride workers rejected the offer 410-5.

Delta Pride argued that was the best it could do. Last year, Delta Pride reported sales of $144 million, but showed an operating loss.

Union officials say the company recovers profits indirectly: The company is owned by farmers who sell their own fish to it, so that Delta Pride can generate profits for its members - and losses for itself - simply by paying a higher-than-market price for their fish.

Charlene Walker remembers that when she started at Delta Pride in 1981, the company promised that as it grew, so would workers' salaries and benefits.

Now Walker earns $4.35 an hour. Her left arm shoots with so much pain from carpal-tunnel syndrome that she has to hang it over the side of her bed to sleep at night. After she pays a baby-sitter $30 a week and figures in gas money, Walker takes home about $2 an hour for all of her seniority and suffering.

``We do our best,'' said Walker, a slender, soft-spoken woman. ``We expect to be paid a decent wage, and we don't want to be treated like slaves.''