Paula Deen Not Cookin' for Smithfield Workers

Local labor activists and workers will hold a vigil at 6P today at Paula Deen’s DC book signing at the National Museum of Natural History. The popular cook and host of the Food Network’s “Paula’s Home Cooking” has a promotional partnership with Smithfield Foods that the United Food and Commercial Workers Union says “ignores the organizing efforts of over 5,500 Smithfield Packing workers in Tar Heel, NC.”  Under the partnership agreement, Deen will promote various Smithfield-branded products and Smithfield will use its website and other promotional venues to market Deen's signature products, including her cookbooks, seasonings, BBQ sauces, aprons, T-shirts, gift certificates and cooking school. “Our vigil, the first of its kind in the nation,” says UFCW 400 President Jimmy Lowthers, “is an effort to let Deen know that she’s partnering with a company whose policies in Tar Heel are decimating families by forcing parents to endanger their health and safety and subjecting them to unnecessary and debilitating injuries.”