Forty years ago, 1,700 meatpacking workers struck the flagship Hormel plant in Austin, Minnesota to protest a company demand for a 23% wage cut. This strike touched a raw, deep nerve in Ronald Reagan’s America and across the world, at a time when the ruling class was carrying out their neoliberal offensive to crush unions. Come hear the story from Labor History Professor Peter Rachleff who chaired the Hormel Twin Cities Strike Support Committee, and join the discussion!

Peter Rachleff is a Marxist Professor Emeritus at Macalester College, where he taught immigration and labor history from 1982 to 2012. He is the author of Hard-Pressed in the Heartland: The Hormel Strike and the Future of the Labor Movement and a founder of the East Side Freedom Library in Saint Paul.

Suggested article to read: The Hormel Strike at 35: A Retrospective for Our Times
https://redsq.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Peter-RachleffHormelStrikeat3533.pdf