How about this? The media is doing extensive coverage of a huge labor battle, with the networks sending their anchors down to the site, cameras set up to record the daily struggle; CNN has a full-time correspondent on the scene. Here are the details.

For many years, workers having been trying to organize at Smithfield Foods in Tar Heel, North Carolina, where 6,000 workers slaughter 34,000 hogs a day to produce retail pork items at the largest such plant in the world. The company’s union-busters have lead a campaign over several years that includes threats to close the plant, interrogations, surveillance and firings. The company has its own private policy force, with a holding cell. During one recent campaign, they used riot-clad police during the election.

In January 2005, a unanimous panel of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) affirmed the ruling by an Administrative Law Judge that found that Smithfield engaged in an extensive and illegal campaign to suppress worker rights. The first campaign in 1994 resulted in numerous charges filed against Smithfield for illegal surveillance, intimidation, threats, coercion and harassment of workers.

In 1997, workers again attempted to organize with the UFCW and the company pulled out all the stops.

The NLRB found that: Smithfield managers conspired with the local Sheriff Department to physically intimidate and assault union supporters; the company planned and instigated a “riot” following the vote count in 1997 that led to false arrests of a union supporter; Smithfield held forced meetings to intimidate and threaten workers for supporting the union; Smithfield paid workers above their normal rate to spy on co-workers and turn in union supporters to management consultants; Smithfield forced a management employee to produce false statements to the Board in an attempt to cover-up anti-union activity; Smithfield threatened to close the plant if the workers chose a union; and, finally, the company was found guilty of illegally firing ten workers during the two campaigns.

Having heard this story, the media is pulling out all the stops—after all, the question of how people live their lives up to the moment of death is a crucial national topic. Ask Terry Schiavo.

Okay, so, it’s April Fools Day. This was my contribution to the completely absurd spectacle of the media’s coverage of one person’s death, compared to the virtual blackout on the coverage of the deaths and injuries that happen every day in the workplace. Disgusting.