Or the pot calling the kettle black…Smithfield Foods, one of the most abusive employers and labor-law breakers in the country, is suing the United Food & Commercial Workers for…racketeering! I had known about this suit but was reminded of it yesterday because of Adam Liptak’s good piece in The New York Times.

Smithfield Foods, which raises, kills and processes more pigs than any company on earth, does not like some of the things a union has been saying about conditions at its giant slaughterhouse in Tar Heel, N.C., where 4,650 people work and 32,000 hogs die every day.

So Smithfield has filed a racketeering lawsuit against the union, on the theory that speaking out about labor, environmental and safety issues in order to pressure the company to unionize amounts to extortion like that used by organized crime.

“It’s economic warfare,” explained G. Robert Blakey, one of Smithfield’s lawyers. “It’s actually the same thing as what John Gotti used to do. What the union is saying in effect to Smithfield is, ‘You’ve got to partner up with us to run your company.’ ”

    But, as Liptak, then, says:

One hesitates to argue with Mr. Blakey, who helped write the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, the 1970 law Smithfield is suing under, as a staff lawyer in the Senate. But what Mr. Blakey calls extortion sounds quite a bit like free speech. [I added the emphasis]

    Duh. Of course, as we know, free speech in the workplace has been attacked over the years by the legal system. And the labor law certainly doesn’t offer much protection for those people who want to express their free speech rights by advocating for unions.

    Check out the campaign against Smithfield.