SPAM, Hormel, and the Strike That Failed

Jay Hormel, who ran his family's meatpacking company in Austin, Minnesota, introduced SPAM in nineteen thirty-seven. The product was designed to use pork shoulder, a cut that otherwise went unsold. The name, officially unexplained by the company, was probably a contraction of spiced ham. The product was cheap, shelf-stable, and required no refrigeration, which made it ideal for military logistics. During the Second World War, Hormel shipped SPAM to Allied forces on four continents. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev later credited SPAM with helping keep the Red Army fed. Whether that is entirely accurate is debatable. That SPAM was everywhere is not.

In October nineteen eighty-five, Hormel announced a twenty-three percent wage cut at the Austin plant. The United Food and Commercial Workers Local P-Nine went on strike. The strike lasted about ten months. It drew national media attention, labor organizers, and supporters from across the country during a period, the Reagan administration's second term, when union power was in steep retreat after the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization strike had been broken in nineteen eighty-one. Austin became a symbol. The strike failed. Workers who refused to return lost their jobs. The union local was put under trusteeship by its national parent.

The SPAM Museum in Austin, a free facility operated by Hormel, tells the product's history with considerable affection and detail. The nineteen eighty-five strike is a harder story to find there. The can is still everywhere.