Workers face off against rendering company in rural North Carolina Photo courtesy of Chris Hollis In tiny Bertie County, Valley Proteins is one of the only employers. Employees say the working conditions are terrible, and now they’re fighting back. Herman Purvis starts work each day a little before 8 in the morning, driving the first of what will likely total several hundred miles over the course of his 11-hour shift from his home in Windsor, a small town in northeastern North Carolina’s Bertie County, to the Valley Proteins plant in the nearby town of Lewiston Woodville. Pictured above: Chris Hollis is among the truck drivers involved in organizing a union at Valley Proteins’ animal waste rendering operations in North Carolina.