Will JBS meat packers strike?

This morning, I wanted to check the status of the JBS labor strike. 

And let me tell you the rabbit hole I went down...

JBS, a Brazilian company, is one of the “Big 4” companies dominating beef packing in the country, with one of its largest beef processing plants in Greeley, Colorado. JBS has about $77 billion in annual revenue and controls about 18% of the US meat market, including beef, pork, and poultry.  In 2024, their net profit was 2.6 billion, with a 3.4% margin. Meat packing generally has a low profit margin.  

Currently, they are being sued by a group of over 1,000 Haitian workers who were recruited to work at the Greeley plant with the promise of no-English-required jobs that would also provide housing while they settled in Colorado.  Currently, Haitian migrants have temporary protected status (TPS), but there were talks last week to remove TPS and work authorization for 353,000 nationwide.  That order was paused by US District Judge Ana C. Reyes, but could be reversed.

According to the lawsuit, workers were recruited through TikTok videos and told that if they got to Greeley, they would have work, housing, and good-paying jobs.  They were provided with 4 days of training in English or Spanish, not their Haitian Creole, and mostly placed on the “B-Shift” from 3:00 pm to midnight.  The suit states that during the B-shift, the line is run faster, averaging 370 head an hour vs the 300 average for the A-shift.  This speed-up leads to more injuries, fewer options for breaks, and harder working conditions. 

The Haitian workers were offered 2 weeks of free housing at a nearby hotel.  A single-bed rooms with 3-11 people per room. After the 2 weeks, they were told they could stay at the hotel for $500 a week.  Or be moved to a house for $70 a week.  The houses were unfurnished, with 40-60 people per house, all reportedly paying $70 a week to JBS’s HR supervisor and a Haitian resident of Colorado who was doing the recruiting.  That's at least $11,000 a month in rent collected!!

In addition to the lawsuit (not the first of its kind brought against JBS), the company is now facing a 99% Strike authorization vote from workers in UFCW Local 7.  UFCW represents 23,000 members in Colorado and Wyoming in supermarkets, Packing Houses, Food Processing Plants, Cannabis Facilities, Barbers and Cosmetologists, Healthcare Facilities, Counselors, and Distilleries.  The contract between the Union and JBS expired in July, but bargaining continued, so work did as well.  

Now that there’s a strike vote, the union could instruct workers to walkout.  The vote was taken on the 4th, and it’s customary to allow a week to see if bargaining can reach a resolution.  By the end of this week, we may see a contract or a strike.  There are nearly 4,000 workers at the Greeerly plant.  The union flier announcing the results of the strike vote was printed in 5 languages: English, Spanish, Haitian, Somali, and Burmese. 

If the workers strike, the plant would be slowed or stopped for some time.  The Greeley plant averages 5,400 head of cattle processed a DAY!  And history tells us that JBS will go to great lengths to NOT shut down.  In 2021, JBS was hit by a major ransomware cyberattack and paid an $11 millon ransom to keep operating.    About 5-7% of all US beef is processed daily at the Greeley plant, and that may seem like a manageable amount to shift to other plants, but it will create bottle neck in processing, as we continue to see plants closed and consolidated.

The question is: will JBS come to the bargaining table with an offer that UFCW Local 7 will find acceptable to improve workers' conditions, or will they use their vast political power to shift the outcome?  

There are no easy answers to fixing this massive, broken system.  A food system built on razor-thin profit margins that depend on the exploitation of workers to keep it running.  I for sure don’t have the answers, but when problems like this take space in my mind, I often come back to the Theodore Roosevelt quote:                

                      “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

For me, that means sharing the knowledge I gather along the way, providing options for people close to me to buy locally raised and processed meat, and voting with my dollar as much as possible when I shop for food I don’t raise.

What does it mean to you?

That’s my Food for Thought today,

Aila