Why JBS Meat Packing Workers Are On An Historic Strike.

JBS workers on strike in Greeley, Colorado.

UFCW Local 7

JBS meat packing workers in Greeley, Colorado have been on strike since March 16th, the first such strike in 40 years. JBS is the world’s largest meat processor. Striking workers have documented unfair labor practices, instances of labor trafficking and wage theft, along with pay that has not kept up with Colorado’s cost of living. In negotiations with United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7, JBS claims its contract offer is consistent with deals reached with workers in other states.

Kim Cordova is the president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7. She represent JBS workers in Colorado and Wyoming and is also an International Vice President of UFCW. She represents 3800 food processing and packing house workers in Greeley at the JBS plant, as well as thousands of grocery, health care, cannabis, and distillery workers. UFCW Local 7 is the largest private sector union in the state.

Errol Schweizer: Who is JBS?

Kim Cordova: JBS is the largest food producer in the world and largest protein producer in the world. They have about 85% of the market for protein production with Cargill, Tyson and National Beef. They’re out of Brazil, and here in Colorado account for about between around 6 to 7% of the beef production for the United States.

Errol Schweizer: Who works in the JBS facilities?

Kim Cordova: We have 3800 production workers. This is a full kill operation. So we actually slaughter the cow, disassemble the animal, all the way through packaging and shipping.

We represent almost all of the production workers in that plant. This is their flagship plant. It’s the largest beef plant in the US.

Errol Schweizer: What’s been happening with the beef market in the US?

Kim Cordova: Well, first of all, there is so much consolidation between those four big packers. They control 85% of the market. There’s a lot of issues with the antitrust laws in this country not being enforced. They have total control over the food supply chain, a lot of control over the price of beef in the United States, and also workers, the labor market, as well as the food supply chain going all the way down from producers to farmers, ranches, feed feeders, truck drivers. They control so much of the food ecosystem because they have so much market share in this in this country and around the world.

Errol Schweizer: What’s it like working in a meat packing plant these days?

Kim Cordova: It is very dangerous. It’s a high pace, where you’re talking about disassembling a giant animal, which magnifies the safety issues in that plant, you could be killed. You’re working with dangerous equipment, sharp tools low staffing. This is a job that, frankly, folks are not lined up to take these jobs. So working in our plant, and within the industry that hires a very vulnerable workforce, you see a lot of immigrant workers, folks that are seeking asylum here on TPS (temporary protected status), refugees. We have an older workforce here in Colorado.

Errol Schweizer: What inspired the strike, and give us a bit more detail on why it’s so important and historic?

Kim Cordova: I believe a lot of it is because of the makeup of the workforce, where they built their operations at very conservative parts of the state or the counties that they operate in, so that they have a lot of control over workers. I will tell you here at this JBS plant here in Greeley, the wounds run deep here. This goes back to Covid. We had one of the largest outbreaks during the pandemic, and workers died or got really, really sick. We had a lot of people that were intubated or were in hospitals during the pandemic, and it was due to the company’s lackadaisical response, their lack of safety interventions and protocol.

So workers were really hurt in this, not just here, but within the industry because of their close proximity of working and no personal protective equipment. These are older plants with very little updates on any of their air ventilations and systems. So you went from that to, later, allegations of human trafficking here at this plant here in Greeley, and this is their flagship plant. There’s a lawsuit right now. And they were trafficking folks from Benin, West Africa, and folks from Haiti. And this was publicized, starting in 2024, 2025, then you go on to the allegations of child labor that they were using in there to do sanitation, and there was a lawsuit.

That’s been one of our issues on our table right now is that the company is intentionally keeping a low supply of personal protective equipment and then garnishing workers’ checks to pay for any replacement equipment, and they don’t have a tracking mechanism. I mean, this is we believe this is a violation of the law, so much so that JBS agreed to back pay current workers going back one year, but they won’t fix the problem going forward. So we’ve been negotiating with this company since May of last year, and the company is engaged in multiple unfair labor practices, and those unfair labor practices have really interfered with our ability to negotiate a contract that really reflects the risk again and the rigor of this work. They’re offering wages that simply don’t keep up with the cost of inflation, as well as shifting over health care costs on to the workers. So this is really, for the largest food producer in the world, a zero cost contract to them.

And you know now they’ve gone public. They’re publicly traded. They’re going to be bigger and richer than they were before. They posted $86 billion in revenue in their last earnings call, none of that extra money is filtering down to the workers who actually do all the heavy lifting for them.

Errol Schweizer: What are the demands of the strikers?

Kim Cordova: We want them to settle the unfair labor practices. There was union supporters that were disciplined or terminated. They need to bring those folks back and remove that discipline. They did pull money off the table and engage in regressive bargaining, and we need cease that and put that money back on the table. But workers also want a job where they are respected and there’s dignity at the workplace. We want the wage that keeps up with inflation. It’s very expensive in Colorado, and the company is engaging in unlawful behavior by insisting that we accept an agreement that they negotiated with other unions in parts of the country that is less expensive to live in than Colorado, and so we need them to recognize that in this state, it’s different.

We want them to make sure that there’s access to affordable health care and that the additional cost of health care is not shifted on to the worker. We need this personal protective equipment issue to be resolved. It’s a safety issue because workers cannot afford these. It’s like $1,100 for the replacement of one of their pieces of equipment, and if they can’t afford it, they’re going to work unsafe. And it’s wage theft. The workers may pay that much money to replace equipment, but it’s not even their equipment. They’re just basically covering JBS’ supply costs.

I think that’s just a fear to keep peoples’ heads down and a no-speak-up culture. And yeah, it’s been very, very trying for folks during this time in our country, but the workers know their worth.

They want to go home in the condition they clock in, and they know they can die at work.

So this strike is a matter of life and death, and it’s a matter of protecting their livelihood. And they know that.

We need to have elected leaders do an investigation on these antitrust issues. With this type of consolidation, everybody is being squeezed, the consumer, the supplier, workers, and the Sherman Act was written for a reason to make sure that there was fair competition. But right now, none of that is happening. So we need elected leaders to get involved. We need folks to recognize when they’re eating a steak or a cheeseburger that these workers how essential they are to our economy and to the food supply and the food ecosystem. We really need them to support whatever way they can. If they could join us on the picket line. We are trying to raise money for the strikers. And then really, again, raising awareness of all of the bad business models and dangerous work environment that these workers work in.

This strike is really historic. You know you haven’t seen a labor dispute in meat processing in over 40 years.

This is a fight led by immigrant workers, by a woman, female president, taking on the largest food producer in the world.

I think that prior to Covid, I don’t think most folks ever gave thought to how meat is produced in these facilities, and we’ve really raised and shed light on the really bad working conditions that are happening in our own state and in our own country. We have workers who can’t even get permission to go to the bathroom in this day and age.

We have to fight this out through the media, through legislation, at the negotiating table. We have to keep talking about this until real change is made.