Above photo: Migrant workers from all over the world are leading the strike at JBS. March 30, 2026. Viviana Weinstein.
Bosses resume negotiations.
Greeley, Colorado –The strike by 3,800 workers at the JBS Swift Beef plant in Greeley, Colorado, will pause as the company has agreed to negotiations starting April 9. Workers, the majority of them immigrants, bravely walked out on March 16, extended the strike to three weeks and almost stayed out for a fourth. They will now return to work in one of the largest meatpacking plants in the country.
Kim Cordova, president of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 7, which represents the JBS workers, said that the union is fighting for a fair contract that protects worker safety in an industry that has extensive worker injuries. Many injuries are caused by line speedups to increase productivity, which have resulted in workers’ hours being cut from 40 to 35 per week — a loss of five hours pay.
Additionally, Haitian workers have filed a lawsuit against JBS, charging discrimination and assignments to dangerous jobs.
Below is an eyewitness account of the JBS strike led by courageous migrant workers.
March 30 — Times have changed. The slaughterhouses that crowded the downtowns of cities, such as Chicago have moved away over the last decades. Now the meat industry does its dirty work in huge industrial plants situated in isolated, rural, agricultural, fracking towns. An example is the JBS’s Swift Beef Co. plant here in Greeley, Colorado, 65 miles northwest of Denver.
JBS hires immigrants with temporary or unstable immigration status and uses threats of ICE abuse and deportation to keep workers oppressed and superexploited, with low pay and unsafe conditions.
Greeley is home to thousands of slaughterhouse workers. There are entire families working at the JBS plant.
On March 16, 3,800 members of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 7 walked out on strike for two weeks and then extended the strike for a third week. It is the first strike since the 1980s in this industry. The workers are mainly documented immigrants, including Haitians on Temporary Protective Status (TPS) — which has been revoked and then reinstated but currently leaves their status unstable — along with people from Mexico, Burma, Somalia and elsewhere. Over 50 languages are known to be heard in the plant, and leaflets are written in multiple languages.
The workers who walked off the job are saying the company has committed Unfair Labor Practices, intimidated workers in one-on-one meetings and does not address the low pay, offering miniscule raises. According to the UFCW, JBS has not fixed serious safety issues, such as the chain speed and the repetitive conditions of the work, a major cause of worker injuries.
Meatpacking work is cold, hard, dirty and dangerous, with serious accidents causing three deaths out of 100,000 workers and excessive industrial injuries of up to 30 out of every 100 workers in a year, according to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Slippery wet floors, sharp knives and heavy machinery with unpredictable speedup of the chain cause amputations and crushing injuries. Contamination with animal blood, feces and diseases are common dangers for the workers. Workers who are sick and don’t show up have been fired. Local 7 has fought and won sick time recently. Workers often have had to provide their own safety equipment.
Deaths and injuries high in meatpacking work
Many of us in Colorado remember that during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, these workers were designated as “essential workers.” That meant they were mandated to show up to work. They worked without protection, and at least seven died from COVID-19. The 287 reported cases of Covid-19 at the JBS plant in Greeley constituted the largest outbreak of cases in any workplace. Across the meatpacking industry, NPR reported that 287 slaughterhouse workers died of COVID-19.
A year and a half ago JBS arranged for recruiters to hire people seeking asylum from Haiti and Benin. The living conditions of the new workers were akin to those of human trafficking. Workers were packed into “squalid” rooms and apartments. Their mail was held, and they reported wage theft, according to Colorado Public Radio Radio. (Sept. 26, 2024)
This Monday, as I walked with the picketing workers, about 1,000 of them formed a continuous stream of people from the parking lot up and around the highly trafficked roads near the plant and back. Almost all were people of color, and many spoke little English.
Some were new employees, and one of them was concerned that his hours were not accurate in his pay. Others were long-term employees, including one woman who had worked 14 years at the plant. She spoke of both extremely cold and sometimes hot temperatures inside the plant, but the most common concern was the speedup which occurred again just prior to the strike.
Their names were a bouquet of flowers from around the world: Maria, Ali, Selisenia. Their spirits were high and their families and children marched joyfully alongside them. When I raised my fist in the air shouting, “We Will Win!” cheers of workers raised their fists in the air and responded, “Yes, we will win!”
