3,800 JBS Meatpacking Workers Authorize Strike at Colorado Plant

Read our editorial on the significance of strikes here.

On February 4, 3,800 meatpacking workers at a JBS plant in Greeley, Colorado voted 99% in favor of authorizing a strike. The workers, represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) Local 7, have been working under an extended contract for seven months since the previous contract expired last July and the meat processing monopoly has stalled negotiations.

According to the union, workers voted to strike in protest of JBS’s unfair labor practices during contract negotiations, including the firing of union workers and threats to cut bonuses and pension payments for workers who go on strike.

Workers are demanding a contract that ensures higher wages and safe working conditions. The company is currently offering a meager ¢60 increase in wages the first year and ¢30 increases in the second and third years of the contract, amounting to significant real wage decreases when accounting for inflation and rising cost of living.

At the same time, JBS is cutting work hours and speeding up production lines, increasing safety risks in an industry leading in rates of repetitive motion injuries. Local 7 President Kim Cordova told local monopoly media that the processing speed at the plant has surged from 390 to 420 animals per hour, as workers are forced to do five days worth of work in four days.

Union officials told local monopoly media that the union decided to hold the strike authorization vote after workers independently began to coordinate short wildcat actions at the plant, including slowing down production lines by letting beef slide past uncut and untrimmed. If the union submits a seven-day notice to end the contract extension and go on strike, this will be the first strike in the history of the Greeley plant – the largest beef slaughter plant in the US, according to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association – and the first meatpacking worker strike in the country since the Hormel strike of the 1980s.

According to Cordova, 90% of workers at the Greeley plant are immigrants. Foreign born workers make up over 50% of the meatpacking sector’s workforce, as companies utilize them for cheap labor to maximize profitability and to increase competition, lowering wages among workers.

Last July, 200 workers at a JBS plant in Ottumwa, Iowa were fired and left to self-deport after the Trump administration revoked the Biden-era CHNV (Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans) parole program in June.

At the Greeley plant, 1,200 workers are Haitian immigrants with temporary protected status (TPS) – the Trump administration has pushed to revoke this status, while this move was blocked by a federal judge earlier this month. According to a lawsuit filed against JBS last December, the Haitian TPS workers are allocated to the night shifts at the Greeley plant, where production speeds go up to 440 animals an hour, and are not covered by the union contract nor workers’ compensation. According to the lawsuit, despite company ads promising employer housing, the workers have also been forced to pay high recruitment fees and rent out of their wages, while they are crammed into one bedroom apartments with 11 other workers, often without running water, heat, and electricity.

Image: UFCW Local 7 members celebrate strike captain training on February 14, 2026. Credit: United Food & Commercial Workers International Union Local 7 Instagram.

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