JBS workers in Greeley vote overwhelmingly to authorize strike

GREELEY — Workers at the JBS meatpacking plant voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to authorize an unfair labor practice strike against the company, alleging illegal conduct at the bargaining table and inside the plant.

Ninety-nine percent of unionized members voted to authorize the strike, according to United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local 7. The timing of a potential walkout, which would be the first in the Greeley plant’s history, will be determined at a later date.

“The vote sends an unmistakable message: Workers are prepared to take immediate and serious action if JBS continues to violate federal labor law and prevent workers from securing a fair contract,” the union said in a news release Wednesday evening.

JBS officials did not immediately respond Thursday morning to a request for comment on the union vote.

The union, which represents 3,800 workers at the plant, and JBS have been negotiating a new contract for over eight months. The company, though, is only offering a 90-cent-per-hour wage increase for most workers, union representatives said, which does not keep pace with inflation and the rising cost of living in Greeley.

The meatpacking giant also charges workers when someone takes or damages their personal protective equipment and insists on a three-year agreement, the union said. And the company has committed a host of unfair labor practices, including firing a member of the bargaining committee, punishing a worker for filing a grievance against management and making changes to working conditions without giving the union notice, according to UFCW officials.

Workers on Wednesday afternoon, just after finishing the A shift at the plant, gathered at a hotel in Greeley to cast their votes. The facility represents a unique and diverse workplace, where employees speak over 50 languages. The union set aside the entire day for voting, with translators for Spanish, Haitian Creole, Burmese and Somali.

Olga Barrios has been working for JBS for 24 years, and said she sees the company getting more and more comfortable with unfair labor practices. Working conditions, meanwhile, have continued to deteriorate as the demands on workers increase. Speeds on the production line are so fast, she said, that workers don’t have time to sanitize themselves properly before the next carcass arrives to be butchered. The knife sharpener was broken for months, Barrios said, while the chains that hold the cows rip all the time, leading to dangerous situations for workers.

“Decent human dignity is what we’re asking for,” she said in Spanish through an interpreter.

Despite the dangerous line speeds, management expects perfection with every piece of meat, said Deborah Rodarte, another JBS worker. With a knife in one hand and a hook in the other, laborers have to be extremely careful not to hurt themselves or their co-workers standing alongside them, she said. Still, the job is hard on the body and leads to regular injuries.

“Every day, we’re pressured to work even when we’re hurt,” Rodarte said.

For many JBS workers, Wednesday’s action represented their first-ever act of democracy, said Mathew Shecter, general counsel for UFCW Local 7.

“There are a lot of stories demonizing immigrants,” he said. “These are people standing up to make sure their voices are heard.”

JBS USA, headquartered in Greeley, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Brazil-based JBS S.A., the world’s largest processor of beef and pork, with more than $50 billion in annual sales.

The company operates nine U.S. facilities, selling beef products to more than 44 countries on six continents. It employs more than 37,000 people at these plants, including nearly 4,000 workers at the Greeley location.

The meatpacking giant has also been in the crosshairs of U.S. regulators for years, along with myriad allegations from its employees over poor or unsafe working conditions.

The U.S. Department of Labor last year found JBS relied for years on migrant children to work in its slaughterhouses.

Children as young as 13 were hired through an outside sanitation company and worked overnight cleaning shifts at slaughterhouses in Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska, federal investigators found. Their jobs included cleaning dangerous powered equipment, labor officials said.