Deborah Rodarte has been picketing every morning outside the JBS meat processing plant in Greeley since roughly 3,000 workers went on strike early Monday morning. She said she plans to be there every day through the end of next week if the company doesn’t come to the table with a fair contract.
“We need a fair contract for our people, and we are fighting for it every day,” said Rodarte. “This is us speaking up. This is us showing, ‘Hey, it's time to treat us fair. It's time to treat us with respect. We deserve safety to be our priority.’”
Rodarte started at the plant in Greeley after moving from Texas three years ago.
“At the time I was a single mom, and I needed a job ASAP to get on my feet and to be a mom to my child and to support her, put a roof over her head. And that was the first place that called me … And I started there and have been there since.”
Rodarte works at a station cutting meat into skirt steaks.
“The cattle starts coming down, and then we just start grabbing the pieces that come down and just start cutting them. We throw them on a belt on top so that they can go back to packaging. And it's just like that, constantly, all day,” she said.
Safety a priority
Improved safety is the biggest issue for Rodarte. Employees like her use large knives that could seriously injure a worker. They wear steel mesh gloves and aprons to protect themselves. She said sometimes it takes too long to get replacements.
“They need to have equipment on stock for the people. We need knives. We need to make sure everybody has good knives … We've had a couple people working with their aprons ripped. So the apron has to be 3 inches from your collarbone … and that's where it's supposed to sit because we have to protect our heart and our arteries. And so one of the girls on my line had it really ripped on the side of her heart, and she stayed like that for a very long time,” she said.
Strike to last two weeks
A previous contract extension expired at midnight Sunday. The last contract expired in July 2025. In early February, 99% of workers at the Greeley plant authorized the union to strike.
“The goal of negotiations is never to go on strike,” said Kim Cordova, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7, in a press release announcing the strike last week. “But when the company violates workers’ rights and ignores workers’ concerns about safety and health, the Company gives workers no choice but to stand together in solidarity and show the Company that they cannot be silenced.”
The strike will go on for two weeks if JBS doesn’t provide workers with a better contract, said Claire Poundstone, an attorney representing workers with United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7. She said participation in the strike has been steady at roughly 3,000 workers split into two daily shifts.
First U.S. slaughterhouse to go on strike for 40 years
It's the first strike at a U.S. slaughterhouse since workers walked out at a Hormel plant in Minnesota in 1985, Cordova said. That strike lasted more than a year and included violent confrontations between police and protesters, according to the Minnesota Historical Society.
The move follows accusations from union officials that owner JBS USA retaliated against workers and committed other unfair labor practices amid contract negotiations. The company tried to intimidate workers to quit the union in one-on-one meetings, according to union general counsel Matt Shechter. He said the union hasn’t been able to reach an agreement with JBS in several areas, including pay and health care costs.
“The biggest issue that everybody's scared of is that the JBS is trying to scare the people … saying that they're going to lose their job because they're on strike,” said Rodarte. “And we try to spread the word like, no … you cannot lose your job. That's illegal … That's not how it works. But they were trying to scare the employees by telling them that.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
