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Meet the Immigrant Workers Who Launched the First Major Meatpacking Strike in Decades

Amid the Trump administration’s assault on immigrant workers, thousands at the country’s largest meat processor organized across nationalities to launch a historic work stoppage.

Workers picket outside of the JBS meatpacking plant on March 16, 2026, in Greeley, Colorado.

Olga Barrios has been working at the beef-processing plant in Greeley, Colorado, long enough to remember the morning in 2006 when ICE agents stormed in and arrested 260 of her coworkers. She watched as they were rounded up, restrained with cellophane wrap and chains, and marched out of the facility. Recounting that time to me, she grew emotional as she described how a local church took in children whose parents had been detained. To this day, “it’s in the back of my mind,” she said. “The company, instead of protecting the workers, was actually turning them in.”

The owner of the Greeley plant at the time, Swift, was the target of six simultaneous ICE raids across the United States in “Operation Wagon Train,” the largest single worksite immigration enforcement action in US history. Some 1,300 workers were detained in all, depleting Swift’s overall workforce by 10 percent. The company struggled to recover, and a year later it was acquired by JBS, a Brazilian company and the world’s largest meat producer.

Since the raid, JBS has rebuilt its workforce by partnering with refugee resettlement agencies to recruit migrants with work authorization. As of 2020, an estimated 80–90 percent of workers at the Greeley plant were foreign born. Workers speak over 50 languages on the disassembly line as they slice, debone, trim, and grind up to 6,000 carcasses a day. Kim Cordova, the president of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 7, which represents workers at the plant, said JBS’s reliance on immigrant labor is strategic. “They’re really good about bringing in folks from different countries that don’t know their rights yet or are here seeking asylum,” she said. JBS knows that precarity and fear means “they can run those chain speeds fast.”

But on March 16, Barrios and her 3,800 coworkers reached a breaking point, walking off the job to launch the first-ever strike at the Greeley plant and the first major strike in the US meatpacking industry in four decades. Members have been working under an expired contract since last July, and have struggled to come to an agreement with JBS on issues including pay and adequate safety equipment. According to the union, JBS has offered wage increases of less than 2 percent per year on average, lower than the rate of inflation. The strike is scheduled to end today after stretching into a third week as the union said JBS refused to come to the table.

Meatpacking is among the most dangerous industries in the United States, with workers standing shoulder-to-shoulder using industrial tools and sharp knives to make thousands of repetitive cuts in a shift. Workers don personal protective equipment including hard hats (with colors indicating their level of seniority), safety goggles, boots, metal-mesh gloves, arm-guards, aprons, and more. But when that gear is inevitably damaged or worn down, JBS garnishes the cost of replacement directly from workers’ checks, which can cost up to $1,100. The plant’s average wage is just $26 an hour.

Amid the Trump administration’s assault on immigrant workers, JBS employees organized across nationalities and languages to launch a historic work stoppage. Many workers in meatpacking plants have Temporary Protected Status, which Trump has eliminated for millions from countries including Haiti, Venezuela, and Afghanistan. Last June, the administration paused ICE raids in agriculture and meatpacking after pressure from the industry, but reversed course just days later. In July, ICE raided a Glenn Valley Foods meat processing plant in Omaha,........

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