New survey on strike at JBS Meatpacking Facility shows most Americans prioritize workers’ rights over beef production

Younger Americans favor transition of slaughterhouses to facilities to produce plant-based protein; most Americans believe migrant meatpackers should not be subjected to immigration enforcement

Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

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WASHINGTON—A new survey by Morning Consult and the nonprofit Physicians Committee finds that in response to the workers’ strike at one of the country’s largest slaughterhouses, a JBS facility in Colorado, a large percentage, 71%, of Americans say workers have the right to strike as opposed to staying on the job to continue beef  production. In a separate survey question, younger Americans favor the transition of slaughterhouses to produce plant-based protein. The Physicians Committee is a nonprofit health advocacy organization with 17,000 physician members nationwide.

According to the new survey, most Americans, 61%, believe that migrant meatpacking workers who are currently striking for safer working conditions should not be targeted for immigration enforcement activities.

Economically, it makes sense for the large meat companies, like JBS, to focus on the plant-based products they are already producing because, according to the Wall Street Journal, meat companies are losing money producing beef. The Wall Street Journal notes, “JBS, the world’s largest meatpacker, reported a $617 million adjusted operating loss for its beef business over the past year. A year earlier, the loss was $37 million.”

Detailed Survey Results:

Survey Question: PCRM1 - Meatpacking workers at a JBS slaughterhouse in Greeley, Colorado recently went on strike, citing concerns about pay and workplace safety. Do you think meatpacking workers should have the right to strike over pay and working conditions or do you think meatpacking workers should always stay on the job to continue meat production?

Meatpacking workers should have the right to strike over pay and working conditions 71%

Meatpacking workers should always stay on the job to continue meat production 11%

Not Sure 19%

The new survey finds that Americans are divided with 36% supporting and 38% opposing the transition of some slaughterhouses into facilities to manufacture plant-based foods or cell-cultivated meat. Support for converting slaughterhouses into cleaner, safer plant-based protein producers was strongest among the youngest respondents—members of Generation Z, 49%, and Millennials, 46%.

Survey Question: PCRM2 - Some have suggested that meatpacking companies like JBS should transition some of their slaughterhouses to facilities that manufacture plant-based or cell-cultivated meat products as an alternative to traditional meat processing. Do you support or oppose this idea?

Many slaughterhouse workers are migrants, including undocumented workers. Given the visibility of migrant workers on the picket line in Greeley, Colorado, there’s a concern that immigration agents might conduct a sweep of the community. But the new survey found that 61% of Americans believe that would be unfair to the striking workers.

Survey Question: PRCM3 - When workers participate in a labor strike, do you think they should face legal consequences — such as immigration enforcement action — for their participation?

Yes 19%

No 61%

Not Sure 20%

“Meatpacking is a dangerous occupation, and the results of this survey show that Americans feel compassion for employees who are striking to obtain safer working conditions,” says Xavier Toledo, MS, RD, LDN, a registered dietitian on the staff of Physicians Committee. “This also raises broader questions about how food is produced. Workers would have a cleaner and safer work environment in facilities that produce plant-based or cell-cultivated 'meat' products. JBS and other major meat companies already offer lines of plant-based protein products, showing that slaughterhouses could be used to manufacture these products instead of processing animals.”

Journalists who would like a copy of the complete survey report please contact Jeanne McVey, jeannem@pcrm.org

Founded in 1985, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is a nonprofit organization that promotes preventive medicine, conducts clinical research, and encourages higher standards for ethics and effectiveness in education and research.

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Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

In 57 Languages, Meatpackers Strike for the First Time in 40 Years

By Caitlyn Clark, Lisa Xu 

March 23, 2026

Source: Labor Notes

Immigrant workers from around the world are on strike at one of the nation's largest beef plants. Photo: Essential Workers for Democracy

In less than a quarter-mile stretch of sidewalk, chatter in 57 languages overlaps with the sound of dancehall, bachata, Thai pop, Haitian kompa, and Micronesian hip-hop. At sunset, dozens gather for iftar, breaking their Ramadan fast; the music, pulsing from boomboxes and cell phones held up to megaphones, swells into one shared hum.

In this sliver of land across from the sprawling JBS beef processing plant—among the largest in the country—workers from around the world have united in the largest U.S. meatpacking strike in 40 years.

The 3,800 workers at the JBS beef processing plant in Greeley, Colorado, walked off the job on Monday, March 16, launching a two-week unfair labor practice strike.

This is the company’s flagship beef plant in the U.S. Its previous contract with Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 7 expired last July.

Strikers say JBS has been increasing the speed of the production line while cutting work hours from 40 a week to 35, squeezing out more work for less money. A thousand Haitian workers at the Greeley plant have filed a class action lawsuit against JBS for discriminatory practices that push them to work at dangerously fast line speeds.

Line speed is a major issue in the meatpacking industry. The UFCW International recently spoke out against a new proposal from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to remove federal limits on line speeds entirely.

“We’re demanding our rights, both in terms of wages and working conditions, because before the strike, they really took advantage of us,” said a worker in the brisket trim department, who spoke in Spanish and asked to remain anonymous. “They want the same output, but fewer hours and fewer people.”

After 18 years working at JBS, he said, “everything is so expensive. Everything has gone up, except our wages.”

‘ONE WRONG MOVE CAN TAKE YOUR LIFE’

Workers are also demanding that the company stop charging them out-of-pocket costs for personal protective equipment like mesh vests and arm guards—essential because they work with knives, saws, and other sharp, dangerous equipment.

JBS garnishes workers’ wages when equipment needs to be replaced due to daily wear and tear, damage, or theft. This gear can cost workers up to $1,100, taken directly from their paychecks without their consent.

“I have never experienced anything harder than this in my life,” said Teshale Dadi, who works on the chuck line. JBS was his first job after moving to the U.S. from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. “One wrong move can take your life away.”

The various jobs mentioned in this article are all similar: cow carcasses are moving along on a conveyor belt, and workers are very quickly cutting them into smaller pieces and trimming off fat with knives.

“Access to the equipment is essential for us,” said Brett Tanner, who moved here from Arkansas and has worked as a ribber at JBS since 2024. “Personally, I love my job. I really do. We feed America. But it’s stressful sometimes, the hours we work and the physical toll the job does take on your body.”

Meatpacking jobs are among the most dangerous in the country. Workers on the picket line showed cuts, deep callouses, and chemical burns on their hands from years at the plant. Repetitive motion injuries are also common. Slips, falls, and machinery crushes can even be fatal; in 2021, a worker at the Greeley plant died after falling into a vat of chemicals.

“Our hard work makes JBS a profitable company, the biggest [meatpacking] company [in the world],” Dadi said. “Doing this hard work, everyone deserves the highest respect. Our pay is generally good, relative to [the rest of] the country, but for this specific job, I don’t think it’s even close to what we deserve.”

“It feels empowering that we have so many people standing together to send a message that we want better pay, we want more access to equipment,” Tanner said.

FACING DOWN A CORPORATE GIANT

Organizing across many languages and cultures has been a historical constant in the meatpacking sector. Union drives in the 1930s brought together Black, Mexican, and Eastern European immigrant workers to build some of the earliest meatpacking unions in the U.S.

This is the first strike ever at the Greeley plant, and the first major U.S. meatpacking strike since the 1985-6 strike at the Hormel plant in Austin, Minnesota. (There were wildcat walkouts at Smithfield Foods in Tarheel, North Carolina, in 2006 and 2007.) At Hormel, 1,500 members of UFCW Local P-9 struck for 13 months, refusing concessions that their international union was pressing them to accept. The Hormel strike galvanized grassroots support from around the country, though ultimately the workers were defeated by the powerful forces arrayed against them.

Over the last few years, UFCW Local 7 has built up a fighting reputation, with some of the largest strikes in the union. Last year 10,000 Kroger grocery workers in Local 7 went on strike for two weeks in February, followed by another 7,000 grocery workers at Safeway in June.

But meatpacking workers face a steep uphill battle as they fight for better conditions. Union density in the industry has fallen precipitously. Up to 90 percent of meatpacking workers belonged to unions in the postwar era, but only 15 percent did by 2019, as the industry consolidated and shuttered unionized plants, only to restart production in non-union plants.

The meatpacking industry is now so concentrated that the “Big Four” companies—JBS, Tyson, Cargill, and National Beef— control 85 percent of beef processing in the U.S. JBS acquired the Greeley plant when it bought Swift & Co. in 2007, one of many acquisitions and mergers on its road to becoming the world’s largest meatpacker.

Meatpacking companies have been reaping record profits since the Covid pandemic (notwithstanding fines for price fixing), even as communities suffer from plant closures and beef prices soar for consumers.

JBS, a multinational based in Brazil, is the U.S.’s largest beef processor, and also owns the second-largest chicken processor, Pilgrim’s Pride. It provides meat products for fast food chains like McDonald’s and Burger King, as well as wholesalers and grocers like Costco and Kroger.

Even in an industry known for greed and lawbreaking, JBS has a notorious reputation. The company paid a $4 million fine last year after the Department of Labor found that cleaning contractors at the Greeley plant were using child labor. It also paid $55 million in a $200 million meatpacking industry settlement over collusion to repress wages.

For a long time, the company’s effort to get listed on the New York Stock Exchange was held up by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission due to extensive corruption scandals and the company’s role in deforesting the Amazon rainforest.

In January 2025, Pilgrim’s Pride made the single largest donation to Trump’s inauguration committee, $5 million, leading to allegations of a quid pro quo. A few months later, the SEC approved the stock exchange listing.

NATIONAL NEGOTIATIONS

The Greeley plant is one of dozens of JBS plants represented by the UFCW. Fourteen of these plants, including 26,000 workers in 12 locals, are now covered by a national contract that was settled for the first time last May. Local 7, which opted out of national negotiations, is pushing beyond this agreement, citing higher costs of living in Colorado.

The national contract included wins on regulating line speeds, including steward training and provisions for walking stewards (who are empowered to move around the plant to proactively enforce the contract, and who are paid by the company rather than the union), and improvements to wages and sick leave.

A particular triumph was the establishment of a new Taft-Hartley pension plan. Pensions used to be standard within meatpacking; the UFCW touted this one as the first to be offered by a meatpacking employer since 1986. (At least one news report speculated that JBS agreed to a pension as an optics move to get its stock listing approved by the SEC.)

That said, the national JBS pension plan is relatively modest, starting at contributions of 10 cents per hour worked in the first year of the contract, and increasing by 10 cents per hour each additional year. Local 663 and Local 1846 negotiated separate language to give individual members the choice whether to continue with their previous 401k or opt into the pension.

Nearly a dozen UFCW locals have been showing up in solidarity at the picket lines in Local 7, including Local 663 from Minnesota and Local 431 from Iowa, which were part of national negotiations.

Local 7 announced at the outset that this would be a limited-duration, two-week strike. It could be shorter, the local has stated, if JBS agrees to come back to the bargaining table and negotiate in good faith.

“I hope that we get justice, and that other meat processing plants stand up and get justice too,” said the anonymous worker, who is originally from Mexico, “for the good of the Latino community, and for the workers above all.”

Caitlyn Clark is a national organizer at Essential Workers for Democracy, an organization dedicated to rank-and-file member education and empowerment for workers in grocery, meatpacking, and retail. Lisa Xu is a staff writer and organizer at Labor Notes.

DOJ Shuttered Antitrust Probe of Meatpackers Before Trump’s ‘Performative’ Investigation Demand

“The law is clear,” said one advocacy group, “what’s been missing is the political will to use it.”


A worker helps a shopper in the meat aisle in a grocery store on July 22, 2025 in Miami, Florida.
(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Nov 17, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

The US Department of Justice shuttered an antitrust probe into the heavily consolidated meatpacking industry shortly before President Donald Trump announced that he had asked the department to investigate whether companies are unlawfully colluding to push up beef prices.

Bloomberg reported late last week that Trump administration officials “formally notified companies recently that they were closing a probe into sharp price increases” during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. The probe began during Trump’s first term and continued through the Biden administration, which used executive action to target price gouging in the meatpacking industry.

The Trump Justice Department’s decision to close the antitrust investigation came weeks before Trump, in a post on his social media platform, said earlier this month that he had instructed the DOJ to “immediately begin an investigation” into meatpacking companies. Just four corporations—Tyson, Cargill, JBS, and National Beef—control roughly 80% of the beef market in the United States.

Critics viewed the president’s announcement as a performative move intended to deflect criticism of his failure to take substantive action to bring down beef prices. Trump has falsely claimed that the prices of all grocery products are down except for beef.

The advocacy group Food & Water Watch noted that Trump’s call for a price-fixing probe came just three months after the Republican president “rescinded a Biden administration executive order meant to tackle these exact meatpacker abuses.”

“Farmers and consumers need real action to bring down prices and protect producers—not performative announcements,” said Tarah Heinzen. “If Trump is serious about investigating beef packers, his [US Department of Agriculture] must also vigorously defend the prior administration’s Packers and Stockyards Act rules.”

Farm Action, a watchdog that fights corporate abuses in the agriculture sector, said that DOJ probes of the kind ordered by Trump often “end quietly” without any meaningful action.

“For this one to matter, it must end with enforcement,” the group said last week. “If investigators uncover anticompetitive behavior, the DOJ has powerful tools to act. Under the Sherman Antitrust Act, it can take the packers to court, break them up, prosecute executives, force changes that protect farmers, and prevent further consolidation.”

“The law is clear,” Farm Action added, “what’s been missing is the political will to use it.”

UK banks poured over £1 billion into ‘forest-risk’ companies since 2022 - defying country’s landmark anti-deforestation pledge

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 Forests

 United Kingdom

Wednesday 16 October 2024, London – The UK banking sector has poured over £1 billion ($1.4bn) into “forest-risk” companies globally since COP26, undermining the country’s commitments made at the 2021 Glasgow climate conference - according to new analysis by Global Witness in collaboration with the Forests & Finance coalition.

This Global Witness analysis, published today, is based on new Forest & Finance coalition data prepared by independent research organisation Profundo. The study found that in 2024, UK financiers ranked as the third-largest investors in shares and bonds issued by "forest-risk" companies, behind only the US and Japan, when excluding financial institutions based in the tropical forest countries themselves.

These "forest-risk" companies are those operating in Southeast Asia, Central and West Africa and South America which are directly involved in industries such as beef, palm oil, soy, and other agricultural supply chains that drive the majority of tropical deforestation.

The study also revealed UK financiers as the 10th largest creditors of “forest-risk” companies globally, moving up to 7th place when excluding banks from tropical forest countries.

The findings imperil the commitments made by the UK at COP26 to halt and reverse global deforestation by 2030, as stated in the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration, and to align financial flows with efforts to protect forests.

Of the top 50 largest UK firms analysed by Global Witness, accounting for 99% of investments in “forest-risk” companies in 2024, the majority still lack public commitments to remove deforestation from their portfolios. So far, only eight out of 50 shareholders analysed have made clear public commitments to removing deforestation from their portfolios.

The new findings come ahead of a critical review by the UK Treasury to assess the extent to which regulation of the UK financial system is adequate to stop funding flowing to business engaged in deforestation. Mandated in June 2023, as part of the Financial Services and Markets Act, the review has still not begun.

Anna Gelderd MP, Labour MP for South East Cornwall, said:

“There will be lots of conversations about green, sustainable finance for the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP16) starting next week. But we must not lose sight of the role dirty finance plays in driving nature destruction. 

"It makes no sense to work towards repairing biodiversity vandalism while allowing British funding to flow to those responsible for the damage. An urgent assessment of the impact of UK finance on forests globally is needed.” 

As of July 2024, British investors still held £1.4 billion ($1.8bn) in bonds and shares in these so-called “forest risk” companies.

Credit provision from UK banks to “forest-risk” companies has recently declined, falling from £662m ($819m) in 2022 to £380m ($472m) in 2023, the latest year for which full data is available. However, British banks have continued to fund some of the most controversial agribusinesses, including meatpacker JBS, soy-processing giant Cargill, as well as Brazil-headquartered beef and leather producer Minerva Foods. All three businesses have been mired in numerous controversies relating to deforestation or alleged human rights violations in recent years.

An analysis of a broader timeframe reveals that three UK banks accounted for a staggering 97% of the country’s credit provision to “forest-risk” companies since the signing of the Paris Agreement at COP21 in 2015: HSBC, which provided £2.9 billion; Standard Chartered with £0.86 billion; and Barclays with £0.75 billion.

In total, these banks extended £4.45 billion in credit to “forest-risk” companies between January 2016 and June 2024. Among all the banks analysed, HSBC emerged as the largest UK financier of forest-risk commodities, representing over 62% of the UK’s credit flows to deforestation-risk during this period.

Alexandria Reid, Forests campaign lead at Global Witness, said:

“It’s time to put an end to this hypocrisy – the UK cannot claim to be leaders in the fight against nature loss while bankrolling its destruction.

“This reckless financing is helping fuel deforestation and tearing apart our planet’s vital ecosystems - all while undermining the UK’s promises to tackle the climate crisis. Labour fought for and won a new Treasury review of deforestation finance under the last government and now they must seize this opportunity to deliver it and stop deforestation before it’s too late.”

Although total financing figures have declined in the past year, some major banks have increased funding to some of the most controversial agribusinesses. For example, HSBC increased its financing for Cargill’s soy operations in Brazil, an agricultural powerhouse, by 112% between 2022 and 2023.

While HSBC, Standard Chartered, and Barclays have all publicised anti-deforestation policies and received recognition from initiatives like Forest500 for these commitments, the analysis provides powerful evidence of the limitations of voluntary policies in safeguarding against environmental destruction. Global Witness argues that only legal safeguards will truly protect the world’s climate critical forests from destructive finance.

All of the companies involved in this investigation were approached for comment. HSBC declined to comment, directing Global Witness to their Net Zero Transition Plan. Barclays stated that it was unable to comment on specific clients, but drew Global Witness’ attention to its Forestry and Agricultural Commodities Statement and noted its recognition in the Forest500 rankings. Standard Chartered also declined to comment on specific clients, but referred Global Witness to its Nature Position Statement and its past statements on agribusiness and soy. The responses of all those entities approached for comment by Global Witness are detailed further in the full report.

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Air Canada pilots union to seek conciliator, says parties are far apart in talks

Ian Bickis, The Canadian Press

Air Canada pilots intend to request help from a federal conciliator to assist in stalled contract negotiations with the airline, the union representing them announced Sunday.

The Air Line Pilots Association, representing more than 5,000 Air Canada pilots, said the two sides are not close to a deal despite a year of contract talks, including close to six months of voluntary mediation.

"Unfortunately, Air Canada continues to undervalue your contributions to the success of this airline," said Charlene Hudy, head of the union's Air Canada contingent, in a video message to members.

She said that while talks have allowed the two sides to reach important agreements, they remain too far apart in negotiations and so pilots will be leaving the voluntary process on June 15. 

The union says it will file a notice of dispute to inform the federal Minister of Labour that they've attempted, but failed, to reach a collective agreement, and to request the minister assign a conciliator.

Air Canada said in a statement that the airline remains committed to achieving a fair, negotiated agreement.

"Air Canada has worked hard and in good faith to reach a new collective agreement with ALPA under the bargaining protocol and the talks conducted under the bargaining protocol led to significant progress," it said.

The airline said it will continue to push for an agreement in the coming months under the normal bargaining process, insisting customers can continue to book and travel with confidence on Air Canada.

Canadian pilots have been seeking gains that will bring them closer to deals won by their counterparts in the U.S.

Between March and September last year, pilots at Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and American Airlines secured agreements that included four-year pay hikes ranging from 34 per cent to 40 per cent.

Hudy has called the wage gap between Canadian and American pilots "unacceptable."

The Canada Labour Code stipulates the minister has up to 15 days to appoint a conciliator, after which a 60-day period of talks begin. If no deal is reached in the talks, there's a 21-day cooling-off period before the union could be in a position to strike. 

Last week, WestJet Encore reached a deal with its pilots to narrowly avoid a potential strike. 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 2, 2024.

Operations suspended at British Columbia's Gibraltar copper mine due to worker strike

The Canadian Press

A worker strike has forced Vancouver-based Taseko Mines Limited to suspend operations at its Gibraltar copper mine in central British Columbia, about 200 kilometres south of Prince George.

The company issued a news release on Saturday saying negotiations for a new contract with unionized workers ended late Friday with no deal.

It says it then shut down mining and milling operations before midnight, and only essential staff remain to maintain critical operations.

Unifor says its Local 3018 members voted to strike today, accusing Taseko of refusing to negotiate "basic terms of a new collective agreement."

A news release from the union says contract negotiations began in February, and the workers' latest contract expired on Friday.

The release says Unifor Local 3018 represents about 550 workers at the mine, which is the second largest open-pit copper mine in Canada and the largest employer in the region.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 1, 2024.

 

Cargill shifts beef production after weeklong strike at Canada plant

Gerson Freitas Jr., Bloomberg News

Signage is displayed outside the Cargill Inc. meat plant in Chambly, Quebec, Canada, on Monday, May 11, 2020. The case-ready facility for beef, pork, chicken and sausage has shut down as the company is “concerned about the number of cases in the community and among our employees,” according to a May 9 statement. Photographer: Christinne Muschi/Bloomberg , Bloomberg

Cargill Inc. is shifting beef production to other facilities after halting operations at a Canadian plant due to a weeklong strike at the facility.

Beef processing at Cargill’s Dunlop plant in Guelph, Ontario was halted after about 1,000 workers took to the picket lines on May 27. The plant has capacity to process 1,500 head of cattle per day. The workers rejected a proposal that the US meatpacker said would have raised wages by 9.3 per cent in the first year of a four-year agreement.

“While we navigate this labor disruption, we will shift production to other facilities within our broad supply chain footprint to minimize any disruptions to our customers,” a Cargill spokesperson said.

The Ontario plant suspension comes as profit margins of North American beef producers have been under pressure due to a shortage of slaughter-weight cattle.

Laid-off: Former Tyson Foods chicken farmers face high costs switching to eggs

By Tom Polansek

April 30, 2024

REUTERS

 A worker sorts cage-free chicken eggs at Hilliker's Ranch Fresh Eggs in Lakeside, California, U.S., April 19, 2022. Picture taken April 19, 2022. 

REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

CHICAGO, April 30 (Reuters) - Some U.S. farmers who once raised chickens for Tyson Foods to slaughter are shifting to sell eggs instead after the meatpacker closed six plants, a move that left local suppliers with limited options for work.

In one example, former Tyson suppliers in central Virginia formed a cooperative that will produce cage-free eggs for Indiana-based Dutch Country Organics on a dozen farms, after Tyson closed its nearby Glen Allen plant last year.

In Dexter, Missouri, the world's biggest egg company, Cal-Maine Foods (CALM.O), opens new tab, in March finalized a deal to buy another chicken meat plant Tyson shuttered. Cal-Maine recruited local farmers to produce eggs.

The switch to eggs, which carries high costs, reflects the tough choices former Tyson suppliers around the country must make following the company's 2023 decision to shut plants in an effort to return to profitability in its chicken business after misjudging consumer demand.

Egg farming also comes with risk as lethal bird flu infections have hit laying hens harder than broiler chickens raised for meat. The virus flared up for a third year this spring, resulting in the culling of nearly 10 million hens involved in commercial egg production so far this year. Cal-Maine culled about 1.9 million, opens new tab birds this month after an outbreak in Texas.

MILLIONS TO UPGRADE
Former broiler growers must spend millions of dollars on barn and equipment upgrades to produce eggs, a notoriously volatile market, 18 poultry producers, government officials and industry experts told Reuters. Last year, egg prices tanked after reaching record highs due to the worst-ever outbreak of bird flu in poultry.

"It's a very expensive investment from the grower," said John Bapties, who is president of the Central Virginia Poultry Cooperative and raised chickens for Tyson for 20 years before the Glen Allen plant closed.

His cooperative is placing hens in barns that formerly housed broiler chickens, and expects to sell cage-free eggs produced by about one million birds to Dutch County Organics within a year, he said.

Farmers needed to replace dirt floors in barns with concrete and install nesting systems for hens, among other costly renovations.

Taylor Lee, a former Tyson grower in DeWitt, Virginia, said he decided against the switch. He will focus on raising crops while keeping his poultry barns empty for now.
"They're painting a pretty picture with that co-op but it's $2.8 million roughly to upgrade my farm to egg production," Lee said.

Roger Reynolds, another Virginia farmer who supplied broiler chickens to Tyson, said he is considering producing eggs for Braswell Family Farms. His daughter found work there after Tyson's plant closure eliminated her job.

Producing eggs means a different way of life, Reynolds said. For one thing, hens lay most of their eggs in the morning, meaning farmers cannot go to church on a Sunday without checking their barns first, he said.

CAGE-FREE EGGS

The United States has about 125 million cage-free laying hens, about 40% of total layers, U.S. government data show. More are needed after some states banned sales of eggs from caged hens and restaurants committed to cage-free supplies, Dutch Country Organics CEO Lamar Bontrager said.

"I've been getting calls like crazy," Bontrager said. "Those guys are all concerned of where to procure their eggs."

Dutch Country sells eggs to retailers including Walmart (WMT.N), opens new tab, Kroger (KR.N), opens new tab and Target (TGT.N), opens new tab, according to Virginia officials.
Former broiler growers offer egg companies an opportunity to expand production because the farmers are already familiar with poultry.

"It's one of the ways that these companies are converting: by grabbing old barns," said Brian Moscogiuri, global trade strategist for Eggs Unlimited.

Tyson declined to comment. The company said last year that 55 broiler growers supplied the Glen Allen plant and that it offered them buyout packages. The plant had about 700 employees.

Tyson has laid off corporate employees and said it will close an Iowa pork plant, in addition to shutting chicken plants. Farmers depended on the plants as markets for their livestock.

The meatpacker is slated to report quarterly results on Monday.

In Arkansas, the third biggest broiler-producing state, Tyson closed two chicken plants. Some of its former growers found work supplying other chicken companies, said Jared Garrett, Arkansas Farm Bureau's director of commodity activities and economics.
"They lucked out," he said.

JOBS WANTED

Tyson closed chicken plants in Dexter and Noel, Missouri, with about 700 workers and 1,500 workers, respectively. Cal-Maine said it plans to initially employ about 100 people at the Dexter plant.

"While I welcome Cal-Maine's investment in Dexter, it does not right the wrongs of Tyson or guarantee new jobs for the more than 2,000 Missourians now out of one," U.S. Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri said in a statement to Reuters.

David Wyman, Dexter's city administrator, also welcomed Cal-Maine, though it is expected to work with a fraction of the farmers who supplied Tyson. Cal-Maine said it expects to expand over time and that revenue opportunities will be as good or better than farmers had under previous contracts.

But some former Tyson suppliers are left with empty barns, Wyman said: "They're really in bad shape."

Egg farming is generally harder to get into operationally than raising chickens for meat; requires more capital and labor expertise; and carries higher disease risks, said Wendong Zhang, an assistant professor and agricultural economist at Cornell University.
"Due to the closure of the plants and termination of contracts, the switch is in a way a move of necessity," he said.

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Reporting by Tom Polansek; Editing by Caroline Stauffer and Anna Driver

Brazilian union sues JBS over alleged exploitation of chicken workers

Story by By Ana Mano • Yesterday 

 The logo of Brazilian meatpacker JBS SA is seen in the unit in the city of Jundiai

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - A Brazilian labor union has accused JBS SA of submitting dozens of workers to "degrading conditions," according to a class action suit filed against the world's biggest meatpacker and its suppliers this week.

The union filed the claim on behalf of at least 76 people, including members of the Terena Indigenous community, who were employed as third-party chicken catchers for JBS and worked in conditions "analogous to slavery," the suit alleges.

Their shifts lasted up to 14 hours including the journey to and from the hen houses, said union leader Sergio Bolzan in a telephone interview. The work consisted of packing live chickens in boxes for transportation, some of which weighed as much as 24 kilograms (53 pounds), he added.

JBS is a primary defendant and four outsourcing companies are co-defendants in the suit, documents show.

In a statement, the company said it had not yet been notified of the suit and would investigate the allegations.

The suit claims workers did not get enough rest time, were not fully paid upon dismissal and did not get extra pay for performing hazardous work.

JBS says it maintains "strict protocols and controls in its operations to ensure that all its suppliers comply with their legal obligations and the well-being of employees."

These obligations include providing adequate protective gear, safe working conditions and reliable means of transportation.

It also says it regularly conducts technical visits to supervise the work of catchers and to verify that everything is in order with suppliers.

Bolzan said evidence of alleged exploitation surfaced in April when he paid a surprise visit to where some catchers were being housed to document the conditions.

The union submitted that evidence on Tuesday to a court in Sidrolandia, in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, where Bolzan said JBS employs 5,000 people directly and indirectly.

The union is seeking 400,000 reais ($82,000) in damages per worker and is pushing for prosecutors to formally join the suit as plaintiffs, documents show.

Bolzan shared his concerns with labor prosecutors, who confirmed preliminary investigations into the matter, including whether catchers were employed "off the books."

($1 = 4.8831 reais)

(Reporting by Ana Mano; Editing by Brad Haynes and Mark Potter)

U$A

Child Labor and Immigration

Mostly a policy lament.

STEVEN L. TAYLOR · SUNDAY, MARCH 5, 2023 ·

Via WaPo: A cleaning company illegally employed a 13-year-old. Her family is paying the price.

At 13, she was too young to be cleaning a meatpacking plant in the heart of Nebraska cattle country, working the graveyard shift amid the brisket saws and the bone cutters. The cleaning company broke the law when it hired her and more than two dozen other teenagers in this gritty industrial town, federal officials said.

[Since the U.S. Department of Labor raided the plant in October, Packers Sanitation Services, a contractor hired to clean the facility, has been fined for violating child labor laws. The girl, meanwhile, has watched her whole life unravel.

First, she lost the job that burned and blistered her skin but paid her $19 an hour. Then a county judge sent her stepfather to jail for driving her to work each night, a violation of state child labor laws. Her mother also faces jail time for securing the fake papers that got the child the job in the first place. And her parents are terrified of being sent back to Guatemala, the country they left several years ago in search of a better life.

I suspect that this case, and others like it, are a bit of a Rorschach Test. Some will see it as a corporation exploiting desperate people, while others will see a family who shouldn’t be in the United States (and who exploited their own child by letting her work).

I will state from the onset that I am more sympathetic to desperate people whose desperation leads them to engage in, well, desperate behavior, but will certainly acknowledge that there are reasons to lay some blame in their direction. Packers paying a fine and the consequences for the family are ultimately not equivalent in my mind.

A sweeping investigation of Packers found 102 teens, ages 13 to 17, scouring slaughterhouses in eight states, part of a growing wave of child workers illegally hired to fill jobs in some of the nation’s most dangerous industries. Driven in part by persistent labor shortages and record numbers of unaccompanied migrant minors arriving from Central America, child labor violations have nearly quadrupled since 2015, according to Labor Department data, spiking in hazardous jobs that American citizens typically shun.

[…]

Packers has faced no criminal charges, despite evidence that it failed to take basic steps to verify the age of its young employees. Last month, it quickly resolved the case by paying a $1.5 million civil fine. The families of the teen workers, by contrast, have been exposed to child-abuse charges and potential deportation. None have applied for work permits and the protection against deportation that is available to the child workers, fearing retaliation in a company town where almost everyone’s job is somehow tied to the meatpacking industry.

[…]

Packers officials said they have dismissed all the minor workers and fired two managers in Grand Island. They accused “rogue individuals” of using counterfeit documents to prove that the children were of legal age and emphasized that the 102 workers made up a tiny share of the company’s 17,000-member workforce. The full statement from Packers is available here.

For anyone who has paid attention to this general topic will recognize the broad outlines here. Companies need employees and immigrants need work. Both either break, bend, and/or ignore the law to make the transaction happen. Once someone gets caught the company basically says “whoops” and pays a fine, and the employees (and often their broader communities) tend to suffer very direct consequences.

Let me pause and note that there is no easy solution to any of this. The easiest of them all is “seal the border” (or similar formulations) and it is an utter impossibility. As I have noted on multiple occasions, there are too many legitimate transactions across the border to “seal” it or “close” it in any meaningful fashion. Calls to “seal” the border are just a way of saying “I wish this problem would go away” with all the efficacy such a statement implies.

What I am constantly struck by when I read stories about immigrants and immigration policy are the very real market forces that help drive all of this behavior. There is a market for labor in this country that is not being satisfied and there is a supply of labor south of the border willing to do the work in question. There is also a very real demand for security and opportunity in many people living south of the border (especially in places like Guatemala and El Salvador) and the ample supply of security and opportunity in the United States. Combining these two push-pull circumstances means that US policymakers have some very, very powerful forces to contend with if we are going to find solutions to deal with this situation in any way that actually makes it better.

(I have held this view for decades, in fact).

Instead, we remain in a spiral of nonsensical approaches. We don’t want to really deal with the labor demands (which would include better enforcement of existing labor laws and, quite frankly, things like paying better wages to attract workers, but that would lead to higher prices that no one wants to pay). We don’t want to figure out a better way to allow labor to enter the country legally. We don’t want to pay to increase the bureaucracy needed to deal with migrants.

We really don’t want to do anything.

And I realize that at the base of my assumptions about this situation is that migrants are going to come and we need to figure out how to deal with that fact. This automatically makes the “seal the border” faction of the population want to ignore me as being an “open border” type. But the issue to me is simple: the empirical reality is that migrants are going to come. If the US really is the land of opportunity, the land of the free and the home of the brave, as well as a shining city on a hill, people are going to come. Desperation is a major motivator. Indeed, it seems to me that the desire for self-improvement, broadly defined, is a major motivator for a lot of humanity and human history shows that people will endure much to improve the lives of their children.

While I have no easy solution (and if an easy solution was possible in a Sunday morning blog post, well, the problem wouldn’t be inspiring blog posts), I will say this: if we had a flooding problem you solve that problem through the construction of dams, levies, dikes, canals, and the like to control the flow. Such systems do not guarantee universal fixes, but it allows for control of the flow of water, to help stop catastrophic flooding and to help direct the water where needed. You don’t just send out the bucket brigade while complaining that we need to “seal” the horizon.

I suspect that if we had a more rational process to deal with migrants, it would be possible to better control the flow (but it would never stop the illegal crossings).

Instead, we refuse to really do anything.

THE REPUBLICAN CHILD LABOR AGENDA

 BY ERIK LOOMIS

 

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ON MARCH 5, 2023

 

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As Timothy Noah notes, the rise of child labor in America is directly connected to Republican policies on the issue, as in Republicans are objectively pro-child labor.

Child labor is back. The Labor Department’s wage and hour division recorded a 37 percent increase in 2022 in the number of minors employed in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which outlawed most child labor way back in 1938 and imposed strict limits on the rest. The 37 percent increase was over the previous year. Over the previous decade, the number of minors employed in violation of the act was up 140 percent. 

The surge in child labor reverses what had been, for most of the past 20 years, a significant decline in the number of minors employed in violation of the FLSA. Nobody knows exactly why the numbers started to climb in 2015, but probably it was because the labor market was getting tight. The unemployment rate, which had been falling since 2010, dropped in 2015 to 5 percent, which was then considered full employment. Workers were getting hard to find. The unemployment rate has since fallen further to 3.4 percent. 

The violations began piling up just as Republican state legislators, many of them newly in the majority, went on the attack against child labor restrictions, pressing in various ways to expand the number of work hours and work settings available to teenagers aged 14 to 17. (With exceptions for farm families, child actors, and a few others, child labor under age 14 is illegal.) One Wisconsin bill went so far as to ban the phrase “child labor” from state employment statutes, requiring that the offending term be replaced by “employment of minors.” A bill introduced in Iowa last month would allow 14-year-olds to work in meatpacking plants. If the youngster gets hurt due to his own negligence (whatever that means at 14), the meatpacker will be indemnified against civil liability. 

Only a few of these Dickensian pro-child-labor bills got enacted, but some did. In June, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu signed into law a bill that allows 14-year-old busboys to clear tables where liquor is served and expands from 30 to 35 the number of hours 16- and 17-year-olds may work during the school year. These restrictions had “become too cumbersome,” New Hampshire Deputy Labor Commissioner Rudolph Ogden explained to The New Hampshire Bulletin. Sununu is weighing a presidential bid in 2024. Working campaign slogan: Bring Back Warren’s Blacking Factory. (Just kidding.)

With this political backdrop, it’s little wonder that an investigation published Saturday by Hannah Dreier of The New York Times revealed a “shadow work force” of migrant children “across industries in every state”: 12-year-old roofers in Florida and Tennessee; 13-year-old girls washing hotel sheets in Virginia; a 13-year-old boy in Michigan making auto parts on an overnight shift that ends at 6:30 a.m.; a 12-year-old working for a Hyundai subsidiary in Alabama (this last courtesy of Reuters). The good news is that the Cheetos you’re snacking on or the Fruit of the Loom socks warming your feet may have been manufactured right here in the United States. The bad news is that they may have been made with child labor. It’s no longer just a Third World practice, or a bad memory from How the Other Half Lives.