The timing could not be worse for grocery bills.
Workers at JBS USA's Swift Beef plant in Greeley, Colorado began picketing before sunrise Monday, bundled in blankets in 20-degree temperatures. About 3,800 workers are on strike — 99% of them voted to authorize it.
United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 says JBS has been offering average annual wage increases of less than 2%, well below Colorado's inflation rate, while shifting healthcare costs onto workers and — in many cases — charging them $1,100 or more per year to offset the company's own expenses for required safety equipment.
JBS said it would keep the plant running on two shifts using workers who chose not to strike, and would move some production to other facilities.
JBS is the largest of the four major beef processors in the U.S. Those four companies together handle 85% of all domestic beef production. The Greeley plant is one of the biggest facilities in the country and the top employer in a city of 114,000 people.
The last strike at a U.S. beef slaughterhouse was at a Hormel plant in Minnesota in 1985. That one lasted more than a year.
JBS in January agreed to pay $83.5 million to settle price-fixing allegations alongside other major meatpackers, and the company has faced separate federal scrutiny over bribery related to its U.S. expansion financing.
Beef prices are already up 15.2% over the past year, driven by the smallest U.S. cattle herd since 1951 — 86.2 million animals as of January. Supply was already tight before this morning.
The Trump administration responded earlier this year by expanding Argentine beef imports by 80,000 metric tons. A prolonged strike at one of the country's largest processing facilities would put more pressure on a supply chain with very little slack left.
Ground beef at the grocery store was already expensive. This doesn't help.