Meatpackers struggle at JBS continues while back on the job

“JBS makes billions off our broken bodies. To them we are not worth as much as the beef going down the line,” John Trimble told the Militant. The 69-year-old Trimble says he has worked at the plant for decades. He explained why 3,800 meat processing workers, members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7, went on strike March 16 — to defend their lives and livelihoods against the abuses and exploitation of the packinghouse bosses at JBS here.

Despite strong wind gusts and deep cold, members of Local 7 showed their willingness to continue the fight into a fourth week at an April 3 open air union information meeting in a field across from the plant.

Workers cheered when Local President Kim Cordova announced the company had asked to return to negotiations April 9-10. And they cheered again when she announced that the company had agreed to reimburse workers for wrongful payments they were forced to make to get mandatory protective equipment, including mesh metal aprons and gloves, that they’re required to wear in order to do their jobs. Her talk was translated from English into four other main languages spoken by workers in the plant — Spanish, Haitian Creole, Burmese and Somali.

Workers booed when Cordova announced that the company, in a move to disrupt the union’s picketing, had rented from the city beginning the following week the empty lot where the meeting was taking place and where regular strike update meetings are held, as well as renting the adjacent parking lot where thousands of union members park before picket duty in front of and on the side of the plant. Cordova said the union had so far found no alternate space for meeting and parking.

Taking the fight back into the plant

The union had organized to give out strike pay and take the picket lines down for the Easter holiday weekend. Then on Saturday, April 4, union officials notified workers that because they were restarting negotiations and with a few concessions made by the bosses, the union had agreed workers would return to work on April 7. In a union statement Cordova said, “Workers remain united and will continue to fight.”

The Local 7 picket lines involved hundreds to 1,000 workers per shift, twice a day. They marched from the parking lot to the picket line and lined up on the street for a mile across and alongside the plant. The striking workers came from every continent on earth and speak 57 languages. Workers took breaks on the ground near the line, sitting on blankets, preparing food, playing music from their home countries and, above all, having nonstop discussions with any visitor to their strike about what they were up against.