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In early February, more than 1,000 Haitian migrants employed at the unionized JBS meatpacking plant in Greeley, Colorado, faced imminent deportation, as the Trump administration fought in federal court to revoke their temporary protected status. Many of the Haitians say they were brought to JBS as part of a human-trafficking scheme concocted by a supervisor in the company’s HR department. (A JBS spokesperson told me there was no evidence tying the company to the union’s claims.)
Among them is Carlos Saint Aubin, who fled from the gangs in Port-au-Prince to Brazil, where he began a harrowing journey on foot—across the Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia, north to the US border. He came to Colorado after seeing TikTok videos promising jobs and housing. Instead, he ended up among the hundreds of Haitians packed more than six to a room at a roadside motel after working long hours. Now Saint Aubin is one of the lead plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit alleging that the Haitians on the evening shift there were forced to work as much as 50 percent faster than those on the daytime crew.
On February 4, less than 48 hours after a federal judge blocked their deportation, 99 percent of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union members at the facility voted to strike in what could become the first sanctioned walkout at a major meatpacking plant in decades.
In the lobby of the hotel, workers were given a blue slip of paper with a simple choice: “Strike/Huelga” or “No Strike/No Huelga.”
Some 90 percent of workers at JBS’s Greeley plant are migrants. Beyond Haiti, they’re from Burma, Somalia, West Africa, and Latin America.
After casting his ballot, Carlos Saint Aubin chatted with fellow workers in the lobby outside the hotel ballroom.
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Members of Local 7 arrived just before 7 p.m. to count the votes. Of the more than 2,000 workers who voted, only 25 voted against a strike.
Despite facing threats from ICE—and the anxieties of a potential strike—workers greeted one another with hugs and handshakes.
Local 7 and JBS resumed bargaining on February 20 in hopes of avoiding a walkout. But workers had already assembled 4,000 picket signs.
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