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President Donald Trump\u2019s migration cutoff is pressuring a huge meatpacking firm to offer better wages to President Joe Biden\u2019s last wave of low-wage migrants.<\/p>\n
JBS is offering wage gains, a cash bonus, better benefits, and even a retirement plan, after a rare strike by migrant employees at the JBS slaughterhouse in Greeley, Colo., said a company statement<\/a>, which added:<\/p>\n Since 2019, base hourly wages at the Greeley plant have increased by approximately 46%, outpacing Northern Colorado\/Front Range inflation of roughly 25% over the same period. This represents a real wage growth of about 16% for team members.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The three-week strike in Colorado has been suspended to allow further negotiations, said the union, which has a very different perspective than JBS.<\/p>\n Since late 2021, as Biden\u2019s migrants flooded the labor market, the JBS workers have seen wage gains of just 7 percent, even though healthcare contributions rose by almost 40 percent, according to the union.<\/p>\n JBS \u201csought to limit workers\u2019 wages and has instead insisted on wage increases of barely 1.5%<\/strong> on average per year, far below both historic and anticipated inflation,\u201d said a statement<\/a> by the local branch of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/reels\/DWvJrDfjHZE\/<\/p>\n \u201cWorkers remain united and will continue to fight until JBS fully ends its unfair labor practices and gives workers a contract offer that protects them, shows workers the respect they deserve, and pays them a livable wage,\u201d said<\/a>\u00a0Kim Cordova, the local president.<\/p>\n In June 2025, amid Trump\u2019s cutoff of new migrants, JBS was forced to grant pay raises, sick leave, and even a pension plan to 26,000 meatpackers in Iowa. \u201cI\u2019ve been working at JBS for 10 years, and when I got the news about the pension, I was excited,\u201d\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0Thelma Cruz, who works at the JBS Pork plant in Marshalltown, Iowa. \u201cMy husband also works here, and when we retire, we will both get pension checks every month.\u201d<\/p>\n Since then, wage gains have been curbed by the usual alliance of corporate lobbyists and pro-migraiotn progressives.<\/p>\n For example, agriculture-sector lobbyists pushed Trump to curb ICE raids on meatpacking and agriculture sites after ICE picked up<\/a>\u00a076 illegals working at a Nebraska meatpacking plant in June 2025.<\/p>\n For decades, the meatpacking companies have been boosted by the federal policy of extracting workers from poor countries via legalized and illegal routes. The imported workers replaced Americans, accepted lower wages and more dangerous working conditions, and were replaced by subsequent inflows of illegals and refugees.<\/p>\n The federal government has also imported workers, renters, and consumers for technology investors<\/a>, the trucking industry<\/a>, Democratic city governments<\/a>, real estate investors<\/a>, and many other economic sectors.<\/p>\n Most of the JBS workers at the Greeley site are Biden migrants from Haiti, Somalia, Burma, and Mexico. They include a mix of legal refugees, illegal migrants, and migrants with various temporary work permits.\u00a0The far-left Nation<\/em> magazine reported<\/a>:<\/p>\n As of 2020, an\u00a0estimated<\/a>\u00a080\u201390 percent of [the 3,800] 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\u2019s reliance on immigrant labor is strategic. \u201cThey\u2019re really good about bringing in folks from different countries that don\u2019t know their rights yet or are here seeking asylum,\u201d she said. JBS knows that precarity and fear means \u201cthey can run those chain speeds [on the production line] fast.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Various far-left groups accepted federal funds to deliver the migrants to the meatpackers, said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies. He told Breitbart News:<\/p>\n It enabled [the meatpackers] to staff their plants with desperate folks who don\u2019t really have the knowledge or connections or experience to be able to bargain for more money or demand changes to work routines, any of that sort of thing. The inevitable result is lower wages and potentially dangerous working conditions \u2026 By delivering this endless supply of cheap, controllable, desperate workers, the government refugee policy was disincentivizing companies from making investments in machinery that increase the productivity of workers. That\u2019s just not good for the country.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n JBS is a Brazilian multinational company whose top executives try to maximize their stock price by minimizing costs, including wages and investments in technology.<\/p>\n Under Trump, JBS executives are trying to offset the wage gains by investing in labor-saving machines, such as computer-controlled saws.<\/p>\n For example, JBS is spending roughly $135 million on a new sausage factory in Iowa, where a workforce of just 500 people<\/a> is expected to\u00a0produce some 130 million pounds of sausage each year from roughly 500,000 pigs.\u00a0The technology would allow each employee to process 1,000 pigs per year \u2014 and so the union will push to win a share of the profits created by the high-tech investments.<\/p>\n This video shows a high-tech JBS plan in high-wage Australia, which is far more automated than a U.S.\u00a0 slaughterhouse in 1980<\/a>\u00a0or the 1930s<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n
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