The agreement, announced on Sunday, will allow JBS to resume normal operations at the plant at a time when beef prices have set record highs due to strong demand from consumers and historically low U.S. cattle supplies.

JBS and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 7 union resumed negotiations last week after nearly 3,800 employees went on strike to press for higher wages and a halt to company charges for replacing protective equipment. The union said it was the first time U.S. meatpacking workers had gone on strike in four decades.

“The strike worked,” Kim Cordova, president of UFCW Local 7, said on Monday.

The agreement secures wage increases over the next two years that were about 33 per cent higher than JBS offered in a pre-strike offer, according to the union. The deal also protects workers from having to pay for personal protective equipment and safeguards them against increases in healthcare costs, the union said.

Union to withdraw unfair labour practice charges

JBS said the deal was “within the economic framework” the company presented to the union months ago, though the union chose to reallocate pension contributions to wages.

“The strike at Greeley could have been avoided,” JBS said.

The meatpacker was pleased with the deal but “expressed disappointment that UFCW Local 7 leadership chose to eliminate the historic pension benefit that was part of the national agreement negotiated last year in partnership with UFCW International,” according to a statement.

Cordova said UFCW Local 7’s proposal was stronger than the national contract that unionized meatpacking workers at multiple other plants ratified with JBS last year.

As part of the deal with workers in Greeley, the union was withdrawing seven unfair labour practice charges against JBS, the company said.

Beef prices set records this year after the nation’s cattle inventory dropped to a 75-year low. Scarce supplies forced meatpackers to pay more for cattle to slaughter, even as processors benefited from the soaring beef prices.

Ranchers delivered cattle to other JBS plants during the strike at Greeley.

Rival meatpacker Tyson Foods closed a beef plant in Nebraska this year and reduced operations at a Texas facility.

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The labor disruption pits a workforce made up largely of immigrants against the world’s largest meat company, and it has already driven ranchers to deliver cattle to alternate facilities.

Beef prices set records this year after the nation’s cattle supply dropped to a 75-year low. Meatpackers including JBS benefit from climbing prices but also must pay record costs to buy cattle to slaughter.

JBS in November reported third-quarter profit of $581 million (C$787.4 million), down from $693 million a year earlier.

Contract not negotiated fairly says union

“While customers are paying more than they ever have, none of that is trickling down to the frontline worker that’s actually doing all the heavy work,” said Kim Cordova, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 union that represents workers in Greeley.

JBS has participated in unfair labor practices and not negotiated fairly on a new contract over the past eight months, Cordova said. Workers sought wages that keep pace with inflation and wanted the company to stop charging them for replacing protective equipment they wear to do their jobs safely, she said.

JBS said it complies with labor laws, sought to reach a fair agreement, and charges employees for protective equipment that is lost or maliciously damaged.

“We stand by the offer we presented,” JBS said. “It is strong, fair, and consistent with the historic national contract reached in 2025.”

Last year, unionized meatpacking workers at multiple plants ratified a first-ever national contract with JBS. However, workers in Greeley already had some benefits in that contract, including sick leave, Cordova said.

JBS did not slaughter Monday

JBS said it was now adjusting cattle deliveries and processing schedules at Greeley and shifting production to other facilities to meet customer needs.

The company did not slaughter cattle at the plant on Monday. Cattle feeders said JBS canceled slaughtering in Greeley for the whole week, and one feeder said he was delivering livestock to a company facility in Cactus, Texas, instead.

“We’ve got way more kill space than finished cattle ready to slaughter,” said Corbitt Wall, a livestock market analyst for DVAuction. Ranchers will “just move them somewhere else.”

Rival meatpacker Tyson Foods closed a massive beef plant in Nebraska this year.

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Jeff Traeger, President and Chief Executive Officer with UFCW Local 832, said the strike vote was a first for the plant and was taken in response to Maple Leaf’s refusal to take the bargaining process seriously so far.

Maple Leaf has been pushing major concessions at the table, and the union members have shown they are united and want a fair deal, he said.

The union and Maple Leaf were back at the bargaining table Monday, Nov. 17. Negotiations are expected to continue right up to the current contract’s expiry on Dec. 31.

UFCW 832’s bargaining committee is made up of seven members from various departments at the plant, and three staff members from the union. The committee first started to collect proposals from the membership in February and brought these proposals to the bargaining table in May.

The Lagomidiere plant in Winnipeg produces and packages pork products, including bacon.

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In a note pinned to the top of the program’s official website, the CGC noted that the strike was causing mail delays with the program.

Farmers were urged to, if possible, deliver their samples directly to the CGC, either at their head office in downtown Winnipeg, another CGC office or service centre, or another approved drop off site.

Service centres are located in British Columbia (Prince Rupert), Alberta (Calgary); Saskatchewan (Saskatoon and Weyburn), Manitoba (Churchill), Ontario (Thunder Bay and Hamilton) and Québec (Baie-Comeau and Québec City). Western and eastern regional offices can be found in Vancouver and Montréal, respectively. A full list, phone numbers and addresses can be found on the CGC’s webpage through the Government of Canada website.

“Please contact the office or service centre you’re visiting to confirm they have a sample drop off box available,” the website advises.

Besides CGC offices, drop off sites have been arranged at the following locations:

• BroadGrain Commodities Inc. – Dafoe, Sask.
• Bunge – Lethbridge County, Alta.
• All Paterson Grain elevators in Alberta, Saskatchewan or Manitoba
• Sakai Spice – Lethbridge, Alta.

Farmers may also choose to keep their sample until the strike ends, the CGC said.

On Oct. 10, Canada Post said that mail service would resume after the Thanksgiving long weekend, as they moved to rotating, rather than nationwide, strikes.

The last day to mail samples is Nov. 30, 2025. Dec. 31, 2025 is the last day for any samples to be included in this year’s Harvest Sample Program.

Testing for quality

The cross-country Harvest Sample Program is a voluntary initiative for testing a host of quality factors across a range of crops.

For each sample, inspectors provide unofficial grade and quality results at no charge, including:

• Falling number for wheat and rye,
• Vomitoxin (deoxynivalenol or DON) levels for wheat, corn, barley and oats,
• Dockage assessment on canola and mustard seed,
• Protein content on barley, beans, chickpeas, lentils, oats, peas and wheat,
• Oil, protein and chlorophyll content for canola,
• Oil and protein content and iodine value for flaxseed, and
• Oil and protein for mustard seed and soybeans.

A CGC inspection supervisor said producer participants appear to be taking the inconvenience in stride.

“There hasn’t been a lot of complaints or anything. I haven’t heard one complaint,” said Judy Elias with the Weyburn, Sask., service centre.

“We’re all used to strikes, so there’s just new ways to do old business.”

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The success of the International Longshoremen’s Association in winning Trump’s support for its anti-automation battle could be instructive for unions facing contract renewals during his term, including the United Auto Workers, UPS Teamsters and the U.S. West Coast’s International Longshore & Warehouse Union.

The deal, announced on Wednesday night, must be ratified by some 45,000 members of ILA and the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) employer group.

“This is a six-year détente in the tech-versus-labor tug-of-war at U.S. ports,” said Judah Levine, head of research at Freightos CRGO.O, a freight-booking and payments platform.

It landed days before an extended Jan. 15 deadline, averting a second strike that could have put a huge dent in the economy at the start of Trump’s second term on Jan. 20.

Father-and-son ILA leaders Harold and Dennis Daggett late on Wednesday called Trump a hero to the union and gave him “full credit” for the resolution of talks.

They pointed to a Truth Social post in mid-December, where Trump appeared to side with the union’s struggle against “foreign” employers after meeting with those ILA leaders.

“I’ve studied automation and know just about everything there is to know about it. The amount of money saved is nowhere near the distress, hurt and harm it causes for American Workers, in this case, our Longshoremen,” Trump wrote.

The employer group, which includes Maersk’s APM Terminals and the U.S. arms of major container carriers such as China’s COSCO Shipping, said the agreement came “thanks in large part to President Trump’s leadership.”

The ILA and USMX extended their bargaining deadline after a deadlock over automation sparked a three-day strike in October at major ports including New York and New Jersey, Houston and Savannah, Georgia.

President Joe Biden played a vital role in helping workers win a 62 per cent raise over six years, which ended the October strike.

Biden praised both the union and employers for reaching a tentative deal on Wednesday. Trump has not commented on Truth Social and his transition team did not immediately comment.

One pro-labor attorney cautioned against interpreting Trump’s post on automation as union support, saying that it was in keeping with his pugilistic approach to international policies.

“It supports his narrative of going after foreigners,” said Cathy Creighton, an attorney and director of Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations in Buffalo.

— Reporting by Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles and Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York

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The organization has been dealing with multiple workforce disputes over the past year, and another is impending.

November 25 CN clerks and mechanics approved a strike mandate. According to their union, Unifor, the two groups voted 97 and 96 per cent in favour of job action, respectively. They are calling for improved compensation, job security and working conditions.

This would affect around 2,500 workers.

At Canadian Western Agribition’s Grain Expo, Sandra Ellis, CN’s vice-president for bulk, spoke briefly about the vote for job action, saying CN is actively in negotiations.

“We continue to be at the table. Both parties have agreed that we’re going to negotiate, and we have dates booked, we’re at the table this week already,” Ellis said.

Despite the overwhelming majority of workers voting in favour of job action, Ellis said she is optimistic that they can come to an agreement.

“We are hopeful and are working on it together to come to an agreement,” she said.

This follows CN’s challenging contract talks and the labour stoppage with railroad workers earlier this year. The Teamsters Canada Rail Conference union contract expired at the end of 2023, which put them into negotiations. By the summer, negotiations and offers had been tabled and binding arbitration had been requested by CN. Before the workers could strike, CN locked out its employees for one day on Aug. 22. While Ellis says that was done to protect the economy, the company faced criticism for it at the time, with the union saying the lockout was antagonizing.

“What this meant was that we could shut down the railroad in a planned way, which put us in the best situation to start up as quickly and as efficiently as possible,” Ellis said at Grain Expo.

The situation ended with the federal government mandating binding arbitration, which is scheduled to take place in 2025.
Now, CN’s Unifor workers could strike by Jan. 1 if no agreement comes to fruition.

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Canada on Tuesday intervened to end the labour disputes at the country’s biggest ports, including Vancouver in British Columbia and Montreal in Quebec, citing economic damage and the potential for driving away trading partners.

It was the second time in three months that the Liberal government has stepped in to halt a labour dispute. In August, it ordered an end to work stoppages at the country’s two largest railway companies.

The Maritime Employers Association (MEA) said it would comply with the labour board’s directive, allowing Montreal port operators to resume activity over the weekend.

The Montreal Longshoremen’s Union on Sunday rejected a final offer made for a new labour contract, leading to a lockout being declared.

The union did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours on resumption of activities.

The dispute, which Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon said was affecting more than C$1.3 billion ($924.35 million) in goods every day, has impacted shipments of canola oil, forest products and other goods.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514, which represents supervisory longshore workers in the British Columbia dispute, said on Tuesday it would file a legal challenge to the minister’s orders.

The BC Maritime Employers Association, which represents West Coast port employers including in Vancouver, said it received the order from the labour board on Wednesday to resume operations on Thursday.

—Reporting by Surbhi Misra in Bengaluru

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It was the second time in a few months that the Liberal government has stepped in to halt a dispute. In August it ordered an end to work stoppages at the country’s two largest railway companies.

Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon said he had directed the country’s industrial relations board to order an end to the strike and impose binding arbitration.

“As the economic losses threaten the country and begin to mount, it is up to the government to ensure that … we can get on with the economic life of this country and avoid layoffs and other carnage,” he told a press conference.

“Canadians have a limited tolerance right now for economic self-harm.”

The dispute – which MacKinnon said was affecting more than C$1.3 billion in value of goods every day – had already hit shipments of canola oil, forest products and other goods. Business groups welcomed the announcement.

International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514, which represents supervisory longshore workers at the heart of the British Columbia dispute, said it will file a legal challenge to the minister’s orders.

“We will fight this order in the courts,” said Frank Morena, ILWU Local 514 president, in a statement.

“And we will not forget how these employers and this federal Liberal government have attacked not only the ILWU but all of labor.”

The Canada Industrial Relations Board, which is independent but takes direction from Ottawa, would take a few days to issue the relevant orders, MacKinnon said.

The left-leaning government has previously stated its preference for resolving labor disputes through collective bargaining. MacKinnon said he had been forced to intervene after federal mediators reported the talks at Montreal and Vancouver were at an impasse.

The left-of-center opposition New Democrats, a pro-union party that is propping up the minority Liberal government, accused Ottawa of caving in to employers.

“Back-to-work orders suppress wages for all Canadians, so billionaires get richer and the rest of Canadians fall further behind,” leader Jagmeet Singh said in a statement but made no mention of bringing down the Liberals.

The Teamsters union that represents employees at the two main rail companies has filed court challenges against rulings by the labor board that forced them back to work.

“The government is sending a dangerous message: employers can bypass meaningful negotiations, lock out their workers, and wait for political intervention to secure a more favorable deal,” the Canadian Labour Congress said in a statement.

The Montreal Longshoremen’s Union rejected a final offer made for a new labor contract, leading to a lockout being declared. Exports of canola oil and forest products from West Coast ports, including Vancouver, have halted.

“These work stoppages are impacting our supply chain, hundreds of thousands of Canadian jobs, our economy and our reputation as a reliable international trading partner,” said MacKinnon, who said employers and unions had not been acting urgently enough.

“I’ve directed the Canada Industrial Relations Board to order that all operations and duties at the ports resume and to assist the parties in settling their collective agreements by imposing final and binding arbitration,” he said.

—Additional reporting by Ed White in Winnipeg

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The MEA said in a statement the lockout, which will impact nearly 1,200 port workers at the Canadian port that handled 8.7 million metric tons in the third quarter of 2024, has been declared as of 9 p.m. eastern (02:00 GMT).

The lockout will further slow Canadian imports and exports at a time the Port of Montreal was already operating at partial capacity and as West Coast ports are stopped due to a separate dispute.

The union representing longshoremen at the Port of Montreal said the offer was rejected by 99.7 per cent of members because the employer refused to negotiate.

“If the MEA had respected the collective bargaining processes, solutions would have been found and a conflict at the Port of Montreal would have been avoided,” said union adviser Michel Murray in a statement.

Two terminals operated by Termont, the container terminal operator based out of the Port of Montreal, representing about 40 per cent of Montreal’s container traffic and 15 per cent of total port volume, have been shut down by the union’s strike, which began on Oct. 31.

However, after Sunday’s announcement all longshoring at the port will be locked out. And only essential services not related to longshoring will continue at the Port of Montreal.

The MEA said that its final offer provided for a three per cent salary increase per year for four years and a 3.5 per cent increase for the two subsequent years.

West Coast ports including Canada’s largest port of Vancouver have also been mostly shut down since Monday due to a labor dispute, impacting exports of canola oil and forest products.

—Reporting by Gnaneshwar Rajan in Bengaluru, Divya Rajagopal in Toronto

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If the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 375 does not accept the offer by Sunday at 8:00 p.m. “only essential services and activities unrelated to longshoring will continue at the Port of Montréal from 9 p.m. on Sunday,” the Maritime Employers Association said in a statement on Thursday.

So far, two terminals operated by Termont, representing about 40 per cent of Montreal’s container traffic and 15 per cent of total port volume, have been shut down by the union’s strike, which began on Oct. 31.

If the operators’ offer is not accepted, all longshoring at the port would be locked out, the association said.

The association said its pay offer represented a “cumulative increase” of over 20 per cent over six years.

A CUPE spokesperson said on Friday “an offer has been made and the union is looking at it.”

West Coast ports, including Canada’s largest port of Vancouver, have been mostly shut down since Monday due to a labor dispute, impacting exports of canola oil and forest products. Bulk grain exports are not affected.

The British Columbia Maritime Employers Association said in a statement on Thursday evening that it is scheduled to meet with International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 representatives with the assistance of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service on Saturday afternoon.

Federal Labor Minister Steven MacKinnon has said both sides have a responsibility to reach an agreement. On Thursday, he criticized the lack of apparent progress at both ports.

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