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Union workers at the JBS pork processing plant in Worthington this week ratified a new contract, which they say addresses critical safety concerns on the production line. 

The employees, represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers union, raised concerns about faster line speeds as part of contract negotiations with the company, after the Trump administration announced it would allow pork and poultry slaughterhouses to speed up production.

The JBS plant in Worthington already processes more than 1,000 hogs an hour, as workers must quickly slice the animals into different cuts of meat on several production lines, and workers there fear that increasing line speeds would lead to more serious injuries in what is already dangerous work.   

According to UFCW 663, the contract includes joint union-employer training for union stewards and company representatives to accurately time and monitor the production line. Union president Rena Wong said these measures allow workers to ensure that line speeds remain within safe limits. 

Wong added that workers will now feel assured that they can also inspect cuts of meat as they’re being processed and flag possible issues while working the line. 

“They have agency over being able to bring up when there are issues on the line,” Wong said. “Which is good for worker safety, but it’s also good for consumer safety.”

In April, as contract talks stalled, union members marched outside the JBS plant in Worthington demanding more safety training and other measures to protect line workers. They also negotiated for higher wages and better benefits.

Workers at this Minnesota meat processing plant and others say they frequently suffer injuries, especially when line speeds increase. The most common are repetitive stress injuries to joints, ligaments and nerves, conditions caused by making the same body movements repeatedly over a period of time. 

“Having all union stewards receive line speed training is very important,” Brenda Quijano, a plant worker who served on the bargaining committee, said in a statement. “When we can regulate the line speed, it means fewer injuries for us — especially given the four years ahead with Trump weakening our line speed protections. We’ve improved our own ability to protect ourselves.”

Officials from the National Pork Producers Council disagree that faster line speeds increase injury risk, pointing to a recent USDA study on meat plant safety that found no direct link between worker injuries and faster line speeds. 

However, the study did show that a higher “piece rate” did correlate with injuries. 

Contract also includes higher pay and new pension plan

Under the new agreement, the JBS plant’s union workers will get pay raises of $1.20 per hour  over the three year life of the agreement. That’s 40 cents an hour per year, but it puts the JBS Worthington meat processing workers on par with what workers at other JBS facilities around the country earn, according to Wong. JBS Worthington plant workers start earning a base pay rate of $21 an hour, but can earn more in certain job classifications.

The new contract also gives workers a new option for saving money for retirement — a Variable Annuity Pension Plan — in addition to having the choice of remaining in  the current 401 (k) plan. 

“We won the right for each worker to choose their retirement plan,” Quijano said. “Many people want to keep their 401(k), and others prefer the stability of a pension. That choice should be ours — and now it is.”

The contract also includes improvements to the attendance policy, allowing workers more flexibility to take time off for a family illness or other unexpected emergency. 

“The change in the attendance policy gives me more breathing room and makes me less anxious that I will lose my job for taking care of my family,” plant worker Nyawargak Jack said in a union press release.

In addition, the new contract will maintain employees’ health care coverage.

“They have health care benefits through JBS and that is going to continue,” Wong said, adding that the company and the union plan to meet later in the year “to talk about how we move forward in partnership, figure out how to contain costs, because health care costs go up every year.”

In comparison to non-unionized food processing plants, Wong contends union-represented workers tend to make more money, and she hopes this contract sets a standard for higher wages for workers across  the food processing industry.

But she added that the main priority was to prioritize workers’ safety.

“That is why we think it is so important that we were able to win this training for all stewards,” Wong said. “To be able to learn how to time the speed of the line, understanding the crewing that is necessary, and then being able to raise those concerns with supervisors in a productive way, to be able to enforce that so our members stay safe, and so that the product that comes out of this plant is also extra safe for our consumers.”

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Amazon is pausing plans to build a large data center in the central Minnesota city of Becker.

City Administrator Greg Lerud said Friday the tech giant told the city it is suspending its development activities in Minnesota, including the site it owns in Becker. 

Last year, Amazon purchased about 350 acres near the Sherco coal-fired power plant for the proposed data center. Sherco owner Xcel Energy plans to close the plant by 2030 and is building a massive solar project at the site. Lerud said Amazon plans to continue owning the property.

In a statement, Amazon spokesperson Duncan Neasham said the company continues to evaluate the Becker location.

Neasham said Amazon chooses locations for data centers based on several factors, such as electric grid reliability, the speed it can build to meet customers’ demand and overall economics, including the cost of power and land.

“As a result, due to the uncertainty, we are redirecting more of our resources to focus on other projects that can provide capacity to our customers more quickly,” he said.

Xcel Energy spokesperson Theo Keith said Amazon communicated that it is pausing its data center plans “because of factors independent of our readiness to serve the site’s electricity needs.”

Keith said Xcel is “committed to supporting economic growth and job creation in the Becker area,” and continues to talk with other potential customers about locating their operations in Minnesota.

At least 11 large-scale data centers are proposed for Minnesota, part of a national building boom to keep up with the growth of cloud computing and artificial intelligence. The explosive growth of data centers is sparking concerns about how utilities will meet their enormous demands for electricity and water.

Minnesota has been attractive for data center developers in part because of its cooler climate, geographic location, renewable energy mandates and tax incentives. 

Amazon’s move comes as Minnesota lawmakers are debating additional regulations on large-scale data centers and could eliminate a sales tax exemption on the electricity they use.

Legislative leaders and Gov. Tim Walz rolled out the broad strokes of the proposal last week as a mechanism to pay for a research and development tax credit. It’s expected to bring in $16 million in net additional revenues in the first two years.

House DFL Majority Leader Melissa Hortman noted that under current Minnesota law, data centers do not pay sales tax on hardware, software or electricity. 

“It is only the electricity portion of the data center tax credit that will be rolled back and will, in part, pay for the R and D tax credit,” Hortman said. “So just want to be clear, the vast majority of the data center tax credit remains unchanged.”

During an interview on MPR News’ Politics Friday, Gov. Tim Walz said Minnesota has one of the most generous tax policies for data centers in the U.S.

“But we have to balance our budget,” Walz said. “And I think a lot of Minnesotans are saying, ‘Well, you couldn't do a tax cut to my sales tax, but you could do a tax cut to (Amazon founder) Jeff Bezos?’”

When asked about Amazon’s announcement regarding Becker, Walz called it “pretty bad lobbying.” 

“We're still in the middle of this. This isn't a done deal,” he said.

While Republican House Speaker Lisa Demuth was involved in the broad budget framework, other GOP lawmakers expressed frustration about the proposed change and about the resulting move by Amazon to slow roll its plans in Becker.

“I’m incredibly frustrated that a major economic lifeline for the Becker community has effectively stalled,” Sen. Andrew Mathews, R-Princeton, said in a news release, noting the governor and legislative leaders “stonewalled” the project. 

“The governor’s proposal last week to repeal the data center’s sales tax exemption on electricity appears to be the final straw,” Mathews said.

There is some disagreement within a legislative tax working group about how to apply the exemption. Some Democrats raised concerns about big tech corporations like Amazon receiving tax credits and opposed efforts to extend credits decades or longer into the future.

“I won’t ask the people who are here on the dime of the data centers to raise their hands but there’s a lot of them, we’ve all been hearing from them,” Rep. Aisha Gomez, DFL-Minneapolis, said during a tax working group hearing on Friday. “What we’re talking about here is sending hundreds of millions of dollars of your kids’, your grandkids’ and, if they have their way, your grandkids’ money, public dollars, tax dollars to the largest corporations that have ever existed on the face of the earth.”

Rep. Greg Davids, R-Preston, said there are financial benefits that come to the state for bringing the data centers in and the tax credits make the state more competitive. He said he would advocate for keeping the Amazon project in Becker on track.

“We learned yesterday that Amazon is pulling back from Becker, I’m hoping we can do some things here so we decide to come back,” Davids said.

Another possible factor could have been the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission’s recent decision that Amazon must prove it needs 250 backup diesel generators at the Becker site. Amazon had sought an exemption from that requirement under the state’s permitting process.

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