Over 1,700 Cargill Meatpacking Workers Locked Out After Demanding Bathroom Breaks
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Over 1,700 Cargill Meatpacking Workers Locked Out After Demanding Bathroom Breaks
The largest privately held company in the United States is refusing to concede to workers’ demands for more dignified workplace conditions, including protected bathroom breaks.
Courtesy of Teamsters Local 455
Tue June 16th, 2026
News<br>•<br>Food<br>•<br>Industry
Words by<br>Grey Moran
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9 min read
The town of Fort Morgan — just over 5 square miles along the northeastern plains of Colorado, with a population of around 11,900 — has emerged as the center of a pivotal labor dispute with the largest privately-held company in the United States: Cargill.
As one of the “Big Four” meatpackers that corner the U.S. market, Cargill produces about one-fifth of the nation’s beef, with six primary U.S. beef processing plants. Its slaughterhouse and processor in Fort Morgan is colossal in its own right. The town’s largest employer, it covers 85 acres and processes around 4,000 cattle a day — at least, it did until recently. This economic engine has shuttered as the company has halted production and indefinitely locked out its workers, putting their livelihoods on the line.
“We’ve got 1,700 union members, and then I look at that as 1,700 families…that’s like 8,000 people that are depending on us to do the best job we can, and set these members up for success in the future,” says Chris Suazo, a business agent for Teamsters Local 455, which represents the plant’s meatpacking workers. “It’s a lot of pressure.”
As negotiations grew tense in late April, Cargill stopped sending cattle to slaughter without notice, leaving workers confused and with shortened hours.
“They stopped production a month before they locked us out,” says Suazo. “We were waiting for the company to come in [for negotiations] and then we were starting to get calls from members at the plant saying, ‘Hey, there’s no cows here today. There’s no cows here.’’’
According to Cargill, this decision to halt production was made in anticipation of a “work stoppage” — i.e., a strike. “Before the lockout began, Cargill adjusted production schedules at the Fort Morgan facility on April 23 because the union had indicated it could call an immediate work stoppage during contract negotiations,” Hli Yang, a senior communications manager at Cargill, tells Sentient in an email.
But workers did not initiate a strike. Instead, Cargill locked workers out of their jobs on May 20th, after the company presented the union with a final offer, which didn’t include their core demands: higher wages to keep up with inflation, protections from penalizing workers or replacing them with automated technology and protected bathroom breaks, according to Suazo.
After overwhelmingly voting against this offer on May 19th, the union asked Cargill to modify the proposal or return to the negotiating table, but the company’s “immediate response was to lock us out,” says Suazo. “It feels to me like they’re just trying to bully the membership into taking a substandard deal.”
The Right to Bathroom Breaks
Despite what they see as Cargill’s punitive, escalating tactics, many of the locked-out union members have assembled every day from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., forming picket lines throughout the town, carrying signs that read “The Steaks Are High.” They are calling to return to their jobs and the negotiating table without scrapping key demands, such as protections when exercising their right to use the bathroom.
“A lot of people don’t believe me when I tell them. Our people are having a hard time just going to the restroom on the line. We literally had to arbitrate this in 2017. The arbitrator ruled with us that our people do have a right to go to the bathroom, just like anybody else in America,” Dean Modecker, the secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 455, told a local Denver radio station. Yet the company has not honored this, according to Modecker and Suazo.
This Cargill plant’s bathroom policy, first established in 1987, states that workers “have the right to go to the restroom when necessary.” This comes with the stipulation that “you must, however, first request permission from your supervisor, and give them a reasonable amount of time to find someone to replace you. That reasonable amount of time is specifically stated as five to ten minutes. At that time, if not relieved, you may go to the restroom without discipline.”
Under federal law, all U.S. workers are guaranteed the right to “prompt access” to the bathroom,...