Colorado Bathroom Access Bill Shows a Bigger Breakdown

CBS Colorado, in a piece by Dillon Thomas, reports that UFCW Local 7, the union representing JBS workers in Greeley, is asking Colorado lawmakers to pass a bill requiring large livestock slaughter employers to provide reasonable bathroom access for employees. The union says the push comes after its recent strike and after bargaining over broader workplace issues, including protective equipment and worker treatment.

According to the article, union president Kim Cordova argues JBS should not have to be forced by legislation to do what basic workplace rules already ought to cover. JBS, for its part, says the proposed legislation matches its existing policies and insists workers already have a process for leaving the line for approved and necessary reasons, including restroom use. In other words, one side says this is a needed protection, and the other says it is already doing the thing. Welcome to modern governance, where apparently we now need a Capitol hearing to confirm that grown adults may use a toilet.

The Bullet Point Brief

• UFCW Local 7 wants a state law covering livestock slaughter employers with more than 500 workers, requiring reasonable restroom access. Because nothing says “advanced civilization” quite like drafting legislation for bladder management.
• The union says it just wrapped its first strike in more than 40 years and won gains on equipment and worker protections, but now wants bathroom access taken out of the realm of negotiation entirely. Fair enough. Some things should not require a labor standoff and a mediator with a clipboard.
• Kim Cordova says JBS should be ashamed that legislation is even being discussed to enforce what she frames as existing OSHA-level expectations. That is a pretty solid sign the relationship is not exactly built on mutual trust and handshakes.
• JBS says it already provides PPE at no cost under normal use and already allows reasonable restroom access through a long-standing process that lets workers leave the line when necessary. So either this bill is fixing a real problem, or it is codifying what the company insists is already standard practice. Government loves that kind of sequel.
• The article notes JBS is no mom-and-pop butcher shop. It employs 3,800 people in Greeley and more than 270,000 globally. Which means when a dispute like this hits the Capitol, it stops being a workplace disagreement and turns into a full-blown political pageant under the Gold Dome.

My Bottom Line

I read stuff like this and my first thought is not partisan. It is civilizational. Have we really reached the point where one side says it needs a law to guarantee bathroom breaks and the other side says, no no, we already allow that, and somehow the only possible referee is the state legislature? That is not a healthy society. That is a society that has forgotten how to govern itself at even the most basic level.

There may well be blame on both sides here. Maybe management has handled this badly. Maybe the union sees an opportunity to turn a workplace dispute into a legislative trophy. Both things can be true at once. But if basic human needs cannot be worked out between employer and employee without dragging in lawmakers, staffers, lobbyists, press releases, and the inevitable parade of virtue signalers, then we are not watching self-government. We are watching dependency dressed up as progress.

And let us be honest about the absurdity. How exactly is this enforced? Are we assigning restroom czars now? Stopwatch audits? Potty compliance units? A hotline for unauthorized hesitation outside Stall Two? The state is already too big, too nosy, and too convinced every human conflict requires another statute. This is how freedom gets chipped away, one supposedly reasonable intervention at a time.

A free people ought to be capable of handling basic workplace decency without a bill number attached to it. JBS ought to act like adults. The union ought to act like adults. And lawmakers ought to resist the urge to turn every failure of character, trust, or competence into another monument to legal micromanagement. If we need legislation to regulate a person’s ability to pee, then something deeper than labor policy is broken.

Source: CBS Colorado